Sharon Zhang
UN groups have
warned that food security is “collapsing” across famine-stricken Gaza, with the
entire humanitarian aid operation at the brink due to Israel’s severe aid
blockade and Israeli-protected gang looting preventing what little aid that
enters from reaching starving Palestinians.
A
wide view captures the destruction of residential buildings in the
Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, on December 7, 2024.Saeed Jaras / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images
The UN Relief
and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has reported that Palestinians
are “in a state of sheer desperation,” with so little food available that two
young girls and a woman died in a crowd scrambling to get food recently.
Further, on
Monday, Israel attacked a group of people lined up to buy flour in southern
Gaza, killing at least 10 people.
The World Food
Programme in the Middle East and North Africa has said that the entire
humanitarian response in Gaza is “nearing collapse.” UNRWA announced this month
that it has had to suspend the use of Gaza’s main humanitarian aid crossing
point, Kerem Abu Salem, “due to a total breakdown of law and order.”
Reports have
found that looting gangs in Gaza are being either passively or actively
protected by Israeli forces, operating in areas that are otherwise controlled
by Israel as military zones. This has led to widespread looting of and violence
against aid convoys; the UN says that, in November, 90 percent of the only 109
aid trucks Israel allowed through the crossing were looted as soon as they
entered the besieged territory.
The looting is
exacerbating Israel’s extreme aid blockade. Last month, Israel only allowed an
average of 65 trucks into Gaza per day — a fraction of the 500 to 600 trucks
that humanitarian groups say is needed per day to meet the population’s basic
needs.
International
food authorities said last month that famine is likely already occurring or
will occur in the near future in Gaza, especially in north Gaza, where Israel
is carrying out a horrific ethnic cleansing campaign. Last week, UN Food and
Agriculture Organization head Beth Bechdol noted that food access is at an
“all-time low” across the Gaza Strip.
UNRWA has
reported that the UN tried to reach Palestinians in north Gaza with aid 53
times in November; of these missions, 48 were denied by Israeli authorities,
while five were approved but “severely impeded on the ground.” Only one set of
food aid was able to enter, along with the only humanitarian mission that was
allowed to reach Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza in two months.
Without an
influx of food and other crucial aid like fuel, yet more Palestinians will die
from starvation, disease and other preventable causes. Gaza officials cannot
account for most deaths due to starvation, but U.S. health workers back from
missions to Gaza estimated in October that over 60,000 Palestinians have died
from starvation, with that figure likely higher due to Israel’s eliminationist
campaign in north Gaza.
Families in Gaza
are also now facing a winter without proper supplies. According to the UN,
humanitarian agencies have only been able to meet the needs of 23 percent of
people in Gaza needing cold weather aid. This has left 945,000 people at risk
of cold weather exposure, lacking simple items like tents, clothing, and
heating materials.
Ashjan Ajour
As I write these lines, Khalida
Jarrar’s isolation has been extended for another month until December 17, 2024,
Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association reports. Jarrar, a
Palestinian activist and elected official, has been held in solitary
confinement in an Israeli prison since August 12, 2024, in an extremely small
cell, described to Truthout by both her lawyer and her husband as measuring
just 2 meters by 1.5 meters with no windows or ventilation. They report that
she must stay close to the gap beneath the door to catch any semblance of
breath. They say she fears being suffocated alive, and that she is being
provided with only minimal water and meager quantities of poor quality food.
Jarrar is a prominent prisoners’
rights activist who has faced repeated arrests by Israeli forces. In an
interview with Truthout, her husband, Ghassan Jarrar, described the brutality
of Khalida Jarrar’s most recent arrest on December 26, 2023:
They invaded our home in a barbaric manner at 3 am. They used a special
silent machine to break the door. We woke up to find ourselves surrounded by
around 15 masked soldiers, both men and women with flashlights on their
forehead. They began beating us while we were still in bed. The effects of
beating are still visible, marked on my body. I was close to dying right there
in bed. Then they took her. She has been in detention ever since and after that
held in isolation.
Prior to her imprisonment, Khalida
Jarrar worked as a researcher at the Muwatin Institute for Democracy and Human
Rights at Birzeit University, where she earned a master’s degree in democracy
and human rights. Earlier, from 1994 to 2006, she served as a director of
Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association. In 2006 she was
elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council, where she now chairs the
prisoners’ commission.
Jarrar’s latest imprisonment in 2023
has been under what the Israeli military terms “administrative detention,”
which enables Palestinians to be incarcerated in Israeli military prisons
without trial and held indefinitely, with a renewal of detention order approved
every six months. She was initially detained at Damon prison in Haifa until she
was transferred on August 12 to solitary confinement at Neve Tirza, Israel’s
women’s prison in Ramla. Upon her arrival, Jarrar was forbidden to meet with
her lawyer and was not informed of the reason for her isolation or the duration
of her isolation.
Mahmoud Hassan, Jarrar’s lawyer,
described to Truthout the extreme conditions she has faced in solitary
confinement:
She has not had contact with the outside world and is subjected to ill
treatment from the jailers. The jailers don’t speak with her, they deliver her
food as if she doesn’t exist. Books and pens are forbidden, leaving her with
nothing but the walls of her cell. There is no TV or radio, so she has no
access to news or awareness of what is happening in terms of political or
social events. Family visits are not allowed. She is even denied the ability to
clean her cell to make herself busy in any way. She sometimes makes
conversation with herself to preserve her mental strength, even talking to
herself in English to retain her knowledge and analyse and evaluate her
thoughts. As you know, a human is a social creature and isolation strips away
an essential part of what it means to be human.
Jarrar’s solitary confinement is one
part of the conditions of psychological torture that structure her
imprisonment. Her efforts to preserve her mental strength through
self-conversation reveal her remarkable resistance against these oppressive
conditions, which appear designed to dehumanize political prisoners and strip
them of their identity and agency. Hassan went on to elaborate on Jarrar’s
condition in isolation:
The lights and electricity remain on 24 hours a day, depriving her of the
ability to distinguish night from day. Without access to sunlight/daylight, she
can’t tell the time, and constant brightness prevents her from sleeping. She
repeatedly requested that the lights be dimmed to allow her to rest, but these
requests have been denied. This means that she is constantly under surveillance
by enabling cameras to monitor her at all times, but also this is a form of
torture.
Her food is not only of poor quality but insufficient, leaving her hungry.
The water is inadequate for both drinking and hygiene. She can’t bathe
regularly because of the scarcity of water. She has no more than two pieces of
clothing to change into, lack of a comb for her hair, and is given a minimal
amount of toothpaste.
In a statement issued through her
lawyers, Jarrar said, “They don’t allow me any space to breathe, even the gap
in the door of my cell has been sealed leaving me suffocating from the lack of
air and searching for oxygen to stay alive.”
When asked to elaborate, Hassan
commented further: “Air in the cell is rotten as there are no windows, no
sunlight, and no ventilation. She is denied outdoors time for days.”
Jarrar’s health and well-being have
been severely impacted by the conditions of her confinement. The deprivation of
necessities and the cruelty of her environment exemplify the systematic abuse
Palestinian political prisoners endure daily. Her husband, Ghassan Jarrar,
described Khalida’s dire situation in detail to Truthout, explaining that she
also contends with various health issues:
Khalida takes five different medications, and now she is
prescribed a sixth in this last imprisonment. However, there are times when
prison administration didn’t give her medication, which forced her to knock on
her cell’s door for hours demanding it. When they finally came, they argue with
her, claiming that they have delivered it, which [is] unimaginable. We tried to
call on human rights organizations and lawyers to intervene because no one can
comprehend the conditions she lives under. They even cut off the water supply
to the toilet, claiming there is a problem in the water pipes. The poor Khalida
had reached a point where she tries to avoid drinking water just to avoid using
the toilet. Her lawyers have documented these conditions in their reports. I am
not allowed to visit her at all as they hardly allow the lawyers to visit.
The systematic torture and abuse
inflicted on Khalida Jarrar are a form of slow death that appears designed to
beak her both physically and psychologically. The escalation of this brutal
torture mirrors the intensification of repression during the genocide in Gaza
that began in October 2023. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has
reported that more than 60 Palestinian prisoners have been killed in Israeli
custody since October 7, 2023.
In my recent essay, “Resistance,
Captivity, and Colonial Repression: The Struggle of Palestinian Political
Prisoners During the Gaza Genocide,” I argued that this current period of
genocide marks an unprecedented surge in violence against Palestinians. This is
evident in the level of torture inflicted on Palestinian prisoners and the
intensified detention campaigns, which have increased administrative detentions
to the highest level ever recorded.
According to Addameer Prisoners’
Support and Human Rights Association, the political prisoners exceeded 10,100
at the beginning of October 2024, and the number of administrative detainees
was 3,398 at that time.
Khalida Jarrar and her husband
Ghassan Jarrar are shown in their cap and gowns as graduates of Birzeit
University, class of 1985 / 1984 respectively.
Khalida Jarrar and her husband
Ghassan Jarrar are shown in their cap and gowns as graduates of Birzeit
University, class of 1985 / 1984 respectively.
Courtesy of Ghassan Jarrar
This is the fifth time that Jarrar
has been imprisoned. Her history of imprisonment began in 1989, when she was
arrested in her 20s after participating in an International Women’s Day
protest. She was arrested again in 2015. A short time after her release, she
was rearrested again in 2017, and she was released in February 2019 to be
arrested again in October 2019.
After holding her under
administrative detention during her 2015 arrest, Israel eventually charged
Khalida with incitement as well as with belonging to an “unlawful group,” a
reference to her association with a leftist political party, the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). She went through a military court trial, in
which she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in a plea deal. She was
sentenced again by a military court on those same charges in 2021, after she
had already been detained for more than a year without any charges. She is
currently being held in administrative detention, again, without any charges.
Khalida was elected to the
Legislative Council to represent the PFLP, which is among the more than 400
groups Israel has deemed “unlawful.” That number includes all of the main
Palestinian political parties — including the Palestinian Authority-controlling
Fatah — as well as reputable international human rights organizations. The PFLP
has both political and armed wings, but Israeli military prosecutors admitted
to having no evidence that Khalida was involved in any kind of armed activity.
Khalida’s imprisonment throughout
the years has solicited outrage from international organizations including
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, who used her story as part of a
case study about the use of Israeli military orders to repress Palestinian
civil society in the West Bank.
“It is both laughable and tragic,”
said Ghassan Jarrar, “to think that one of her accusations is being a member of
the Legislative Council and attending [an] event to honor a released political
prisoner.”
Ghassan revealed that Khalida knew
she was likely to be targeted for arrest again, which is why she refrained from
any political activity or media appearance, dedicating herself to her academic
work at Birzeit University. Despite distancing herself from the political world
and focusing on her research and teaching, she was arrested once more. Before
her arrest, she was deeply involved in a research project conducting interviews
and was preparing to teach a master’s course in the Democracy and Human Rights
M.A. program at Birzeit.
It is worth noting that during
Khalida’s many imprisonments, she experienced the loss of several family
members and wasn’t permitted to say goodbye. When I asked her husband about
this he shared:
Khalida has been imprisoned four times since 2015. During her first
imprisonment, her father passed away, and she was unable to bid him farewell,
only visiting his grave after her release to say goodbye. During her second
imprisonment, her mother died. In her third imprisonment, we lost our daughter
— may she rest in peace — and in this current imprisonment, her nephew, whom we
consider a son, passed away. Each imprisonment has brought enormous loss and
heartbreak.
The case of Khalida Jarrar embodies
the broader struggle of Palestinian political prisoners and reflects a
systematic pattern of abuse designed to dehumanize and destroy them. Such
inhumane treatment and torture weakens Palestinian society by targeting its
national, political and social leaders. Khalida appears to be deemed a threat
by Israel because she is a respected public figure and an emblem of resistance,
making her a target in Israel’s effort to dismantle Palestinian national
identity and leadership.
As an activist, politician,
researcher and academic, Jarrar has been steadfastly committed to the
Palestinian cause, constantly speaking and writing about Israeli violence and
oppressive practices at both national and international levels. In Damon prison,
she became a mentor to female prisoners, earning deep respect as a political
leader and teacher with a political consciousness.
Her lawyer said her resistance
highlights the brutality of her oppressors and the strength of her spirit.
“[Khalida] is a strong individual who understands their aims and tries her best
to resist the isolation,” Hassan said.
Khalida Jarrar exemplifies the
Palestinian sumud (steadfastness) embodied by all Palestinian political
prisoners fighting against colonial repression. Her indomitable spirit reflects
the courage of Palestinians everywhere who hold onto hope in the face of
despair. Justice demands not only her release, but also freedom for all
political prisoners.
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