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Photos: Published by Haaretz
Ghassan Jarrar, Khalida's husband, at their home in Ramallah this week. He is very fearful about his wife's fate, as indeed every proponent of human rights in Israel and elsewhere should be. Credit: Moti Milrod.

Jarrar celebrates her release from 14-months imprisonment, in 2016. Credit: Majdi Mohammed / AP

Jarrar holds a picture of her daughter, who died while she was in Israeli jail, in 2019. She heard of her daughter's death on the radio.Credit: Alex Levac
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Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar was arrested again after the war broke out and has been jailed ever since without charges – now in total isolation, in inhuman conditions

by Gideon Levy for Haaretz
Aug 30, 2024

After being imprisoned during Israel's mass arrests of West Bank Palestinians a few months after the war broke out in Gaza, Khalida Jarrar has been ordered to remain behind bars for yet another six months, again under administrative detention – without charges and without a trial.

The No. 1 female Palestinian political prisoner – whom Israel alleged is a member of the political leadership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which it considers a terrorist group – was snatched from her home eight months ago and has been incarcerated ever since. Until two and a half weeks ago, she was held with other female security prisoners in Damon Prison, on Mount Carmel outside Haifa. Then, suddenly, with no explanation, she was transferred to Neve Tirza, a women's prison in central Israel, thrown into a tiny cell of 2.5 x 1.5 meters and left in total isolation 24/7.

Her cell has no windows. There is no air, no fan, only a concrete bed and a thin mattress as well as a toilet that has no water most of the day. This week she told her lawyer that in order to breathe a bit, she lies down on the floor and tries to draw in a bit of air from the crack under the cell door. She doesn't drink much, in order to avoid having to use the toilet, which emits a horrific stench.

This is how Israel holds its political prisoners: without charges or trial, under inhuman conditions that are illegal even according to High Court of Justice rulings (such those relating to cell crowding, which the prison authorities ignore).

At times the 61-year-old feminist and political activist calls for hours for a guard to assist her – Jarrar is ailing and is on medication – without any response. When I asked her husband, Ghassan, this week, what he thinks she does throughout all those hours of inhuman isolation, he fell silent and his eyes grew moist. Khalida and Ghassan have plenty of experience with incarceration: He's spent about 10 years of his life in prison, she about six. But her imprisonment now is undoubtedly the harshest and most difficult of all, under the iron fist of Itamar Ben-Gvir's Israel Prison Service.

She is steeped in suffering: During each of her previous incarcerations – all but one of them also administrative detentions – a close relative died, and Israel prevented her from participating in the funerals or mourning rituals. In 2015, when her father died, she was in custody; in 2018, when her mother died, she was in custody; in 2021 one of her two daughters, Suha, died at the age of 31, and even then Israel hardened its heart and refused to allow the bereaved mother to attend the funeral. Jarrar was released three months after her daughter's death and went straight from Damon Prison to Suha's grave. "You people think we have no feelings," she said to me then. And now, during her present imprisonment, her nephew, Wadia, who grew up in her home like a son, died of cardiac arrest, at age 29.

The disasters that have befallen Khalida are beyond comprehension: Tragedy has followed tragedy and she copes heroically with all of them, at least outwardly; she is behind bars for the fifth time in her life and the fourth time since 2015. The fact that, other than in one case, she has never actually been convicted of anything (and even that sole conviction was for a political offense, "membership in an illegal association," and not for committing acts of terrorism or violence), without Israel ever having presented the slightest bit of evidence against her at a trial – this should shock every person in Israel or abroad who believes in democracy. Five times Haaretz has called for her release in editorials, but in vain.

Jarrar, who opposes the regime, the regime of occupation, is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Assembly, which is not functioning at present, a fact that should accord her parliamentary immunity. She is a prisoner of conscience in Israel. When we talk about prisoners of conscience in Myanmar, in Russia, in Iran or in Syria, we also must not forget Jarrar. When we talk about Israel as a democracy, it's our obligation to remember Jarrar.

The last time we visited the Jarrars' handsome old stone house in the center of Ramallah was after her release from her previous jail term, straight into the period of mourning Suha's death. That occasion was her most painful return home from prison. Parked below was the new red Jeep her husband had bought her two years earlier, which she had barely managed to drive before being arrested. The red Jeep again stood silently in the driveway this week. But the house is emptier and sadder than ever before: Suha is dead, Khalida is in prison, and the other daughter, Yafa, the couple's eldest, lives in Ottawa with her Canadian husband and their 2-year-old daughter, whom they named Suha in memory of her aunt. Only Ajawi (ripe date) and Asal (honey), two ruddy cats, are still wandering about here.

A kite flew this week in the skies of Ramallah, high above the dismal traffic jams around the Qalandiyah checkpoint. From outside the window of the Jarrars' home, the noise of helicopters is suddenly heard: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is apparently returning after another diplomatic mission – Jordan has supplied him with two helicopters.

Two months ago, Ghassan closed down his factory in Beit Furiq, southeast of Nablus, which manufactured stuffed animals. The ordeals of the checkpoints on the way there and back – Beit Furiq has been locked down by Israeli authorities since the start of the Gaza war – and the economic situation, in which captivating, colorful toys made from spectacular synthetic fur don't stand a chance, forced him to shutter his business. Numerous Palestinians have suffered a similar fate in the West Bank, where incomes have dried up because workers are no longer allowed to enter Israel.

Ghassan, 65, is currently a member of the municipal council in Ramallah, heading an independent faction of four. Since Khalida's most recent abduction from their home, he has embarked on a vigorous sports regimen, running 10 kilometers a day and swimming.

The abductors arrived on December 26, 2023, at 5 A.M., quietly forcing open the iron front door and then bursting into the bedroom on the second floor. Ghassan, who was sleeping soundly and didn't hear a thing at first, was jolted awake with blows from rifle butts and punches in the face by soldiers, some of them masked. He recalls instinctively trying to protect his face, without understanding what was going on, until he heard one of the soldiers say, "He tried to grab the weapon." Ghassan snapped awake. He heard rifles being cocked and felt the red laser beams of their sights skittering across his face. That was his closest moment to death ever, he says. He immediately raised his hands in surrender and saved his life.

The soldiers didn't harm Khalida. She was ordered to dress, collect some clothing and her medication, and go with the soldiers downstairs. There, in the driveway, she was handcuffed and blindfolded. The abductors said nothing about why she was being taken into custody and where she was being taken.

She was placed in administrative detention for six months without undergoing any interrogation. On June 24 that was extended for another six months, as usual without charges or explanations. The conditions at Damon Prison are worse than at Hasharon Prison, near Netanya, where she had been jailed the previous time. In addition, since the start of the war the situation of security prisoners has been aggravated immeasurably thanks to the sadistic duo, National Security Minister Ben-Gvir and his chief of staff and lackey, Chanamel Dorfman.

At Damon there were anywhere between 73 and 91 female Palestinian prisoners and detainees while Khalida was there, Ghassan reports, adding that she had showed greater caution there and did not try to act as the leader of her fellow inmates, as she had before. Since December, of course, her husband has not met or even spoken with her – all visits to Palestinian prisoners were halted by Ben-Gvir. In 2021, Khalida learned of her daughter's death via the radio, but now there is no radio, no electric kettle or hotplate, or any other devices that could ease her plight. Nor can anything be purchased in prison canteens in the Ben-Gvir era.

On August 13, a lawyer who had visited a different inmate, reported that Khalida was no longer in Damon. Naturally, no one in the Israel Prison Service thought to inform the family, which immediately launched feverish efforts to find out where she was. The family's lawyer, Hiba Masalha, contacted the legal adviser at the prison service, but got no response. Finally, she was told at Damon that Khalida had been transferred to Neve Tirza. No more information was forthcoming.

As far as is known, there are no other security prisoners in Neve Tirza. Its criminal inmates could pose a danger to a Palestinian security prisoner like Khalida, but she was immediately sent to solitary confinement. No one explained to her lawyer why she was in isolation or for how long it will last. For an unwell woman over 60, inhuman conditions indeed.

On August 20, a Palestinian NGO, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, fired off an urgent letter to the heads of all the diplomatic missions in Ramallah and Jerusalem, describing the plight of the woman known around the world as a prisoner of conscience.

Last week, the prison's director informed Khalida that she is entitled to a daily walk of 45 minutes in the prison yard, alone. Since then she has gone out only twice for walks that are even shorter than a dog would get. But that privilege was revoked as of this week. Masalha visited and Khalida told her that she doesn't have a toothbrush, toothpaste or hairbrush, or any sort of slippers. Ghassan is anxious about what will happen should she pass out as a result of the diabetes and other ailments she suffers from, since the guards don't respond to her calls.