Check back as I post what's been happening on my end soon.  this post will be regularly updated.



The media attention/coverage towards what has been taking place thus far has been shockingly and modestly absent. Where are the reporters who covered the Arab spring? Thus far there have been two to about six people and their teams covering this - all of the same News Media. That is not including online and journalists offsite.  This is a massive movement and yet by the coverage alone, people are led to believe it is a small event.

This is the ultimate non-violent, DESPERATE push and card the Palestinian people have. They are willingly starving themselves to death, that is how dire their situations has become.

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The Israeli government paints this situation as 'business as usual' and even goes so far as to invent charges against many of the prisoners. To make them sound as if their detentions and imprisonment are justified, when most were literally people randomly picked off the streets, human rights activists from other countries, and journalists.  Most who are not in prison are in 'detention centers' which are basically high security prisoners and  are  mostly comprised of Children and Teenagers ie. Stone throwers or kids that 'resisted' the security forces by clutching onto them begging for them to release their loved ones.  There are parents in the detention centers and their own children in some cases are also being held unbeknownst to them. So say they get released, they are released but their children would not be, it is a classic tactic to break the Palestinian - literally keeping innocent people in prisons as a way of coercing cooperation with their relatives.  With regular interrogations being preformed against the children to make them admit to charges fabricated by their jailers.


In this case it has been reported that TWO prisoners were released, the joke here is that those two people have been forbidden from ever returning to their families and their respected homes. So say one was born in Th West bank, she would be sent to Gaza and never allowed to travel to The West bank. Even though she has no family in Gaza, she is 'released' to live out the rest of her life in a city that is basically a massive security prison. The last person to endure this sentence spent all her life in exile after being arrested in her teens and was an elder before she finally saw one of her last remaining living siblings. She had been sent to live out her days in a Jordanian Refugee camp.


So yes Israel releases those prisoners but on the conditions that it sets. Basically if they release prisoners those prisoners are made to wish they never asked to be released.

UPDATE
"Hana Shalabi was among those released in the prisoner exchange, but then barely recovering from her prior detention period, was rearrested in a night arrest raid, once again confined by an administrative detention decree for a further four months in Israeli jail."

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Hasan Zahi Safadi. He's been imprisoned uncharged since June 29, 2011. May 5 marked his 60th hunger striking day. Family members are denied permission to see him.

His brother Fou'ad said Hasan was held 55 days at al-Jalama interrogation center. Israel Prison Service (IPS) authorities then transferred him to Magiddo Prison. He joined other strikers in protest. IPS moved him from one facility to another. He spent much time in punitive isolation.

Hasan's lawyer said he was physically assaulted and denied proper medical care. His health deteriorated badly. On April 6, he was transferred to Ramla Prison Hospital. Its treatment is appalling. Hasan pledges to keep hunger striking for justice.

Al Haq also discussed Nizar Samir-al Tamimi. He was first arrested in 1993. Last October, he was released as part of Israel's prisoner exchange for Gilad Shalit.

When arrested years ago, he was violently interrogated and abused physically and psychologically. Observers call it torture. Its standard Israeli practice. Even children aren't exempt.

Nizar was forced to sit for hours in one position with his hands and feet painfully shackled and a plastic bag over his head. Weeks later in court, his mother attended his hearing. She was physically assaulted. A female soldier pushed her down and struck her head with her rifle butt.

Severely injured and hospitalized, she died two days later. Soldiers literally get away with murder. Interrogators tried using his mother's death to pressure Nizar to confess to false charges. He was sentenced to life in prison.

You can read the rest here

[link]

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The Media Missing in action even gets reported by Aljazeera

Santa Barbara, CA -Can anyone doubt that if there were more than 1,500 prisoners engaged in a hunger strike in any country in the world other than Palestine, the media in the West would be obsessed with the story? Such an obsession would, of course, be greatest if such a phenomenon were to occur in an adversary state such as Iran or China, but almost anywhere it would be featured news, that is, anywhere but Palestine. It would be highlighted day after day, and reported on from all angles, including the severe medical risks associated with such a lengthy refusal to take food, with respected doctors and human rights experts sharing their opinions.At this time there are two Palestinians who were the first to start this current wave of resistance to the practice of administrative detention, Thaer Halalheh and Bilal Diab, enduring their 70th day without food. Both men are reported by respected prisoner protection association, Addameer and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, to be in critical condition with their lives hanging in the balance. Examining doctors indicated recently that both detainees were reported to "suffer from acute muscle weakness in their limbs that prevents them from standing" and are under the "dual threat" of "muscle atrophy and Thromohophilia, which can lead to a fatal blood clot".
Despite this dramatic state of affairs until today there has been scant notice taken by Western governments, media and even the United Nations of the life threatening circumstances confronting Halalheh or Diab, let alone the massive solidarity strike that is of shorter duration, but still notable as a powerful expression of nonviolent defiance.

In contrast, consider the attention that the Western media has been devoting in recent days to a lone blind Chinese human rights lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, who managed to escape from house arrest in Beijing, find a safe haven at the US Embassy, arrange a release and then seek an exit from China. This is an important and disturbing international incident, to be sure, but is it truly so much more significant than the Palestinian story as to explain the total neglect of the extraordinary exploits of thousands of Palestinians who are sacrificing their bodies, quite possibly their lives, to nonviolently protest severe mistreatment in the Israeli prison system, and by extension, the oppressiveness of an occupation that has gone on for 45 years?

This current wave of hunger strikes started on April 17, Palestinian Prisoners' Day, and was directly inspired by the earlier recently completed long and heroic hunger strikes of Khader Adnan (66 days) and Hana Shalabi (43 days) both of whom protested against the combination of administrative detention and abusive arrest and interrogation procedures. It should be understood that administrative detention depends on accusations contained in secret evidence not disclosed to the detainee or defense lawyers and allows Israel to imprison Palestinians for six months at a time without bringing any criminal charges, with terms renewable as they expire.

Hana Shalabi was among those released in the prisoner exchange, but then barely recovering from her prior detention period, was rearrested in a night arrest raid, once again confined by an administrative detention decree for a further four months in an Israeli jail. Or consider the experience of Thaer Halahla, although only 33 years of age has been eight times placed in administrative detention for a total of six and a half years, despite the absence of any signs that he was involved in any violent activity.

Both Mr Adnan and Ms Shalabi were released through last minute deals negotiated at a time when their physical survival seemed in doubt, making death seem imminent. Israel apparently did not then want to risk a agitating Palestinians by such martyrdom. At the same time Israel, as usual, did not want to seem to be retreating under pressure, or draw into question its reliance on administrative detention and imprisonment. Israel has refused, until the present, to examine the grievances that gave rise to these hunger strikes.

In Hana Shalabi's case her release was coupled with a punitive deportation order, which cruelly confines her to Gaza for the next three years, away from her family and the familiar surroundings of her home village of Burqin near Jenin in the West Bank. There are some indications that Ms Shalabi was not fully informed about the deportation feature of her release, and was manipulated by prison authorities and the lawyer representing her interests. It may now be with the continuation of the hunger strikes, and their rapid expansion to a majority of those imprisoned, and even to Palestinian civil society, that Israel has altered its calculations, thinking that deaths among such fear into the Palestinians as to lead those still alive to abandon their hunger strike. It is difficult to assess the direction of the Israeli response at this stage.

There are reports that some of the current hunger strikers have been offered similar conditional releases, but have so far steadfastly refused to resume eating if it means deportation or exile. A fierce struggle of wills between the strikers and the prison authorities is underway, between those with the advantages of hard power domination and those relying on the soft power resources of moral and spiritual courage, and societal solidarity. As the strikers repeated affirm, their acts are not meant for their own release alone, but on behalf of all prisoners, and beyond even this, in support of the wider Palestinian struggle for dignity, self-determination and freedom from oppression.

The torment of these striking prisoners is not only a consequence of their refusal to accept food until certain conditions are met. Israeli prison guards and authorities are doing their best to intensify the torments of hunger. There are numerous reports that the strikers are being subjected to belittling harassment and a variety of punishments, including constant taunting, solitary confinement, confiscation of personal belongings, denial of family visits, disallowance of examination by humanitarian NGOs and hardhearted refusals to transfer to medically threatened strikers to civilian hospitals where they could receive the kinds of medical treatment their critical conditions urgently require.

There are also broader issues at stake. When in the past Palestinians resorted to violent forms of resistance they were branded by the West as terrorists, their deeds were widely covered by dwelling upon their sensationalist aspects, but when Palestinians resort to nonviolent forms of resistance, whether hunger strikes or BDS or an intifada, their actions fall mainly on deaf ears and wooden eyes. Worse, there is a concerted propaganda spin to depict a particular tactic of nonviolent resistance as somehow illegitimate, either as a cheap trick to gain sympathy or as a dirty trick to subvert the state of Israel by drawing its legitimacy into question.

All the while, Israel's annexationist plans move ahead, with settlements expanding, and now recently, with more than 100 settler outposts, formerly illegal even under Israeli law, in the process of being retroactively legalised. Such moves signal once and for all that the Netanyahu leadership exhibits not one iota of good faith when it continues to claim that it seeks to negotiate a conflict ending peace treaty with the Palestinians. It is a pity that the Palestinian Authority has not yet had the diplomatic composure to call it quits when it comes to heeding the hollow calls of the Quartet to resume direct talks with Israel. It is long past time to crumble this long bridge to nowhere.


[link]

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The number of Hunger Strikes has now reached 3500, there are 250.000 Palestinians imprisoned on and off without charge.


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Some one was kind enough to send me this quote and asked me what I thought:

Sivan Weitzman, a spokeswoman for the Israeli prison service, says a government committee has been formed to re-evaluate the living conditions and rights of prisoners. But she says that the hunger strikers are only harming themselves.

"We don't directly negotiate with them. There are officials and a committee who deal with their requests and demands. And we hope in the coming days they will announce their findings," Weitzman says.


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this is the Israeli government basically saying ' We don't actually give a damn about their conditions, rights, OR the question of how the came to be prisoners;, but since this inconvenience has been somewhat highlighted; we don't actually think it was a wise decision on the Palestinians part.'  See because conditions were what the Palestinians deserved in their minds and to say otherwise is idiotic to Israels government body.  How dare any of you actually tell Israel what it can and cannot do to it's enemies. For every single Palestinians is getting their rightful treatment.  And the last line of course is them saying they will stall and stall because they see this as a 'cry wolf' scenario on the part of the Palestinians. It is only when they start dying off will they finally begrudgingly start actually assessing things, and of course they will find nothing wrong. See because this is exactly like asking a serial killer to investigate himself for murder - it's asinine.

How do you test that? Have the UN send in Amnesty international to assess every.single. prisoner in all prisons both public, secret, and All detention centers all over Israel - and Israel will refuse.

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