DELINDA C. HANLEY
Palestinians, wearing protective masks amid fears of the spread of the novel coronavirus and waving national flags, take part in a protest in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails outside the U.N. High Commissioner’s offices in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, March 16. Protesters called for the release of children, elderly and ill prisoners. (SAID KHATIB/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2020, pp. 12-13
Special Report
By Delinda C. Hanley
AMERICANS CONCERNED ABOUT “flattening the curve” of COVID-19 infections around the country are beginning to release elderly and frail prisoners. There are more than 7,000 overcrowded prisons, jails and detention centers in the U.S., employing half a million workers who are also at risk. According to a report from Prison Policy Initiative, there are nearly 2.3 million people incarcerated in federal, state and local prisons, jails and other correctional facilities in the United States—the highest incarceration rate in the world.
Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black, whose memoir inspired a popular American Netflix series, published a plea to free prisoners in the March 31 Washington Post: “Our nation’s prisons and jails will soon become uncontrollable super-spreaders of this pandemic—and the reach will extend beyond their walls and barbed wire fences…an outbreak will overwhelm nearby health-care facilities, which are often in already underserved, rural communities.”
As for releasing elderly and ill prisoners, Kerman argues that they pose very low public safety risks because seniors have some of the lowest recidivism levels of all former inmates. Kerman also suggests the release of many of the 555,000 people in jail awaiting trial who can’t afford to post bail and home confinement for people serving short terms for minor nonviolent crimes. There are 48,000 kids incarcerated in U.S. juvenile prisons and immigrant detention centers on any given day that Kerman urges should be reunited with their families or sent to safer settings immediately.
Palestinians are also concerned about the danger of coronavirus to prisoners crammed together in squalid Israeli prisons. About 5,700 Palestinians are believed to be held in 23 Israeli prisons including 186 children, 41 women and scores of elderly people.
On March 19, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) called on Israeli authorities to take immediate action to release all Palestinian child detainees: “Palestinian children imprisoned by Israeli authorities live in close proximity to each other, often in compromised sanitary conditions, with limited access to resources to maintain minimum hygiene routines, according to documentation collected by DCIP.”
At least three Israeli prison guards have contracted the virus and others have not been tested in both the Ofer and Nitsan jails, where there are hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. On April 1, a newly released Palestinian prisoner tested positive for the coronavirus. That same day, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club, the Center for Defense of Liberties and Civil Rights (Hurryyat) and other organizations launched a petition calling for Israel to release more than 1,000 prisoners, including women, children and the sick. Palestinian organizations as well as the Cairo-based League of Arab States called on all relevant international organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), to intervene and pressure the Israeli authorities to provide necessary medical care and implement precautionary measures to prevent any further cases of coronavirus.
In prison, practicing social distancing is nearly impossible, one Israeli inmate told Haaretz in an article published on March 23. “How can you stay two meters apart when you’re nine in a room? Everything is very crowded, toilets and showers too, and the hygiene level is very low,” he said. “We got soap twice in a month. They promised more, but they haven’t brought in any.”
Palestinian prisoners have it much worse—even before the pandemic hit Israel’s notorious prisons. Ramzy Baroud helped prisoners tell their inspiring stories in his recent book, These Chains Will Be Broken, available from Middle East Books and More. Readers come to know and admire the individuals who stood up for their rights or just happened to be in the wrong place and are trapped for months or decades awaiting justice.
A prison guard poured boiling water over Wafa’s hand when she begged for a cup of tea. Wafa adopted a cat who—to the lonely prisoner’s delight—gave birth. When guards discovered her secret friends they poisoned and stomped on the little family.
Dareen, 33, charged with inciting violence by publishing a poem on social media, spent 97 days in prison and another nearly three years under house arrest, only to be jailed again for another five months. During her incarceration she fell and broke her leg. After enduring hours of pain she was finally treated at a hospital. She wrote, “As the prison vehicle began moving, I thought to myself: one foot broken, another tied to a metal chair; my hands cuffed as I sit inside a cage that feels like a mobile grave, and all that for writing a poem condemning the occupation.” (When she returned to her cell she penned another poem!)
Dima, a 12-year-old, was accused of trying to stab an armed illegal settler—a story she insisted he had fabricated. After serving two and a half months, she was suddenly released after an interrogator told her the previous day she had received a life sentence.
Hilal joined the resistance after his younger brother was deliberately run over by a Jewish settler, and another was drowned by an Israeli extremist. Arrested when he was 20, Hilal was released when he was 46. During his incarceration Hilal read 3,000 books, learned 16 different languages, and taught English and Hebrew to hundreds of his fellow prisoners. During one prison raid, guards confiscated all the works he had translated and hoped to publish one day.
These are just some of the stories Baroud gathered to tell readers about Palestinian prisoners. Detainees like these, who have endured so much, now risk contracting COVID-19. Israelis don’t really care about Palestinian prisoners, but perhaps Piper Kerman and other Americans will exert international pressure to set them free.
