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Last
week armed Israeli policemen entered the East Jerusalem
YMCA offices and arrested Haytham Hammouri, a YMCA
staff member. He was handcuffed and taken into police
custody. No charges were made, and he was kept incommunicado
for three days. At this point, he was able to see
a lawyer, taken in front of an Israeli court, and
sentenced to six months "administrative detention"
in an Israeli prison. No charges were made against
him, and there has been no trial. Haytham joins more
than 12,000 Palestinians in a similar situation, but
may be the only Palestinian resident of Jerusalem
held under this arbitrary pretext.
Haytham
Hammouri is a YMCA staff member working on community
projects. The YMCA has taken an increasingly important
role providing basic services to the community. The
YMCA runs rehabilitation centers where the tens of
thousands of Palestinians wounded during the previous
and current intifada are treated, given support, and
offered rehabilitation. Rehabilitation isn't just
a matter of teaching the youngsters to walk with crutches,
or to implant prostheses; it is crucially also an
economic issue. Most of the wounded people are manual
laborers, and therefore the loss of one of their limbs
or mobility is a major blow to their chances to become
economically independent. The rehabilitation offered
by the YMCA therefore also entails teaching the victims
skills that will reintroduce them productively into
society.
The
YMCA differs from the organizations found in other
countries, where it is synonymous with a sports club
or cheap hotel. In the Occupied Territories, it has
taken on an additional role to deliver essential services,
and Haytham was involved in the organization of such
services. Thousands of Palestinians depend on key
services organized by the YMCA, and therefore Haytham's
imprisonment on no charges, for an undetermined duration
(initially six months, but this can be extended arbitrarily),
without trial or appeal, in a prison far away from
his family is grotesque.
We
in the "West" only hear about the bloody
aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and in
fact, the reporting from that area stops when there
is no bloodshed. However, the pernicious aspects of
occupation - the attempt to make life unbearable for
the grand majority of Palestinians - continue unabated
even when there is "a period of calm." The
most recent Israeli tactic is to atomize Palestinian
society even further. After effectively crippling
the official Palestinian "authority", now
we witness further attempts to imprison all actual
and potential leadership who work at the grassroots
level. Thus, Haytham, who provides essential services
to the population and is in no way involved in violence,
has been arrested - his crucial leadership is thwarted
making life more difficult for many. This is the intended
effect of the perniciously named "administrative
detention," in reality this is arbitrary imprisonment
without charges or trial, for arbitrary terms that
can be extended at will by the Israeli "judge"
(these can't even spell habeas corpus), with limited
access to legal representation, and served in prisons
far away from their families. This practice abrogates
all the rules that we take for granted in the "West",
however, the news we usually obtain from the area
seldom mentions the Kafkaesque situation Palestinian
leaders find themselves in. If Bush were really concerned
about democratizing Palestinian society, then he may
want to ask his frequent visitor, Ariel "man
of peace" Sharon, why a person like Haytham Hammouri
is imprisoned.
Despite
the terrible situation Haytham finds himself in, he
is "lucky" on two counts. First, he hasn't
been tortured (yet) - a common practice, and something
that isn't legally proscribed in Israel. Second, he
is in a relatively decent prison in Netanya; other
prisoners aren't so lucky, and end up in what can
only be called a concentration camp, the new Ansar
camp in the Negev desert. This is a jungle of barbed
wire where prisoners are kept in tents on top of an
asphalt tarmac. Prisoners are rotated and moved between
jails often to prevent the formation of social bonds,
and break the spirits of the prisoners.
Despite
all American claims about democracy, justice, and
a special way of life, it is astonishing to see that
they overlook the denial of those very rights elsewhere.
Democracy and justice are crushed under an Israeli
boot subsidized to the tune of untold billions of
US money without a peep from the "lovers of freedom".
The US bears direct responsibility for the brutalization
of Palestinian society; you my American friend, have
a lot to answer for.
What
you can do: Please print out a poster about Haytham
Hammouri's situation, and please post it everywhere
you can. Please get every YMCA around the world to
campaign for Haytham's release. The poster (in PDF
format) can be found at: www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/40046.html.
More
about Haytham Hammouri: He is married to Malak Masri
and they have three daughters aged 4, 8, and 14; they
live in Jerusalem. One of the consequences of Haytham's
imprisonment is the havoc caused to his family - the
main breadwinner has been imprisoned, and his close
relationship with his children has been cut. The YMCA
also has been denied one of its most effective organizers.
After learning of his six-month sentence, his 8-year-old
daughter wrote her dad a letter that the Israeli prison
authorities haven't allowed to be delivered.
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