According to the agreement sponsored by the Palestinian government in Ramallah and the Joint Arab List in the Israeli Knesset, the prisoner Abu Hawash will spend the remainder of his sentence in the hospital for health rehabilitation, due to his deteriorating health condition after the long days of the strike.
Ramallah- In the home of the prisoner Hisham Abu Hawash in the village of Tabqa, near the city of Dura in the southern West Bank, the anxiety and sadness that hung over the house for three days turned into great joy. Farah, the uncle of the entire village, overflowed with all Palestinian areas, after announcing the prisoner’s victory and reaching an agreement to end his hunger strike in exchange for his release on February 26, while ensuring that his administrative detention would not be renewed again.
While his wife and brother Muhammad and dozens of Palestinian activists from inside accompanied him at Assaf Harofeh Hospital as he signed the agreement, hundreds of villagers and surrounding villages from all parties and sects flocked to his house to celebrate this victory, amid the firing of fireworks that lit up the village and its surroundings.
His brother, Imad, describes – during a telephone conversation – the victory that Hisham achieved double, as it is a victory over the occupation intelligence and security services, which were intransigent until the last moments of signing the agreement. And a victory over the extreme right, which has long incited against the agreement, and is still trying to attack Hisham and those accompanying him in the hospital.
According to what Imad told Al-Jazeera Net, the family lived a psychological war during the last three days, fearing for Hisham’s life as he was approaching death more and more, and for fear of great incitement against him in the Hebrew media by the extreme right, and his attempts to disrupt any agreement that would stop his suffering.
The agreement stipulates that the prisoner Abu Hawash will return to administrative detention, thus canceling the decision to freeze his detention previously issued by the occupation intelligence, and returning to his old administrative ruling that ends on February 26 next, provided that this date is a final date for his release, meaning that it will not be renewed. Again, a captive demand of his strike.
Declaring victory and implementing the agreement
According to the agreement, which was sponsored by the Palestinian government in Ramallah and the Joint Arab List in the Israeli Knesset, the prisoner Abu Hawash will spend the remainder of his sentence in the hospital for health rehabilitation, due to his deteriorating health condition after the long days of the strike.
During the declaration of victory and the implementation of the agreement, the extreme right, led by Israeli Knesset member Ben Gvir, tried to storm the prisoner Abu Hawash’s room in Asaf Harofeh Hospital, and attack him and his family companions.
The joy, whose voice was reaching us over the phone during our conversation with the prisoner’s brother, comes after days of popular movement in all cities of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the occupied interior, with the activities in support of the prisoner Abu Hawash after the great deterioration in his health and his arrival to the stage of extreme danger, which his brother said that “this The victory would not have been possible without her.”
Popular activities in all of Palestine
These activities, which varied from marches to points of contact, protest vigils and solidarity in the heart of cities and at the headquarters of the International Red Cross, took a larger turn in the city of Ramallah, after a group of liberated prisoners sit-in at the headquarters of the International Red Cross in protest of his timid role in the case of the prisoner Abu Hawash. .
This sit-in against the most prominent international human rights institutions working in Palestine shed light on the institution’s lost role in following up the issues of prisoners in occupation prisons, and prisoners who are engaged in long hunger strikes in particular.
The sit-in prisoners clearly declared that this sit-in was a protest against the international institution’s failure to play its role, and its bias towards the Israeli occupation in following up the issue of the prisoner Abu Hawash and other prisoners.
The protesters informed the Red Cross of their demands to stop the sit-in, says the released prisoner, Khader Adnan, to Al Jazeera Net. These demands are: the visit of the head of the diplomatic mission of the Cross in Tel Aviv to the prisoner Hisham Abu Hawash in his place of detention at Assaf Harofeh Hospital inside the occupied, and a close examination of his health conditions.
Also, visit the prisoner’s family in his hometown of Dura, and issue an international statement condemning Israel and its responsibility for his administrative detention, which beats Abu Hawash in refusal, and that the source of the statement is the mission’s headquarters in Geneva, and not the mission’s offices in the occupied territories.
Adnan was inspired by these demands from the experience of his strike in 2012, where the personal intervention of the head of the mission had a significant impact on his case, and led to the internationalization of the case and the action of other international institutions to put pressure on Israel, especially the United Nations.
No result on earth for 54 years
Talking about the Red Cross’s failure to follow up on prisoners’ cases is not new, but it is renewed with the deteriorating health conditions of hunger strikers in Israeli prisons, says Sahar Francis, director of the Addameer Foundation for Prisoner Care and Human Rights.
Francis told Al Jazeera Net that the Palestinian human rights institutions – including her institution – have repeatedly criticized the way the Red Cross works and deals with the files of prisoners, especially the file of sick prisoners and administrative prisoners, but no change has occurred in the way it deals with these issues.
There is nothing in international law that directly refers to the mechanism of the Red Cross’s work. The law and international conventions leave room for the international organization to define its mechanisms in accordance with special agreements it concludes with states, as is the case with the occupying power, where the agreement stipulates that the Red Cross does not declare what it sees and watches. In prisons, in exchange for being allowed to visit her.
Francis said that the Red Cross is trying to be impartial, but what is happening is that neutrality and failure to declare the crimes of the occupation, especially with regard to sick cases in prisons, torture and arbitrary administrative detention, gives the green light to the occupation with more of these crimes.
And she continued: “We have repeatedly called for the necessity of changing the method of the cross in dealing with the occupation, for more than 54 years and no result on the ground, on the contrary.”
Urgent follow up
The director of the Hurriyat Center for Civil Rights, Helmy Al-Araj, agrees with what Francis said, adding that the Palestinian people and their institutions are not convinced of the role of the cross and its relationship with the occupation, and that he wants to notice a tangible and clear change, especially in light of the continuing occupation violations and arbitrary arrests that increase their severity.
In the case of the prisoner Abu Hawash, Al-Araj told Al-Jazeera Net that the Red Cross should take a general position on the crimes of the occupation, and not be a reaction to the prisoner Abu Hawash’s strike, considering that the high declared position of the Red Cross will have an effect in forcing the occupation to retreat from this political, because it will move the United Nations and international institutions and form a pressing global public opinion.