Behind the Wall - 'Over Eleven Thousand to One…'
 

April 17th 1974 saw the first ever Palestinian-Israeli prisoner exchange when Palestinian activist Mahmoud Hijazi was released from Occupation prisons. Ever since that day Palestinians have dedicated April 17th as Prisoners' Day. It is an important date in the calendar and is always marked with demonstrations and other activities in support of those currently incarcerated.

Prisoners' day started very early this year in Aida Camp, but not with the planned activities…

Around 8pm on April 16th I heard agitated children running through the streets of Aida Camp. I went to see what was happening but somehow I felt I already knew what this meant. Sure enough I was told that the IOF were active in the Camp. They were just inside the Camp next to the section of the Apartheid Wall which surrounds Rachel's Tomb military compound. The children feared someone had been arrested so I went to have a look but by this time the IOF had pulled out again.

A few hours later, around 1am on April 17th, a large contingent of IOF military vehicles was seen leaving the military base and entering Bethlehem. By 2am they were inside the Camp and had surrounded a house. A sleeping family received the dreaded early morning wake up call of the IOF.

Mutasim was woken not by the knocking itself but by one of his children, who was terrified as he shook his father to wake him. When Mutasim went to answer his door the IOF were already inside his courtyard, they had damaged his outside front metal gate to gain entrance. As he opened his door the unwelcome intruders barked an order at him:

"Turn off your light! Get all your family outside now!"

Two families live together in two small houses next to each other inside the courtyard, Mutasim, and his brothers' family. Everybody left the houses as they were ordered. As soon as all the family were outside the soldiers grabbed one of Mutasim's sons, Amjad, and began to beat him. As any father would Mutasim attempted to protect his child. He tried to get between his son and the soldiers and wrapped his body around him as if hugging him:

"I began to hug him trying to protect him. When I hugged him they (the soldiers) began to beat me. They hit me with their guns, on my legs, on my back, everywhere. They also beat my brother."

Mutasim was pulled off his son as he was being beaten. Amjad was pulled away and Mutasim and the rest of the family were forced inside their house. Amjad was handcuffed and blindfolded, the IOF were clearly going to arrest him. Mutasim tried to speak to the soldiers:

"I asked if I could give him some clothes. He had only his night clothes on, he had nothing else, but they refused."

Seeing his son being beaten, and about to be arrested, was too much for Mutasim to deal with. He tried to get back outside to where his son was being held. He pushed past the other frightened family members and tried to get outside but was restrained by his brother. The soldiers again attacked Mutasim and beat him severely. Eventually the soldiers stopped beating Mutasim, by this stage he was in a heap on the floor, badly injured. He rolled up his trouser leg to show me the huge scar and bruising to his right leg. His back, shoulders and side are also badly bruised and swollen.

Mutasim's brother picked him up and helped him back into the house. He was still shouting at soldiers asking them why they were taking his son. The soldiers answered him but didn't offer any real information as to why they were arresting Amjad:

"Your son makes problems!"

Amjad was loaded into an IOF jeep and the soldiers left Aida Camp, leaving behind another devastated family. The whole incident had lasted around one and a half hours. Palestinian Prisoners' Day was less than four hours old and the list of people locked up from Aida Camp in Occupation prisons had already increased.

The following day Mutasim visited the Palestinian Prisoners' Society and the Red Cross in an attempt to gather information about Amjad and his whereabouts but nobody could tell him anything.

Mutasim himself has served around seven years in Israeli prisons. He has been arrested ten times for working inside Israel without permission. The first time he was imprisoned for one month and this sentence increased every time he was arrested. He continued to seek work in Israel after his first, and subsequent arrests, as work inside Israel paid considerably higher than in Palestine, and was also much more readily available than work ever has been inside the West Bank. As Palestinians have always sought work inside what is now called Israel (especially in the period before the creation of the Apartheid Wall) both with and without official permission, many Israeli employers also happily employed Palestinians knowing that they could pay lower wages and provide poorer working conditions much as those seeking non-taxable or 'illegal' work around the world are often exploited by greedy employers. Mutasim now suffers from severe mental health problems and has been receiving treatment at a Bethlehem Psychiatric hospital for several years. He has not worked at all in six years because of his ill-health.

Amjad's brother, Ali, was already imprisoned when the IOF came for Amjad on April 17th. Mutassim has never been allowed to visit him, although with Ali at least his father does know where he is – Telmund Prison. When Mutassim visited the Red Cross seeking information about Amjad he found that there was eventually a permission waiting for him there to visit Ali in Telmund. He has been waiting a long time for this permission; it is now nine months since Ali was arrested. The Red Cross had just received the permission the previous day allowing Mutassim to go to Telmund. When Mutasim looked at the permission he found that he had been granted permission for a six week period. The period runs from March 25th through to May 8th, the permission papers were received by the Red Cross on April 17th. So the first twenty-three days, around half of the total period of his permission, had already expired. Once this permission period expires Mutasim must once more apply to the Israeli authorities, and once more sit for months waiting, until he eventually may or may not receive another permission. Of course he must now also apply for papers so he can visit Amjad, once that is, he has found out where he is.

Mutasim tried to explain to me how he feels now that two of his sons have disappeared into Israeli custody:

"If they (the IOF) take my heart it is better than to take my sons. My sons are like part of my body. I now have two sons in their (the Israeli's) prisons. I don't want to see my sons arrested, but there are many other children also in prison. I have no idea when I will see Amjad again. I am nothing without my sons, and I don't want to see any children inside prison…"

Amjad was born in 1990. He has just celebrated his seventeenth birthday. According to the definitions of the UN Convention for Rights of The Child, Amjad is still a child. He is now another Palestinian child locked up in an Israeli prison. He is 'only' one of around four hundred children currently locked-up inside Israeli prisons. They are 'just' four-hundred of over eleven thousand Palestinians who currently languish in the Occupation's custody.

Palestinian Prisoners Day is commemorated to mark the release of Prisoners in 1974. However, on Prisoners' Day in 2007 more than twenty-five more Palestinians across the country were sadly added to the list of those detained, not released.

A few weeks ago German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the Middle East. She went to visit the family of the Israeli soldier who was arrested last year by Palestinian Resistance in Gaza and is still being held. Palestinians are trying to negotiate a prisoner exchange deal to return the soldier in exchange for a list of Palestinians held in Occupation prisons, similar to the exchange in 1974. The list includes the old, the sick, and democratically elected Palestinian leaders such as Fateh leader Marwan Barghouti and PFLP leader Ahmad Sa'adat. Merkel didn't visit any families of Palestinian detainees. She made a statement telling Palestinians they must release the soldier immediately. So whilst the leaders of the Western world work for the release of one captured Israeli, they forget about all the imprisoned Palestinians.

The ratio speaks for itself. Over eleven thousand to one…