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CounterPunch
October
23, 2002
Arbitrary Imprisonment
by SAM BAHOUR and PAUL
de ROOIJ
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.
Sam Bahour
is a Palestinian-American businessman living in the besieged
Palestinian City of Al-Bireh in the West Bank. He is co-author
of HOMELAND:
Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (1994).
He can be reached at sbahour@palnet.com.
Paul de Rooij
is an economist who lives in London. He can be reached at jproo@btconnect.com
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