Vancouver – Unceded Coast Salish Territories | by Aiyanas Ormond

“O you with bloodshot eyes and bloody hands,

Night is short-lived,

The detention room lasts not for ever,

Nor yet the links of chains.”

The words of Mahmoud Darwish, read as part of a street theatre performance at an emergency rally against escalating Israeli war crimes, are eerily significant as Israel has rounded up at least 639 new prisoners in the past weeks. These new prisoners join more than 5000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails, many of them on administrative detention with no charges, no trial and no right of appeal, and more than 250 of them children.

A street theatre performance highlighted the Israeli re-arrest of four prisoners:

• Samer Issawi , one of 52 prisoners who have been rearrested as the occupation forces invade the West Bank. He was only released last December after 17 months in an Israeli prison where he was held without charge or trial. Shireen Issawi, a prominent lawyer and activist, Samer’s sister, is also a prisoner, held in an Israeli military prison and tried before a military court,
• Bushra Al-Tawil , a prisoner activist who was arrested for the first time at 17 years old in 2011. During the First Intifada her father was arrested and held for months on administrative detention with no charge.
• Aziz Dweik is one of 12 parliamentarians, all from Hamas, who have been kidnapped. They join 11 other deputies already in Israeli occupation jails including Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, and Comrade Ahmad Sa’adat, secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
• Nidal Abu-Aker , a resident of Dheisheh refugee camp and journalist for ‘Voice of Unity’ radio station broadcasting in the camp. Abu Aker was first arrested by the Israeli occupation at 14 years old in 1982. Since then he has spent more than 13 years in the Israeli occupation prisons, including more than 9 years on administrative detention with no charges or trial.

Kathy Copps, an activist with the Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign, read a first hand account from a Palestinian friend describing the Israeli missile bombardment and continuing siege of densely populated Gaza:

“Yesterday night it was a quiet night until we all woke up on the sound of bombing and the sound of air craft shooting every moving thing on our peaceful neighborhood. I have two babies, a girl 17 months called Ola-kathy and a boy called Salem. They woke up crying and shouting while the atmosphere around them is just like hell, and when my wife and me ran to their room we found them crying and shouting. In the eyes of my daughter Ola I saw the fear while it’s her right to live in safe life with her brother and her parents.”

“Sad is the life here in Gaza, siege, occupation, unemployment , no electricity , no oil; everything is expensive. The man of us looking to his kids asking himself how can I make those kids living a normal life with good future? Now it is Ramadan time and it is a holy month for Muslims , in the Ramadan day we have only two meals , the first one Called Sahour is on 3 AM and the second one Called Iftar is on 8 PM , we eat the both meals in complete darkness because the deficit in electricity.”

“I can’t find enough words to describe what and how we live here in Gaza. But despite the hard and sad life we live and despite the Israeli procedures, the Palestinian People will keep fighting to live in Peace and retrieve our occupied land.”

Long-time Palestinian activist Hanna Kawas, of Canada-Palestine Association and Voice of Palestine Radio, spoke to close the rally:

“I would like to emphasize that Israel doesn’t do what it does in a vacuum. Israel is empowered to do what it is doing in the Palestinian territories; it is empowered by settler colonial regimes like itself, by Canada and by the U.S.   It’s worth noting that Canada was instrumental in 1947 during the discussion of the partition plan at the UN, in creating the state of Israel. Lester Pearson and Judge Rand were instrumental in creating the illegal state of Israel on Palestinian land. They refused to allow for a referendum for the people of Palestine and they forced Israel down the throat of the Palestinian people.”

The rally was organized by the Red Sparks Union, a member organization of the International League of People’s Struggles, along with the Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign and the Revolutionary Student Movement, in response to a call from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to take urgent actions to condemn and oppose the escalating Israeli attacks.

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