Abu Azzam is an influental farmer from the Palestinian village of Jayyous. He has dedicated his life to fighting the Wall and annexation of the village's agricultural land.
Abu Azzam has a middle-aged son, Ghassan, who is a law professor at An-Najah University in Nablus. A couple of weeks ago Ghassan was arrested and a taken for questioning by the Israeli military. No one is really certain what he's accused of. It is secret. Secret because the information has been gathered by Israel's Shin Bet agency, whose methods must remain undisclosed. As you can probably imagine, secret accusations makes it somewhat difficult for the defense lawyer to work Ghassan's case.
Ghassan has already had one hearing where it was decided that he needed to be kept in detention for more questioning. Today was the day for the second hearing, and as Abu Azzam is not allowed to go and EAPPI's Jayyous team was unable to attend, Guillaume and I decided to go.
We met Abu Azzam at a conference in January
Chapter 1
The trip to Petach Tikva, an Israeli city north-east of Tel Aviv, was interesting enough in itself.
We left the West Bank through the infamous 'hole in the Wall', which really just means passing by Abu Hosni's house in lower Shufa, where there's a gap in the highway fence onto a bypass road that leads into Israel. Allegedly, many Palestinians from the Tulkarem area use this as their gateway into Israel.
We had arranged for an Israeli taxi to pick us up on the east-side of the green line and take us through Jbarah checkpoint and into Israel to our final destination. However, Petach Tikva turned out to be quite far away in taxi-terms. We watched the meter with increasing concern, quietly counting our money in the back seat. It ended up being a rather pricey trip...
Chapter 2
The hearing took place in Petach Tikva's police station. We met up with some Israeli human rights activists and headed to the room where the military hearings were being held. Outside the room, a handful of prisoners were lined up as on an assembly line.
The hearings were surreal, like a Seinfeld episode. The man next to the judge was reading the paper. The judge himself looked like he was in his early twenties and very bored. It seemed like he had made up his mind on the verdict ahead of the process by the absent-minded way he listened to the evidence. The prosecuter, who might as well have been a Shin Bet representative, kept smiling sardonically at all the defendants and making snide comments and jokes. The Druze soldier who acted as a translator kept mumbling his words to the floor.
And the man with the most ungrateful job in the room, the defense lawyer, was allowed five minutes with each client before every hearing, always unaware of what charges he was to defend them against. I noticed that it was the same lawyer for all the prisoners - and I wondered: a volunteer or an appointed lawyer?
Not that it made much of a difference. Each prisoner was granted about ten minutes in front of the judge where they heard the evidence against them, were read their sentences (extension of the detention in all the cases we witnessed) before they were ushered back to their cells. Next!
Chapter 3
Abu Azzam's son was actually allowed to speak - courtesy of our presence apparently. And the Druze soldier actually lifted his eyes from the floor and looked into Ghassan's eyes when he translated from Hebrew to Arabic. Unfortunately, the soldier was not quite as competent at translating the other way around, and most of the time that Ghassan was allowed to talk was spent on arguments between the judge, the prosecutor and the defense lawyer over the translation.
Abu Azzam's son is a big man like his father. He has the same warm and jovial way about him. But today he looked worn down and broken. This man, whose plan is to go to the US to teach at a university, seemed very small despite his size. There might be a very tangible explanation for this change. During the trial, a woman from the Israeli women's organisation Machsom Watch passed us a note. It said that he had been interrogated for 21 hours every day for the past week, blindfolded and tied to a chair.
Afterwards, we spoke to the defense lawyer who could tell us that he thought the charges were based on something someone (who could not be named because of security reasons) had said about Abu Azzam's son. The lawyer interpreted the evidence presented by the prosecutor towards Ghassan being accused of leading of an underground Hamas faction at An-Najah university.
In my opinion, such argumentation sounds rather too vague for a court to make a decision. It seemed like the proof was all based on hearsay. Sort of like a witch hunt where one woman accuses her neighbour of casting a spell on her cows. At least this is how it comes across to me who is accustomed to a court system where fair and open trials are the norm.
Unfortunately, it seemed like reason and good judgement were absent in the courtroom today and the Ghassan was taken back to prison to await a new hearing on February 20. And some more interrogation...
Chapter 4
Palestinian prisoners is huge strain on both the Palestinian and the Israeli society, for very different reasons.
Almost every Palestinian male over the age of twenty that we've met have been imprisoned at some point in his life. Imagine how crippled a society becomes when a large chunk of their teenage and twenty-something male population spends two years or more in prison. Sometimes it seems like it's a crime to be Palestinian. The safest thing is to stay at home and not interact with anyone. But what kind of life is that?
For Israel, there is the obvious cost issue of keeping several thousands imprisoned. According to the Israeli human rights organisation, B'Tselem, there are about 8 500 individuals kept imprisoned at the moment. Around 800 of these are held under administrative detention - a practice kept from the time of the British mandate which allows the Israelis to hold individuals (read: Palestinians) for six months without any trial. A period that can be extended for another six months without trial. And this can go on for eternity if deemed necessary.
The military courts are like the invisible hands of the Israeli occupation. It is not obvious to the average Israeli and the rest of the world what is going on, and there is always a military code than can back up any kind of decision, thus making a claim to 'legality'.
Time will tell if the Israeli military court decides whether Abu Azzam's son will sink or float. Either way, he and his family are being punished.
EPILOGUE: Home sweet home
Since we'd spent all our money on the taxi to Petach Tikva, we thought that taking the bus back home would be clever.
Of course we managed to get lost. Suddenly, the towers of the Israeli city Hadera were disconcertingly close. Thankfully, a helpful guy sent us in the right direction (we made out that we were going to the settlement close to Tulkarem rather than to Tulkarem itself).
When we finally passed Jbarah checkpoint on foot, we saw that there was a military jeep outside Abu Hosni's house. Facing Israeli soldiers did not seem too tempting after our day in the military court, so we decided to crawl through another hole in the highway fence instead.
I, clumsy as always, managed to get stuck on the barbed wire. Some Palestinian worker pitied me and helped me get untangled. After some fumbling and climbing, we were up on the road. We jumped into a taxi, happy to be back home, in Palestine.
We wrapped up the day with two bottles of Cremisan and a heart-to-heart. Funny how injustice brings out the philosophers in us... Vive Guillaume!
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