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Why is Israel so afraid of Khalida Jarrar?
(AP)
When Israeli troops stormed the home of Palestinian parliamentarian and lawyer Khalida Jarrar on April 2, 2015, she was absorbed in her research. For months, Jarrar was leading a Palestinian effort to bring Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Her research that night was directly related to the kind of behavior that allows a group of soldiers to handcuff intact intellectuals and throw them into jail without trial or liability for their actions.
Jarrar was released after spending more than a year in jail in June 2016, to be arrested again on July 2, 2017. She is still incarcerated in an Israeli jail. On October 28, his "administrative detention" was renewed for the fourth time.
There are thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, most of them detained outside the Palestinian territories under military occupation, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. However, nearly 500 Palestinians belong to a different category, as they are held without trial and detained for six months. They are renewed, sometimes indefinitely, by Israeli military courts without any legal justification. Jarrar is one of those inmates.
Jarrar does not beg his jailers for his freedom. Instead, she works to educate her fellow students on international law, offering courses and publishing statements to the outside world that reflect not only her refined intelligence, but also her determination and strength of character.
She is relentless. Despite his precarious state of health – Jarrar suffered multiple strokes, hypercholesterolemia and was hospitalized with heavy bleeding from an epistaxis – his commitment to the cause of his people has not wavered or faltered. The 55-year-old Palestinian lawyer defended a political speech that is largely lacking in the midst of the current quarrel between Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, and besieged Hamas in Gaza.
As a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and an active member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Jarrar has advocated a policy that is not disconnected from the people and, in particular, the women that she represents firmly and uncompromisingly.
According to Jarrar, no Palestinian official should engage in any form of dialogue with Israel, as this commitment helps to legitimize a state based on ethnic cleansing that is currently committing various types of war crimes: the very crimes that Jarrar attempted to denounce before the ICC.
Expectedly, Jarrar rejects the so-called "peace process" as a futile exercise that has no intention or mechanism to "implement international resolutions related to the Palestinian cause and to recognize the fundamental rights of Palestinians".
It goes without saying that a woman with such a clever and strong position vehemently rejects the "security coordination" between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, regarding this cooperation as a betrayal of the struggle and sacrifices of the Palestinian people. .
Ramzy Baroud
It goes without saying that a woman with such a clever and strong position vehemently rejects the "security coordination" between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, regarding this cooperation as a betrayal of the struggle and sacrifices of the Palestinian people. .
While PA officials continue to enjoy the benefits of "leadership", desperately infusing a dead political speech of "peace process" and "two-state solution", Jarrar , a Palestinian woman leader with a real vision, remains in HaSharon Prison. There, with dozens of Palestinian women, she suffers the daily humiliation, the denial of rights and various Israeli methods aimed at breaking her will.
But Jarrar has as much experience in resisting Israel as in his knowledge of law and human rights. In August 2014, as Israel was committing one of the most heinous acts of genocide in Gaza – killing and wounding thousands of people in its so-called "Protective Edge" war, Jarrar received an unwanted visit from Israeli soldiers.
Conscious of her work and her credibility as a Palestinian lawyer of international stature (she is the representative of Palestine in the Council of Europe), the Israeli government launched its harassment campaign, which ended with his imprisonment. The soldiers issued a military decree ordering him to leave his house in Al-Bireh, near Ramallah, for Jericho.
Having failed to silence her voice, she was arrested in April of the following year, marking the beginning of an episode of suffering, but also of resistance, which did not stop her. not yet ended.
When the Israeli army came to fetch Jarrar, they surrounded his house with a large number of soldiers, as if the well-spoken Palestinian militant was the greatest threat to Israel's security. The scene was quite surreal and revealed the real fear of Israel: that of the Palestinians, like Jarrar, who are able to communicate a clear message that exposes Israel to the rest of the world.
This recalled the opening sentence of Franz Kafka's novel "The Trial": "Someone certainly made a false accusation against Joseph K. because he was arrested one morning without doing anything wrong".
The administrative detention in Israel reconstitutes again and again this Kafkaesque scene. Joseph K. is Jarrar and the thousands of other Palestinians who pay a price for simply claiming the rights and freedom of their people.
Under international pressure, Israel was forced to bring Jarrar to justice, charging 12 charges including visiting a released prisoner and attending a book fair. His other arrest and the four renewals of his detention testify not only to the absence of real evidence of Israel against Jarrar, but also to his moral bankruptcy.
But why is Israel afraid of Jarrar? The truth is that, like many other Palestinian women, it is the antidote to Israel's narrative, tirelessly promoting Israel as an oasis of freedom, democracy and human rights, juxtaposed with a Palestinian society that is supposed to be the opposite of what Israel represents.
Jarrar, an advocate, human rights activist, prominent politician and women's advocate, demolishes, in her eloquence, her courage and deep understanding of her rights and the rights of her people, this house of lies in Israel.
She is the feminist par excellence. However, his feminism is not just a politics of identity – a superficial ideology evoking empty rights supposed to reach the Western public. Instead, Jarrar fights for Palestinian women, their freedom and their right to receive adequate education, to seek employment and to improve their living conditions, while facing the enormous obstacles of the military occupation. , prison and social pressure.
Khalida in Arabic means "immortal" – a designation quite appropriate for a true fighter, which represents the legacy of generations of strong Palestinian women whose "sumoud" (immutability) will always inspire an entire nation.
- Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of the Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is "The Last Land: A Palestinian Story" (Pluto Press, London, 2018). He obtained a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a non-resident researcher at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, UCSB. Twitter: @RamzyBaroud
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