Kamal Boullata is a Palestinian artist, writer and art historian. Boullata was born to a Christian Palestinian family in Jerusalem, mandatory Palestine in 1942. Growing up in Jerusalem, Boullata studied with the artist of Orthodox Christian icons, Khalil Halaby (1889–1964). He was fascinated by Arabic script, particularly the square, geometric style of lettering known as Kufic. Boullata recalled spending hours growing up in Jerusalem, sketching the calligraphy he saw on the Dome of the Rock shrine. He graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arte in Rome in 1965 and attended the Corcoran Academy for the Fine Arts in Washington, D.C., from 1968 to 1971. Boullata stayed in Washington thereafter, teaching at Georgetown University and producing his art. In 1990 he published Faithful Witnesses: Palestinian Children Recreate Their World and in 1993 he received a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship to research Islamic art in Morocco, with the result that in the 1990s, he lived in both Morocco and France.

In 2001 he received the Ford Foundation grant to pursue research on the influence of post-Byzantine art on Palestinian painting.

His works are primarily done in acrylic and abstract in style focusing on the ideas of division in Palestinian identity, separation from homeland through utilization geometric forms as well as integration of Arabic words and calligraphy.

His compositions are based on the angular Kufi script, which he uses as a representational form of art.

Boullata published studies on contemporary Arab art, the structural affinities between Arabic grammar and the arabesque and the cultural perception of color through its linguistic expression. His pioneering studies on Palestinian art appeared in books and academic journals. He is the author of Recovery of Place: A Study of Contemporary Palestinian Art (in Arabic) and the editor ofBelonging and Globalisation: Critical Essays on Contemporary Art and Culture (Saqi Books).

His work is well regarded around the world, and Boullata is considered one of Palestine’s great modernist artists. His work has been shown in the United States, France, and the Middle East, including at the Musée du Palais Carnoles and the Galerie d’art Contemporain Palais de l’Europe, Menton, the Musée du Chateau Dufresne, Montreal, and Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris.

Boullata is still active, but surely will be remembered as a foremost Palestinian modernist artist, as well as a scholar of the history of Palestinian art.

 Boullata´s work

Video

Exhibitions

2009

Palestine – La création dans tous ses états, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; National Museum of Bahrain, Manama

2008

Modernité plurielle : Art arabe contemporain, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris

2006

Word Into Art: The Contemporary Middle East, British Museum, London; Dubai International Financial Centre, Dubai (2008)

2005

L’œuvre en cours, Musée du Palais Carnoles, Menton

2002

Musée du Château Dufresne, Montreal (solo)

2002

Bibliothèque Centrale, Grenoble (solo)

2002

Modern Arab Art, Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman

2001

L’Art du livre, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

2001

Fifth International Art Biennal of Sharjah, Sharjah

2001

Ateliers Arabes, Agial Gallery, Beirut; Galerie Atassi, Damascus

2001

Galerie d’art contemporain, Palais de l’Europe, Menton (solo)

2000

Adonis:Un poète dans le monde d’aujourd’hui, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris

2000

50 Ans d’ art sur la Côte d’Azur, Galerie d’art contemporain, Palais de l’Europe, Menton

1999

Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris (solo)

1998

Palacio de Carlos V, Alhambra, Granada (solo)

1998

Darat al Funun, Amman (solo)

1997

Artistes palestiniens contemporains : Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris

Further readings:

–An Interview with Kamal Boullata

Sources:

http://www.artnet.com/artists/kamal-boullata/biography

http://www.meemartgallery.com/art_resources.php?id=35

http://www.droppingknowledge.org/bin/user/profile/6208.page

http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/5618/Boullata-Kamal-1942.html

Sliman Mansour born in Birzeit, Palestine in 1947. He is an important figure among contemporary Palestinian artists. Mansour spent his childhood at boarding schools on Bethlehem.He studied fine art at Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem from 1967 to 1970, and has been involved in the Palestinian art scene since the 1970’s.

Mansour is considered an artist of the Intifada whose work gave visual expression to the cultural concept of sumud ¹. He is a co-founder of the League of Palestinian Artists and the artist group ‘New Visions’ which was established during the first Intifada in 1987. This group particularly tied notions of land to political suppression through artist’s materials such as henna, clay and natural pigments, advocating a continuous claim to land through these. The group was formed by four prominent Palestinian artists: Tayseer Barakat, Vera Tamari, Nabil Anani and Sliman Mansour.

Since the seventies, he has contributed to the development of an iconography of the Palestinian struggle through his works on paper. Uniting Mansour’s body of work is the depiction of the orange tree (considered to symbolize the 1948 Nakba), the olive tree (considered to symbolize the 1967 war), traditional Palestinian embroidery, village life, and the figure of the Palestinian woman as the mother figure of Palestine, giving birth to and protecting the Palestinian people. One of Mansour’s most recognized works is the 1974 painting, Camel of Hardship. In this image, the figure of the porter bends under the weight of his satchel, which is significantly shaped like an eye and holds the city of Jerusalem as identified by the Dome of the Rock. Personifying Palestine through the figure of an old, weary, and isolated man, Mansour captures the concept of sumud, or steadfastness, and the continuing endurance of the struggle despite hardship. Before its international acclaim, the piece resonated locally as it was printed as posters in 1975 and displayed in homes and public venues throughout the West Bank and Gaza.

In 1988 he made a series of four painting on destroyed Palestinian villages, the four villages being Yibna, Yalo, Imwas and Bayt Dajan.

For Mansour, art aids the continuation and revival of Palestinian identity, particularly as it captures images of the land and people working in the land. By keeping roots in the ancestral homeland, Mansour enables Palestinians to continue to lay claim to it.

Mansour – also a cartoonist, art instructor and author –has contributed greatly to art education and promotion in the West Bank. He is now regarded as a pivotal cultural leader in Palestine. Co-founder of the Wasiti Art Center in Jerusalem, Mansour’s work has been exhibited in Palestine Israel, the United States, Japan, Korea and across the Arab world and Europe. He is a co-author of Both Sides of Peace: Israeli and Palestinian Political Poster Art.

Mansour has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions throughout the Arab world, United States, Europe, and Asia. Notably, he participated in the 1997 French Palestinian spring exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. In 1989, he received the “Nile Award,” at the 1998 Cairo Biennial for the series, I am Ismail and the Palestinian Prize for Visual Arts.

Awards and Honors

​1998     Palestine Prize for the Visual Arts

​1998     Grand Nile Prize, Seventh Cairo Biennial

Sliman Mansour´s work

Further reading:

– An Interview with Palestinian Artist Suleiman Mansour

https://aaron.resist.ca/cracked-and-shrinking-maps-an-interview-with-palestinian-artist-suleiman-mansour

– The return of “Jamal Al Mahamel”

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/03/palestinian-art

Source:

http://www.barjeelartfoundation.org

http://www.cca-glasgow.com/programme

http://www.encyclopedia.mathaf.org

Reference

¹ Sumud means “steadfastness” or “steadfast perseverance” is an ideological theme and political strategy that first emerged among the Palestinian people through oppression and resistance in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day W

More than 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed –in its entirety or partially– by Zionist gangs as part of a programmed plan of uprooting native Palestinians from their homeland, Palestine, and breaking new ground for a bizarre colonial project called Israel, which the days of its first stage were closing in on that awful year of 1948.

Few researchers, and historians, Palestinians and Israelis, have attempted to document this tragic chapter of al-Nakba (catastrophe). Among Palestinians were Aref El-Aref who prepared shortly in the aftermath of 1948 war a list of villages occupied and its Arab citizens were forced to leave in the course of battles. He published few years later a six-part volume about 1948 war under the title al-Nakba (1956-1960). The historian Mustafa Dabbagh published an eleven-part volume titled “Our Land Palestine” (1972-1986). A thorough description of the destroyed villages or otherwise was included in the book.

Other writers followed suit including the late Palestinian geographer Bashir Najm who coauthored with Engineer Bsharah Muammer comprehensive tables of statistics covering the people and the land.

On 1987, Abdul Jawad Saleh and Walid Mustafa published a booklet concerning the mass destruction of the Palestinian villages.

At last the Israeli historian Benny Morris published on 1989 his important book “ The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-1949”.

All in all, 418 villages were destroyed, depopulated or simply taken over by Zionists for various purposes. Others were utilized as sites for building Zionist settlements.

In 1992 , the distinguished Palestinian historian, Walid Khalidi, author and editor of many valuable publications, books and researches, narrating the untold story and history of the Palestinians before and after their Nakba (catastrophe), a paramount referential research work titled “ All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948”. Its Arabic version appeared on November 1997.

In addition to these major works, a group of researchers prepared a list of names for destroyed villages — among them was Israel Shahak, president of Israeli Human Rights group who published on 1973 somehow modified text of Aref Al-Aref list.

Shahak based his work on Al-Aref list of 399 occupied villages, omitting from it the undestroyed villages—reducing the figure to 383 villages.

The Palestinian geographer Kamal Abdul Fattah classified on 1986 another list in preparation for the forthcoming list of Ber Zeit University.

But Christoph Uehlinger from the Swiss “Association for the reconstruction of Emmuas” village prepared a list based on Al-Aref-Shahak list, and to the preliminary list of Kamal Abdul Fattah (1983)—adapting it to the Israeli maps.

Although the Israeli authorities failed to issue a list of the destroyed villages, it republished on 1950s topographic maps –originally prepared by British Mandate –giving Hebrew names to the places printing over the destroyed villages the Hebrew word “Hrous” – meaning: destroyed.

Barring Dabbagh’s book (Our Land Palestine) and the Palestinian Encyclopedia, none of these works has referred to the destroyed village with more than a name and few statistics—merely as a single element amid general sight of destruction.

General Moshe Dayan stated in 1962:

We came to this country, which was already populated by Arabs, and we are  establishing a Hebrew, that is, a Jewish State, here. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because those geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books, not  exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahal arose in the place of Mahalul; Gevat in the place of Jibta; Sarid in the place of Tell Shaman. There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.
Bibliography:

-All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 by Walid Khalidi

-The Catastrophe and the Lost Paradise by Aref al-Aref

Al-Nakba was marked by the destruction of Palestinian villages and the exodus of over 750,000 Palestinians. Historical records confirm that in 1947 Palestine comprised more than 900 Palestinian villages. More than 400 villages were destroyed by Israeli forces as well as their houses and buildings.

The Israelis wiped off all these destroyed villages of the map. Mayor urban centers exclusive for Palestinians such as Nazareth, Baysan, Beersheba, Acre, Ramla, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Haifa and many others were depopulated and in their places Israeli settlements were built.

Israeli and international historians confirm the number of these destroyed villages to be at least 418 and possibly up to 472.

Here we have a list of the destroyed villages within the pre-1967 borders of Israel, which were destroyed and depopulated in 1948.

The District of Acre (26 villages)

Amqa, Arab Al-Samniyya, Al-Bassa, Al-Birwa, Al-Damun, Dayr Al-Qasi, Al-Gabisiyya, Iqrit, Irbbin Khirbat, Jiddin Khirbat, Al-Kabri, Kafr Inan, Kuwaykat, Al-Manshiyya, Al-Mansura, Miar, Al-Nabi Rubin, Al-Nahr, Al-Ruways, Suhmata, Al-Sumayriyya, Suruh, Al-Tall, Tarbikha, Umm  Al-Faraj, Al-Zib.

The District of Baysan (29 villages)

Arab al-‘Arida, Arab al-Bawati, Arab al-Safa, al-Ashrafiyya, al-Birra, Danna, Farwana, al-Fatur, al-Ghazzawiyya, al-Hamidiyya, al-Hamra, abbul Kafra, Kawkab al-Hawa, al-Khunayzir, Masil al-Jizl, al-Murassa, Qumya, al-Sakhina, al-Samiriyya, Sirin, Tall al-Shawk, al-Taqa, Khirbat, al-Tira,  Umm ‘Ajra, Umm Sabuna, Khirbat, Yubla, Zab’a, al-Zawiya, Khirbat.

The District of Beersheba (3 villages)

Al-‘Imara, al-Jammama, al-Khalasa.

The District of Gaza (45 villages)

Arab Suqrir, Barbara, Barqa, al-Batani, al-Gharbi, al-Batani, al-Sharqi, Bayt ‘Affa, Bayt Daras, Bayt Jirja, Bayt Tima, Bi’lin, Burayr, Dayr Sunayd, Dimra, al-Faluja, Hamama, Hatta, Hiribya, Huj, Hulayqat, ‘Ibdis, ‘Iraq al-Manshiyya, Iraq Suwaydan, Isdud, al-Jaladiyya, al-Jiyya, Julis, al-Jura, Jusayr, Karatiyya, Kawfakha, Kawkaba, al-Khisas, al-Masmiyya al-Kabira, al-Masmiyya al-Saghira, al-Muharraqa, Najd, Ni’ilya, Qastina, al-Sawafir al-Gharbiyya, al Sawafir al-Shamaliyya, al-Sawafir al-Sharqiyya, Summil, Tallal al-Turmus, Yasur.

The District of Haifa (51 villages)

Abu Shusha, Abu Zurayq, Arab al-Fuqara’, Arab al-Nufay’at, Arab Zahrat al-Dumayri, Atlit, Ayn Ghazal, Ayn Hawd, Balad al-Shaykh, Barrat Qisarya, Burayka, al-Burj, Khirbat, al-Butaymat, Daliyat  al-Rawha’, al-Damun Khirbat, al-Ghubayya al-Fawqa, al-Ghubayya al-Tahta, Hawsha, Ijzim, Jaba’, al-Jalma, Kabara, al-Kafrayn, Kafr Lam, al-Kasayir Khirbat, Khubbayza, Lid khirbat, al-Manara Khirbat, al-Mansi, al-Mansura Khirbat, al-Mazar, al-Naghnaghiyya, Qannir, Qira, Qisarya, Qumbaza, al-Rihaniyya, Sabbarin,al-Sarafand, al-Sarkas Khirbat, Sa’sa’ Khirbat, al-Sawamir, al-Shuna Khirbat, al-Sindiyana, al-Tantura, al- Tira, Umm al-Shawf, Umm al-Zinat, Wa’arat al-Sarris, Wadi Ara, Yajur.

The District of Hebron (16 villages)

‘Ajjur, Barqusya, Bayt Jibrin, Bayt Nattif, al-Dawayima, Dayr al-Dubban, Dayr Nakhkhas,  Kudna, Mughallis, al-Qubayba, Ra’na, Tall al-Safi, Umm Burj Khirbat, Zakariyya, Zayta, Zikrin, Al-Nabi Rubin.

The District of Jaffa (23 villages)

al- ‘Abbasiyya, Abu Kishk, Bayt Dajan, Biyar ‘Adas, Fajja, al- Haram, Ijlil al-Qibliyya, Ijlil al-Shamaliyya, al-Jammasin al-Gharbi, al-Jammasin al-Sharqi, Jarisha, Kafr ‘Ana, al-Khayriyya, al-Mas’udiyya, al-Mirr, al-Muwaylih, Rantiya, al-Safiriyya, Salama, Saqiya, al-Sawalima, al-Shaykh Muwannis, Yazur.

The District of Jerusalem (38 villages)

‘Allar, ‘Aqqur, ‘Artuf, ‘Ayn Karim, Bayt ‘Itab, Bayt Mahsir, Bayt Naqquba, Bayt Thul, Bayt Umm al-Mays, al-Burayi, Dayr Aban, Dayr ‘Amr, Dayr al-Hawa, Dayr Rafat, Dayr al-Shaykh, Dayr Yasin, Ishwa’, Islin Ism Allah, Khirbat, Jarash, al-jura, Kasla, al-Lawz Khirbat, Lifta, al-Maliha, Nitaf, al-Qabu, Qalunya, al-Qastal, Ras Abu ‘Ammar, Sar’a, Saris, Sataf, Suba, Sufla, al-Tannur Khirbat, al-‘Umur Khirbat, al-Walaja.

The District of Jinin (6 villages)

Ayn al-Mansi, al-Jawfa Khirbat, al-Lajjun, al-Mazar, Nuris, Zir’in.

The District of Nazareth (4 villages)

Indur, Ma’lul, al-Mujaydil, Saffuriyya.

The District of Ramla (58 villages)

Abu al-Fadl, Abu Shusha, ‘Ajanjul, ‘Aqir, Barfiliya, al-Barriyya, Bashshit, Bayt Far Khirbat, Bayt Jiz, Bayt Nabala, Bayt Shanna, Bayt Susin, Bir Ma’in, Bir Salim, al-Burj, al-Buwayra Khirbat, Daniyal, Dayr Abu Salama, Dayr Ayyub, Dayr Muhaysin, Dayr Tarif, al-Duhayriyya Khirbat, al-Haditha, Idnibba, ‘Innaba, Jilya, Jimzu, Kharruba, al-Khayma, Khulda, al-Kunayyisa, al-Latrun, al-Maghar, Majdal Yaba, al-Mansura, al-Mukhayzin, al-Muzayri’a, al-Na’ani, al-Nabi Rubin, Qatra, Qazaza, al-Qubab, Qubayba, Qula, Sajad, Salbit, Sarafand al-‘Amar, Sarafand al-Kharab, Saydun, Shahma, Shilta, Al-Tina, Al-Tira,  Umm Kalkha, Wadi Hunayn, Yibna, Zakariyya Khirbat, Zarnuqa.

The District of Safad (77 villages)

Abil al-Qamh, al-‘Abisiyya, Akbara, Alma, Ammuqa, ‘Arab al-Shamalina, Arab al-Zubayd, ‘Ayn al-Zaytun, Baysamun, Biriyya, al-Butayha, al-Buwayziyya, Dallata, al-Dawwara, Dayshum, al-Dirbashiyya, al-Dirdara, Fara, al-Farradiyya, Fir’im, Ghabbatiyya, Ghuraba, al-Hamra’, Harrawi, Hunin, al-Husayniyya, Jahula, al-Ja’una, Jubb Yusuf, Kafr Bir’im, al-Khalisa, Khan al-Duwayr, Karraza Khirbat, al-Khisas, Khiyam al-Walid, Kirad al-Baqqara, Kirad al-Ghannama, Lazzaza, Madahil , al-Malikiyya, Mallaha, al-Manshiyya, al-Mansura, Mansurat Al-Khayt, Marus, Mirun, al-Muftakhira, Mughr al-Khayt, al-Muntar, Khirbat, al-Nabi Yusha’, al-Na’ima, Qabba’a, Qadas, Qaddita, Qaytiyya, al-Qudayriyya, al-Ras al-Ahmar, Sabalan, Safsaf, Saliha, al-Salihiyya, al -Sammu’i, al-Sanbariyya, Sa’sa’, al-Shawka al-Tahta, al-Shuna, Taytaba, Tulayl, al-‘Ulmaniyya, al-‘Urayfiyya, al-Wayziyya, Yarda, al-Zahiriiyya al-Tahta, al-Zanghariyya,al-Zawiya, al-Zuq al-Fawqani, al-Zuq al-Tahtani.

The District of Tiberias (25 villages)

‘Awlam, al-Dalhamiyya, Ghuwayr Abu Shusha, Hadatha, al-Hamma, Hittin, Kafr Sabt, Lubya, Ma’dhar, al-Majdal, al-Manara, al-Manshiyya, al-Mansura, Nasir al-Din, Nimrin, al-Nuqayb, Samakh, al-Samakiyya, al-Samra, al-Shajara, al-Tabigha, al-‘Ubaydiyya, Wadi al-Hamam, al-Wa’ra al-Swawda’, Khirbat, Yaquq.

The District of Tulkarm (17 villages)

Bayt Lid Khirbat, Bayyarat Hannun, Fardisya, Ghabat Kafrr Sur, al-Jalama, Kafr Saba, al-Majdal, Khirbat, al-Manshiyya, Miska, Qaqun, Raml Zayta, Tabsur, Umm Khalid, Wadi al-Hawarith, Wadi Qabbani, al-Zababida Khirbat, Zalafa Khirbat.

Bibliography:

-All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 by Walid Khalidi.

-For more detailed information you can visit http://www.palestineremembered.com/

Posted on: April 16, 2014 in www.imemc.org

As the Palestinian people mark Palestinian Prisoners’ Day on April 17, more than 800,000 Palestinians, including children, have been kidnapped and imprisoned by Israel since 1967, while at least 5,000 Palestinians are currently held by Israel, a report by the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees has revealed.

The Ministry said that Israel is ongoing with its daily invasions, assaults and arrests against the Palestinians in different parts of occupied Palestine, targeting both men and women, adults and minors of varying ages. It said that since Israel, in 1967, occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, until the end of 2013, the army had kidnapped more than 800,000 Palestinians, including 15,000 women and thousands of children, and that the arrests are still ongoing. “There isn’t single family that did not experience arrest, some numerous times”, the report said. “Israel turned every corner in occupied Palestine into a prison, detention camp and interrogation facility.” After the second Palestinian Intifada, the al-Aqsa Intifada, which began in late September of 2000, Israeli soldiers have kidnapped more than 80,000 Palestinians, including around 10,000 children and more than 60 elected legislators and ministers. Israeli authorities also issued more than 24,000 arbitrary Administrative Detention orders, detaining thousands without charges or trial, and imprisoning more than a 1,000 Palestinian women since then.

Arrests And Brutality Targeting Everybody

The arrests did not target any certain demographic or age group; instead, they targeted all sectors of the Palestinian society, including children, seniors, women, men, officials, ministers, legislators, political leaders, union leaders, disabled Palestinians, students, intellectuals, poets and artists… Arrests take place every day, and there has not been one in which the army has not kidnapped someone. Most of the individuals abducted had nothing to do with “security threats”, to use Israel’s terminology, yet, imprisonment and torture became part of daily life for Palestinians. According to the report, the real danger is that the vast majority of these arrests, and accompanying violations, are direct violations of International Humanitarian Law; “The detainees are extremely tortured and abused… face the most cruel methods of torture, physical and psychological. They are imprisoned under inhumane conditions, are humiliated, and even their families are humiliated and assaulted”. Israel, its security devices and interrogators, continuously violate the rights of the detainees as it imprisons, intimidates and tortures children, women and even detainees with special needs.

Detainees In Numbers

5,000 Palestinians are still behind bars, imprisoned in different prisons and detention centers. Most of them are from the occupied West Bank. Around 576 of them have been sentenced to at least one life term. There are 19 Palestinian women and 200 children who are still imprisoned by Israel, in addition to hundreds of children who grew up and became adults while in prison. Israel is also still holding captive 185 Palestinians under arbitrary Administrative Detention orders without charge, eleven elected legislators and dozens of political officials. The detainees are held in around 22 prisons, detention and interrogation camps, mainly in Ramon, Nafha, Asqalan, Be’er As-Sabe’, Hadarim, Galboa’, Shatta, Ramla, Damoun, HaSharon, Ofer, Majeddo, and the Negev Detention camp.

Female Detainees

Detained Palestinian women, including children, face humiliation, torture, degradation, and are also tortured and beaten, in addition to the threats and harsh treatment they receive while being transferred. They also face repeated threat of sexual abuse. Their suffering continues in solitary confinement, while the army also denies them family visits, denies them access to education, and proper medical treatment. Many of the detained women have husbands who are also imprisoned.

Ailing Detainees

More than 1,400 Palestinians need medical attention but are, instead, denied the needed medical treatments, and are suffering from deteriorating medical conditions. Sixteen of them are continually living at Ramla Prison Clinic, which lacks basic supplies and specialized physicians. Some of the detainees are paralyzed and/or amputees, with dozens struggling with major life-threatening conditions. They need special attention and surgeries, while only prison doctors are allowed to examine them. 80 of the ailing detainees suffer from chronic conditions, including 15 who have different types of cancer, while dozens of others suffer various other physical and/or mental conditions. Most of the detainees who fall ill, or develop psychological conditions, were completely healthy before they were kidnapped and imprisoned. Prisons lack appropriate sanitation, are filled with bugs and insects. Cells and rooms have high humidity and are overcrowded. Dozens of Palestinians were taken prisoner after they were shot by the army, and were tortured and interrogated, beaten on their wounds and cuts. Many detainees, while in prison, developed skin conditions, ulcer, tumors, kidney failure, eyesight deterioration, slipped discs, diabetes, oral conditions, tooth loss and various sorts of psychological conditions, are still abused, with their bodies being used for testing by pharmaceutical companies.

Administrative Detainees

Administrative Detention is the “unknown enemy” which the detainees face, as it is a punishment without a charge, without an indictment. Administrative detainees are held without trial. Neither they or their lawyers are allowed to defend themselves, simply because they face what Israel calls a “secret file” that no one is allowed to see. Each arbitrary Administrative Detention order is usually 1 to 6 months, issued by military commanders in the occupied Palestinian territories. Such orders target both men and women of different ages, young and old, including physicians, engineers, professors, teachers, journalists and elected legislators and officials. Such orders are repeatedly renewed and, in many cases, just as the detainees are about to step out of prison, they are informed of a new order, often spending months and years under such orders without even knowing when, or if, they will ever be freed.

Veteran Detainees

Following the resumption of direct Palestinian-Israeli talks in late July of 2013, and after years of stalemate, Israel was still holding captive 104 veteran detainees, held since before the First Oslo Agreement of 1993. Under American mediation, Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank reached an agreement for the release of all 104 veteran detainees, in four stages. In return, the Palestinian Authority vowed not to file any new application to join the different UN and other international institutions which, as a result, would allow them to gain international recognition, during the nine months of direct talks. Israel implemented the first three stages of release, and backed down on the fourth, which supposed to be implemented by March 28, 2014. 30 veteran detainees were supposed to be freed, but Israel voided the deal. The release was supposed to contribute to stability in the region, a part of the ongoing talks, free of violations and invasions, but Israel blatantly continued with its ongoing assaults, arrests, invasions and assassinations. The United States, the mediator of these talks, along with the International Community, need to act, putting pressure on Israel to halt its violations, to respect its commitment and to release the detainees, if it is seriously willing to resume peace talks and reach a final status agreement.

Tragic Conditions

The living conditions which detainees face in Israeli occupation prisons are tough, extremely harsh, especially in the face of such a wide range of violations and abuses which include but are not limited to torture, medical neglect and solitary confinement – this all in addition to repeated denial of family visits, malnutrition and blackmail, most often by way of children. This is happening in addition to repeated attacks against the detainees in their rooms, night raids and searches, high fines, all different sorts of violations. Simply put, Israel is violating all international conventions and is denying them the most basic of human and prisoner rights. According to detailed and documented reports by the Ministry of Detainees and various human rights groups, 205 Palestinian detainees died after being arrested since the year 1967. Seventy-three of them died due to extreme torture; the latest casualty was Arafat Jaradat from Sa’ir town, near Hebron, who died less than two weeks after being kidnapped and repeatedly tortured by Israeli interrogators. Fifty-three Palestinian detainees died due to lack of medical attention; the latest casualty being one Hasan Toraby from the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Seventy-two Palestinians were executed after the soldiers kidnapped them, and seven were shot and killed while in prison. These violations, and the unacceptable conditions which detainees face in Israeli prisons, require every Palestinian in the country, and around the world, to act in highlighting the suffering of the detainees, and to engage in solidarity acts which expose the serious violations and crimes perpetrated on them by the Israeli government. Activists around the world, including all international institutions, in defense of both human and prisoner rights, are also called upon to act, in order to oblige Israel to respect those human and civil rights, to respect International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention and all related treaties.

Source:

http://www.imemc.org/article/67566

Posted August 14, 2012

By Dalia Hatuqa

Ramallah, occupied Palestinian territories – A dirty mattress fills up a space barely two metres long and one metre wide.
A suffocating stench emanating from the toilet hovers over the windowless room, and a light turned on 24/7 means sleep is a distant dream. This is the infamous Cell 36 in Al Jalameh Prison in Israel. It’s one of the cells that many Palestinian children have either heard of or, worse, been inside when placed in solitary confinement.

The children imprisoned here are most often taken from their homes between midnight and 5am. Most don’t even see it coming. In one case, in Beit Ummar near Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers detained a Palestinian boy after reportedly taking some of the house’s doors off their hinges. Most of the children detained live close to “friction points”, areas close to Israeli settlements, roads used by settlers or near the separation wall. And their offence is almost always throwing stones at settlers or troops.

These vivid details emerged recently in a report based on the testimonies of more than 300 Palestinian children, which were collected over four years. The study by Defence for Children International, Bound, Blindfolded and Convicted: Children Held in Military Detentionhighlights a pattern of abuse towards children detained under the Israeli military court system. In the past 11 years, DCI estimates that around 7,500 children, some as young as 12, have been detained, interrogated and imprisoned within this system. This is about 500-700 children per year, or nearly two children every day.

Mohammad S, from the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem, was 16 when he was arrested, according to the report. It was 2:30am when Israeli soldiers dragged him out of bed. He was blindfolded and verbally abused and taken to an unknown destination, where he says he was forced to lay down in the cold for an hour. He was later taken to an interrogation centre near Nablus at around 11am, and only then was he allowed to drink some water and use the bathroom, after he underwent a strip search. Tied and blindfolded still, he was then taken to Al Jalameh, near Haifa in Israel. There he was taken to Cell 36, where he was forced to spend his first night sleeping on the floor because there was no mattress or blanket.

Mohammad says he spent 17 days in solitary confinement in Cell 36 and Cell 37, interrupted only by interrogations. Mohammad was reportedly interrogated for two to three hours every day, while sitting on a low seat with his hands tied to the chair.

The most crucial hours

“The first 48 hours after a child is taken are the most important because that’s when the most abuse happens,” DCI’s lawyer Gerard Horton said. Children taken from their homes in the night are blindfolded and bound and made to lie face down or up on the floors of military vehicles, according to the centre’s report.

Very rarely are parents told where their child is being taken, and, unlike Israeli children from within either Israel or the settlements in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian minors are reportedly not allowed to have a parent present before or during initial interrogation, and generally do not see a lawyer until after their interrogation is over.

Specifically, Israeli children have access to a lawyer within 48 hours and those under the age of 14 cannot be imprisoned. Palestinian children, however, can be jailed even if they are as young as 12 and, like adults, can be held in jail without having formal charges against them for up to 188 days.

“The key issue is one of equality. If two children, a Palestinian and an Israeli, are caught throwing stones at each other, then one will be processed in a juvenile justice system and one in a military court,” Horton said.

“They have completely different rights. It’s hard to justify this after 45 years of occupation. It’s not a question of whether offences are committed. What we are saying is children should not be treated completely differently.”

As soon as children are taken from their homes, and placed inside an Israeli military vehicle, they are often kicked or slapped, according to testimonies obtained by DCI. Some said they were laughed at and others said they heard cameras clicking.

Nightmares

Because children are often taken late at night, they are driven to the nearest settlement to wait until Israeli police interrogators open up shop in the morning. This means children are sometimes placed out in the cold or rain for many hours. Requests for water or using the bathroom are most often denied, and children are taken straight to interrogation after a night of little sleep.

That’s what Ahmad F said happened to him. A 15-year-old from ‘Iraq Burin village, just outside Nablus, he was arrested in July 2011. He was taken to the nearby Huwwara interrogation centre, where he was left outside from 5am until 3pm. At one point, soldiers brought a dog. “They brought the dog’s food and put it on my head,” Ahmad told DCI. “Then they put another piece of bread on my trousers near my genitals, so I tried to move away but [the dog] started barking. I was terrified.”

During interrogation, many children reported being facing with slurs and threatened with physical violence. In a small number of cases, interrogators have reportedly threatened minors with rape.

In 29 per cent of cases studied by DCI, Arabic-speaking children were either shown or given documentation written in Hebrew to sign. An Israeli spokesperson denied this to Al Jazeera, saying “the norm is that interrogations in Arabic should be either recorded or written in Arabic”. Israeli officials did say, however, they had identified 13 cases from the report where children had signed a confession written in Hebrew. Yet the spokesperson maintained that video recordings of those interrogations had been available, should the lawyers acting for the children doubt the accuracy of the written Hebrew statements.

After children sign a “confession”, they are brought before an Israeli military court. Since 2009, an Israeli spokesperson said, children have faced juvenile military courts. Most often, that’s the first time the minor will see their lawyer. The confession is generally the primary evidence against the child, say DCI officials. Other evidence will often consist of a statement by an interrogator, and sometimes a soldier.

Because so few are granted bail, children face a legal dilemma: they can ask the lawyer to challenge the system – and by doing so potentially wait, locked up, for four to six months – or plead guilty and get a two or three month prison sentence for a “first offence”.

Pleading guilty

“So, very rarely does anyone challenge the system,” said DCI’s Horton, as the quickest way to be released is to plead guilty. This goes some way to explain why, according to the military courts, the conviction rate for adults and children in 2010 was 99.74 per cent.

According to DCI, some fifty to sixty per cent of the time, children are taken to prisons inside Israel, making it difficult for parents to visit. “Some parents are denied permits on unspecified ‘security grounds’. For the others, the bureaucracy can take up to two months to get a permit, which means if their children are sentenced to less time, they will not receive a visit,” Horton said. “However, some permits are processed in less than two months, and those children sentenced to more time will also generally receive visits.”

The allegations of what seems to be a deliberate system of abuse appear to be corroborated by another report published by a group of British jurists. The UK government-backed delegation of nine lawyers, with human rights, crime and child welfare backgrounds, concluded that Israel’s soldiers regularly breach the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and theFourth Geneva Convention, of which Israel is a signatory.

Their report, Children in Military Custody, attributed much of Israel’s reluctance to treat Palestinian children in accordance with international norms to “a belief, which was advanced to us by a military prosecutor, that every Palestinian child is a ‘potential terrorist'”. The lawyers said this seemed to be “the starting point of a spiral of injustice, and one which only Israel, as the Occupying Power in the West Bank, can reverse”.

Israel’s practice of holding children “for substantial periods in solitary confinement would, if it occurred, be capable of amounting to torture”, the report concluded. Of all the children represented by DCI, 12 per cent reported being held in solitary confinement for an average of 11 days.

Denial

The Israel Security Agency (ISA), also known as Shin Bet, denied that children were mistreated under the military court system, calling claims to the contrary “utterly baseless”. The ISA also said that claims regarding the prevention of legal counsel were also completely groundless.

“No one questioned, including minors being questioned, is kept alone in a cell as a punitive measure or in order to obtain a confession,” said the ISA in a statement when the Guardian first released a special report about the status of child detainees in Israel.

The ISA also said that it provides minors special protection because of their age and adheres to “international treaties of which the State of Israel is a signatory, and according to Israeli law, including the right to legal counsel and visits by the Red Cross”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, an Israeli spokesperson accused the DCI report of bias, and refuted the group’s finding that the majority of children prosecuted were charged with throwing stones: “This was the basis for only 40 per cent of the indictments filed against minors in the West Bank … the young age of offenders is not relevant to the gravity of the act: it has been proven beyond doubt that a stone thrown by a 15-year-old child can be no less fatal than a stone thrown by an adult.”

Stone-throwing can prove deadly, stressed the spokesperson, citing a case from September 2011, when an Israeli settler and his one-year-old son were killed after their car overturned as a result of stones hurled at them. “Two Palestinians from Halhul confessed to throwing the stone which caused the deaths of Asher and Yonatan. The stone was hurled from a driving car,” the spokesperson said. The official said that children were also involved in grenade throwing, the use of explosives, shooting and assault

The spokesperson also denied that the ISA used isolation as an interrogation technique or as punishment to exert confessions out of minors. “There are certain cases in which an interrogee will be held alone for a few days at the most, in order to prevent information in his/her possession from leaking to other terrorist activists in the same detention facility, which could compromise the interrogation of the suspect. Note that even in these cases, the interrogee is not held in absolute confinement, but is entitled to meet with Red Cross representatives, medical staff etc.”

Furthermore, the spokesperson rejected the idea that pleading guilty was the quickest way out of the system for a defendant, deeming the accusation “misleading, distorted, and premised upon incorrect information”.

“Should a minor defendant choose to plead ‘not guilty’ and challenge the prosecutorial evidence by proceeding to a full trial and mounting a good-faith defence, military courts will, in the vast majority of the cases, conduct the hearings very efficiently, sometimes even in a few weeks.”

Yet, since the DCI and UK reports came out, “there’s no substantive change on the ground”, Horton said. “The response by the military authorities has been to start talking about making some changes and amending the military orders. But when you look at the details, the changes are of little substance.”

“In reality, what we are seeing is a de facto annexation of most of the West Bank; it’s not a temporary military occupation,” he concluded. “The military courts are an integral part of this process used to control the population.”

Source: Al Jazeera

Posted in August 5, 2002.

Care International

CARE International today released preliminary findings from two surveys focusing on the health and nutritional status of the 

Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The surveys are funded and supported by CARE International with a grant from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The surveys are being implemented by Al Quds University and the Global Management Consulting Group, with technical assistance from Johns Hopkins University and on the ground support from the American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA). A comprehensive report will be available in September.

To download executive summary or initial report click here.

Summary

Preliminary results of the first survey, a Nutritional Assessment, indicate an increase in the number of malnourished children with 22.5 percent of children under 5 suffering from acute (9.3 percent) or chronic (13.2 percent) malnutrition. The preliminary rates are particularly high in Gaza with the survey showing 13.2 percent of children suffering from acute malnutrition, putting them on par with children in countries such as Nigeria and Chad.

Other early findings show that the rate of anemia in Palestinian children under 5 has reached 19.7 percent (20.9 percent in the West Bank and 18.9 percent in Gaza), while anemia rates of non-pregnant Palestinian women of childbearing age are 10.8 percent (9.5 percent in the West Bank and 12 percent in Gaza).

A market survey reveals shortages of high protein foods such as fish, chicken, and dairy products amongst wholesalers and retailers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Fifty-two percent of wholesalers and 48.3 percent of retailers reported a shortage of infant formula. Survey respondents indicated that shortages in Gaza were primarily due to border closures that seal the Gaza Strip off from Egypt, Israel and the West Bank. In the West Bank, survey respondents said food shortages were caused by a combination of road closures, checkpoints, curfews and military conflict.

The second survey, a Sentinel Surveillance System, assesses the ability of families to purchase food. More than half the Palestinian population surveyed reported having to decrease food consumption; the primary reasons cited were lack of money (65 percent) and curfews (33 percent). Fifty-three percent of households said they had to borrow money to purchase food, with Bethlehem, North Gaza, Jericho and Gaza City containing the most households in this category. Roughly seventeen percent of households had to sell assets to buy food, with rates highest in Gaza City and Khan Younis. Thirty-two percent of all households reported buying less bread, potatoes, and rice, which are staples of the Palestinian diet.

The household survey is based on a three-stage stratified random sampling of 1,000 households in the West Bank and Gaza. Preliminary findings include malnutrition and anemia data for 936 children and 1,534 non-pregnant reproductive age women (15 – 49 years of age). The preliminary Sentinel Surveillance Study findings represent cumulative data from four rounds of collection (1,280 households thus far) and include selected data applying to food security from this ongoing assessment. The total number of one-time households to be interviewed over the life of the Survey is 10,240 (20 households in urban and non-urban clusters every two weeks in all 16 districts of the West Bank and Gaza). These households are not the same as those in the Nutritional Assessment. All data collectors are students in the Al Quds School of Public Health and have medical and/or public health Bachelor or Masters degrees and previous data collecting experience.

Source:

http://electronicintifada.net