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Remember Palestinian Prisoners on April 17

14/04/10

April 17 is marked each year around the world as Palestinian Prisoners Day, which draws attention to the plight of the thousands of Palestinian men, women and children who are imprisoned by the zionist state.

7,000 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, which includes 280 ‘administrative detainees’ who have been interned without trial. Those who were ‘convicted’ were subject to Israeli military law, in which they were tried in a non-jury military court. This system makes a mockery of all notions of justice and of the Israeli’s state facade of liberal democracy.

Palestinian Prisoners Day will be marked this year in Ireland with a demonstration organised jointly by éirígí and the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Like other events around the world, this one will call for the release of all these political prisoners. Two cases will be focused on to highlight the way in which Palestinians are treated by the Israeli ‘justice’ system.

Ahmad Sa’adat, general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was abducted by Palestinian Authority security officials in January 2002 at the behest of Israel and imprisoned without trial. In March 2006 Israeli forces laid siege to the prison before kidnapping Sa’adat and five of his comrades.

Sa’adat, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, was finally tried by the Israeli state in the summer of 2008, and on December 25 2008, he was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment. He was convicted of membership of a prohibited organisation [the PFLP], holding a post in a prohibited organisation, and incitement, for a speech he gave following the Israeli assassination of his predecessor, Abu Ali Mustafa, in August 2001.

Abdallah Abu Rahmah is co-ordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall. Bil’in has come to international attention because of a five-year long campaign of non-violent resistance to Israel’s attempt to build a stretch of its Apartheid Wall through the village.

Abdallah was abducted from his home during an Israeli military night raid on the village in December 2009. He has been charged with incitement, of ‘organising and participating in demonstrations without a permit’, and of ‘possession of arms’ – the latter charge arising from an exhibition organised by Abdallah of grenades and bullets used by the Israeli military against the Bil’in protestors. Though the trial is ongoing, Abdallah continues to be detained in Ofer prison.

éirígí spokesperson Daithí Mac An Mháistír encouraged people to attend the demonstration. He said: “All democrats, socialists and republicans, should make an effort to attend this event in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

“We in Ireland are only too well aware of the use of internment without trial and non-jury trials against political opponents of the state. The people of Palestine continue to suffer under these abuses of power day after day.”

Daithí concluded: “A clear message must be sent to the Israeli government and its allies that the world has not forgotten about the Palestinians, that the rights of an entire people cannot be trampled on, and that Israel’s pretence of being an ordinary democratic state will be challenged at every turn.”

The Palestinian Prisoners Day demonstration will take place at 2pm on Saturday, April 17, at the Israeli Embassy on Pembroke Road in Ballsbridge, Dublin.

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