Khalida Jarrar leaves Israeli jail with “messages of freedom”

Palestinian leftist lawmaker Khalida Jarrar embraced by family and supporters in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on 28 February. Ahmad ArouriAPA images


Tamara Nassar- 2 March 2019

Israel released leftist Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar on Thursday after imprisoning her without charge or trial for 20 months.

She was taken from her home on 2 July 2017 during a pre-dawn raid in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

Israel has imprisoned Jarrar multiple times.

Pictures of Jarrar circulated on social media following her release:

شبكة قدس الإخبارية

✔@qudsn

الإفراج عن القيادية في الجبهة الشعبية خالدة جرار على حاجز "سالم" بعد 20 شهراً في سجون الاحتلال.

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2:08 AM - Feb 28, 2019

View image on Twitter

شبكة قدس الإخبارية

✔@qudsn

النائب خالدة جرار ترفع شارة النصر خلال استقبالها بعد الإفراج عنها من سجون الاحتلال.

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10:15 AM - Feb 28, 2019

“They told my family that I would be released from al-Jalameh military checkpoint at noon, but the prison authority brought a special bosta and decided to take me to Salem checkpoint and release me in the early hours,” Jarrar said in a video:

Bosta is the name for a vehicle used to transfer prisoners in tiny metal cages with their arms and legs chained, often for hours at a time – a brutal form of abuse.

“They released mom in the very early hours at a different location and let her walk free by herself in the middle of nowhere. In spite of Israel’s attempts to disrupt her reception, mom is free!” Jarrar’s daughter Yafa said on social media, according to prisoners rights group Samidoun.

Khalida Jarrar visited her father’s grave following her release.

Khalida Jarrar prays over her father’s grave following her release from an Israeli jail in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus on 28 February. 

 Shadi Jarar’ahAPA images

“In the end, we wish for the release of all prisoners and we carry their messages of freedom,” Jarrar added.

Prisoners conditions

The lawmaker pointed to “the difficult conditions female prisoners are living in, especially after they were gathered and transferred from HaSharon prison to Damon prison, where they live in inhuman conditions.”

The Palestinian Authority prisoners committee said that Israeli prison authorities were providing prisoners at Damon with rotten and expired food.

They added that surveillance cameras are still installed in the courtyard, forcing women to wear the hijab – a headscarf – even inside their rooms.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in Israeli jails in the Naqab (Negev) region in southern Israel are dissolving prisoner organizations in protest of crackdowns by Israeli prison authorities.

Palestinian women held at HaSharon prison protested the authorities’ decision to turn on surveillance cameras in the prison yard in September, by refusing to go into the yard.

Jarrar addressed Israeli public security minister Gilad Erdan’s plan, announced last month, to worsen conditions for Palestinians in Israeli prisons and reduce their standard of living to “the minimum required,” according to The Times of Israel.

Erdan is part of a committee with several Knesset members, as well as the Shin Bet, that determines the conditions of Palestinian prisoners and imposes further restrictions on them.

“Part of the attack was on female prisoners,” Jarrar told Wattan TV following her release. “They are trying to corner female prisoners in a reality where they restart their struggle from square one.”

“Rooms are very humid, electrical installations are dangerous because they are wet, especially in the winter, and it causes fires,” Jarrar said. “The courtyard is filled with cameras. We don’t have a library, we don’t have a classroom. There is no kitchen and prisoners are forced to cook in their humid rooms.”

Erdan announced the blocking of prisoner welfare funds from the Palestinian Authority, reducing prisoners’ autonomy and restricting water supplies.

He claimed that prisoners’ water consumption is “crazy” and a way for them “to subvert the state,” accordingto Haaretz.

The newspaper did not spell out how much water Palestinian prisoners are alleged to use.

Named in government report

Aiming to discredit and smear the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights, the Israeli government released a report last month titled “Terrorists in Suits: The Ties Between NGOs promoting BDS and Terrorist Organizations.”

The report labels Jarrar, a board member of prisoners rights group Addameer, as one of “numerous members and terrorist operatives [who] have become leading figures in [nongovernmental organizations] which delegitimize and promote boycotts against Israel, while concealing or downplaying their terrorist past.”

It is notable that Israel did not charge Jarrar at all in the past 20 months, given their claim she has “terrorist” ties.

Jarrar is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and a former leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Israel considers that political faction, along with virtually all other Palestinian political parties, to be a “terrorist” organization. There are currently eight Palestinian lawmakers in Israeli jails, five held under administrative detention.

Palestinian artist Mustapha Awad is also named in the report.

He has been imprisoned since July, and was sentenced to one year in an Israeli prison in November.

Awad, 36, was born in Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon and was granted asylum in Belgium at age 20.

Like many Palestinian refugees, Awad had never been to Palestine and decided to visit this past summer, but he was detained by Israeli authorities as he tried to enter the occupied West Bank from Jordan and has been imprisoned since.

Israel accuses Awad, the co-founder of a folk dance group, of membership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Egypt releases Hamas members

Egyptian authorities released four Hamas members on Thursday who were abducted by gunmen in Egypt in August 2015, and four other Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

Hamas members Abdeldayim Abu Libdah, Abdullah Abu al-Jubain, Hussein al-Zibdah and Yasir Zannoun arrived through the Rafah crossing in the Gaza Strip accompanied by member of the Hamas political bureau Rawhi Mushtaha.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who had returned to the Strip the day before, reportedly thanked Egyptian authorities for releasing the men.

Local media circulated pictures of the prisoners after their release:

وكالة شهاب

✔@ShehabAgency

#صور اللحظات الأولى لوصول الشبان المفرج عنهم من مصر إلى مكتب رئيس المكتب السياسي لحركة حماس اسماعيل هنية.

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12:46 PM - Feb 28, 2019

شبكة قدس الإخبارية

✔@qudsn

استعدادات عائلات عناصر القوة الخاصة في كتائب القسام الأربعة المختطفين في #مصر منذ سنوات لاستقبالهم

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10:29 AM - Feb 28, 2019

#شاهد رئيس المكتب السياسي لحركة حماس اسماعيل هنية يستقبل المعتقلين المفرج عنهم من مصر#عودة_الاحباب pic.twitter.com/NFZGlNT6a2

— وكالة شهاب (@ShehabAgency) 28 February 2019

The four Hamas members were abducted by masked men after entering Egypt from Gaza through the Rafah crossing and were on a bus heading to Cairo International Airport when the abduction occurred.

Egypt never officially admitted that it was detaining them.

Yemen's farmers forced to eat leaves as war devastates harvests

In the Hajjah governorate, residents have been struggling to make ends meet since the beginning of the war

Abdullah Wesabi stopped farming in 2015 because of the increase in fuel prices due to the war and left to look for work in Saudi Arabia (MEE)

By MEE correspondent-in Hajjah, Yemen- 3 March 2019 

Khalid Abdullah, a 33-year-old resident of Yemen's Hajjah governorate, used to work on the farms he had inherited from his father.

He would plant tomatoes, onion, potatoes, corns, and other kinds of vegetables and grains, and never thought he would find himself unemployed and reliant on help from others.

But anything is possible when your country is enveloped in conflict, and the outbreak of Yemen's civil war in 2015 turned the lives of farmers in Abdullah's part of the world upside down.

Hajjah is a rural governorate, 127km from the capital Sanaa in Houthi-controlled territory.

Houthi rebels have been mired in a war with government forces, who have been backed since 2015 by a Saudi-led coalition.

"I used to provide for my family from farming, but in 2015 the prices of fuel more than doubled and I could not buy fuel for the water pump, so my lands became barren," Abdullah told Middle East Eye.

"I did my best to bring water by jerrycans to water the farms, but that did not help, and I lost my only source of income because of the expensive fuel."

The price of 20 litres of diesel increased from YR2,500 ($10) to more than YR12,000 ($48) in 2015, and although it has now decreased to YR7,500 ($30), the price remains unaffordable. 

Abdullah used to send the harvest from his farms to different parts of the country, but now his area is in dire need of food.

"The harvest from my farms used to ship to several governorates, and I did not need anyone to help, but today everything has changed."

Khalid Abdullah, left, shows the leaves of the Halas plant which are boiled for eating (MEE)

Food prices have jumped by 150 percent since the conflict began, leaving as many as 20 million Yemenis food insecure. 

In the absence of the harvest, or help from the Houthi administration, international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) have stepped in to try to help the situation.

"We have been waiting for organisations to help us with some food that enables us to survive. Not only me, but most of the farmers face the same suffering," said Abdullah. “Organisations are now the main source of income and they help many people in Hajjah, but there is still a shortage of aid and not all needy people get food.

"Some families, including mine, usually resort to eating Halas leaves, so I call on INGOs to double their efforts in Hajjah."

Halas is a climbing plant, with shiny, leathery-looking leaves. 

Yemenis used to eat the leaves in ancient times when famine spread in the country, and now some families in rural areas like Hajjah are again resorting to boiling the leaves to eat them.

Public servants no longer paid

Along with those who relied on agriculture, residents of Hajjah who once received public servant salaries are also reliant on aid.

"The government has been absent from Hajjah since August 2016, when we received our last salary and today we depend on INGOs to help us with food,” Gamal, a teacher in Hajjah, told MEE.

A packet of rice for a family of nine: Why Yemenis are starving

Read More »

"If not for the INGOs, we would starve to death. Some children already have in Hajjah."

According to UNICEF, 1.8 million children are acutely malnourished in Yemen, including 400,000 who are suffering from "severe malnutrition and urgently need life-saving food to survive". 

Gamal said that the current crisis has left most of the residents in Hajjah and other governorates unemployed despite being still young and in their prime.

"I call on the INGOs to continue to provide us with enough food until we receive our salaries and the farmers resume their works," he said.

Fleeing from the needy

In October, Houthi authorities in Sanaa formed the National Authority for the Management and Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Response.

The authority consists of representatives from 12 ministries and works under the leadership of the office manager of the presidency.

The authority supervises and organises the work of the INGOs in Houthi-controlled areas and provides INGOs with figures about the affected people and the hardest hit areas.

Abdul Rahman al-Muayyad, a supervisor for the authority in Hajjah, told MEE: "There are some desperate people in Hajjah who do not have any source of income and the aid that arrives to some districts is not enough for all the needy people, so they resort to eating Halas.

"INGOs are the main source of income and no one can deny their role in helping Yemenis, but we hope to receive more aid from them to cover all needs."

Muayyad confided that sometimes he flees from needy people because he feels sad when people asked him for help them which he is unable to provide.

'I achieved my dream'

Abdullah al-Wesabi is a 35-year-old farmer from al-Anasi village in Hajjah's Bani Qais district.

Wesabi plants different kinds of vegetables, such as tomatoes, onion, radishes, watercress and grains. 

He has been working on his farm since he was a child, and he never thought that one day those lands would become barren.

With help from an INGO, Wesabi has now been able to resume farming and the income from the farm covers the needs of his family (MEE)

As with many other farmers, Wesabi stopped farming in 2015 because of the increase in fuel prices and left to look for work in Saudi Arabia. He lasted there for only a few months before returning to Yemen, where fortunately the situation turned in his favour.

"Last year, Vision Hope International (VHI) organisation supported us with seeds, rehabilitated the well, built a water storage tank, provided us with a pump and solar energy and also provided us with water network," he said.

The water arrives to several farms in the area, including Wesabi's. He has now been able to resume farming, and the income from the farm covers his family's needs.

"The VHI achieved my dream, and today we receive water for free so many farms are working again today," Wesabi said.

'We hope to see agriculture in Hajjah return'

VHI is one of the INGOs that have started to support the farmers, based on the premise that helping them earn a decent living for themselves and their families is better than simply providing them with food.

I hope to resume my farming so I can help needy people instead of waiting for the INGOs to help me

- Khalid Abdullah, farmer

Kamel Salah, the head of the community committees in al-Anasi village, said the main problem is with the water and seeds.

"Most of the residents of this area are farmers, but they could not buy fuel for water pumps, so the intervention of the organisations has helped them to resume their jobs in farming," Salah told MEE.

"Some INGOs have started to help farmers, and we hope to see the agriculture in Hajjah return as it was before the crisis."

Abdullah, also a farmer, believes that INGOs are the only ones that can help him nowadays.

"To help us with the rehabilitation of a well and provide us with a pump or solar energy is better than helping us with food," he said.

"I hope to resume my farming so I can help needy people instead of waiting for the INGOs to help me."

How to Make a New Party Succeed in Britain

A centrist movement can win, but it needs to build a base in cities first.

Then-Conservative MP Anna Soubry (L) and then-Labour MPs Luciana Berger (C) and Chuka Umunna (front) are greeted by an anti-Brexit protester as they arrive at the Cabinet Office on January 21, 2019 in London. (LEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGES)

BY GARVAN WALSHE

 | MARCH 3, 2019, 10:25 AM
Starting new parties is hard in Britain’s adversarial political culture. Public debate is structured around alternative tribes. Voters are supposed to put one in office and kick the other out. Even Britain’s Parliament is arranged into separate government and opposition benches, whose members main function appears to be to shout louder than the other side’s speaker so nobody can hear what they’re trying to say. During a relatively boisterous budget debate in Spain’s parliament recently, the chair of proceedings had to admonish the country’s elected representatives: “Esto no es el Parlamento británico.” “This is not the British Parliament.”

Anyone thinking of setting up a new grouping in Britain tends to be dismissed as a foolish idealist
, and the 11 defectors who left the Labour and Conservative parties to form a new bloc, currently called the Independent Group (TIG), have faced the same charge. They are warned constantly that they are repeating the failure of the Social Democratic Party (SDP)—the result of a 1980s split within Labour. The SDP won a quarter of the national vote but less than 4 percent of the seats in Parliament, thanks to Britain’s first-past-the-post system, and eventually merged with the Liberal Democrats.

 

A psephologist so eminent that he has been knighted, John Curtice, dismissed their chances. The Kent University professor Matthew Goodwin makes a different argument in these pages: that the new party is likely to have more influence in pushing the Labour Party to adopt its policies than it is to win a large number of seats and become a genuine electoral threat. That may have been true before Jeremy Corbyn ascended as Labour’s leader. But the party’s room for maneuver is now limited by the more extreme membership Corbyn has recruited.

The defectors who formed TIG—such as Labour’s Mike Gapes, with whom I visited the Kurdish front lines with the Islamic State in northern Iraq, and the Conservative Party’s Anna Soubry, with whom I sit on the advisory board of the Migration Matters Trust—are proud advocates for migration. Other Labour defectors, including Luciana Berger, were motivated to leave by growing anti-Semitism in the party.

Here are 11 things they need to do—one for every TIG member—to give it a chance of success.
First, avoid being boxed in as a new centrist party. Too many people see a centrist party as a revival of the Tony Blair-era “triangulation” strategy—but triangulation only worked because Blair and, later, David Cameron were able to retain the support of their respective bases while also reaching out to centrist voters. But the voters who would initially support the TIG are not voters to be triangulated to: They would be its core vote.

Second, the political axis is tilting: Centrists on the old axis are liberal, cosmopolitan true believers on the new one. TIG could take advantage of that shift to become the party of the cities and university towns. Britain’s first-past-the-post system may hurt some third parties, as Goodwin argues, but it helps geographically concentrated identity, as demonstrated by the hugely successful Scottish National Party, which now dominates Scottish representation at Westminster. To win seats in Britain’s system, a new party doesn’t need to win more than 50 percent of the vote: It’s enough to be the single biggest party. As little as 35 percent of the vote can be enough; more than 40 percent is rarely necessary. These city and university seats, which number between 70 and 100 out of the 650 in the House of Commons, would not be enough to form a government but would form a base from which TIG could expand in subsequent elections, just as the Labour Party was able to expand on its results in the early 20th century.

Third, present yourselves as an insurgency. The new party’s central message cannot be splitling the difference between the old parties; the pitch must be that TIG will replace their failed way of doing business. It needs to define both the Tories and Labour as the establishment and run against them.

Fourth, let Brexit happen. As long as the debate over Brexit continues, the old parties will retain coherence. But once its disastrous legacy is plain to see, voters will look for someone to blame
, and the Tories and Labour will both be easy targets. For this to work, TIG needs to try very hard to stop Brexit but ultimately fail to do so.

Fifth, build local infrastructure. Local councilors don’t just control budgets and run services. They become foot soldiers at election time and a potential stock from which parliamentary candidates should be selected. They knock on doors, stuff envelopes, and can be a vital early warning system about how communities think.

Sixth, avoid celebrity candidates. Politics is hard, and people need time to learn to do it well. None of this is to say that someone like J.K. Rowling could not eventually lead the party, but she would need to learn the ropes first.

Seventh, don’t worry about picking a leader yet. TIG’s bench will get bigger as it attracts more people. The group’s candidate for prime minister when the next election comes could easily be someone who hasn’t joined yet.

Eighth, create a small- and medium-sized donor base. The new party will have no trouble whatsoever getting the initial funding it needs to get going—about 20 million pounds ($26 million). But sustainable independence is bought by large numbers of medium-sized donors.

Ninth, don’t overdo the policy. People don’t tend to vote on policy itself (though they often like it to be there). A statement of principles, plus some long-term policy ideas to get ready for the next election, scheduled for 2022, should be sufficient. Reject all attempts to be defined as Tory or Labour or to be associated with the failed politics that caused Brexit.

Tenth, build up your own in-house campaign expertise. This sector is full of slick and expensive consultants, but you need people committed to the cause.

Eleventh, cultivate outriders: Think tanks can float radical ideas from a safe distance; new media sites can get the message out and attack the new party’s many enemies. Ignore Michelle Obama’s advice “When they go low, we go high” even if you pretend to follow it. As her husband was fond of saying: “Politics ain’t beanbag.”

The new party’s longer-term success will depend on the Tory and Labour parties’ continuing to fall under the sway of extremist members. But they could indeed be forced into a self-reinforcing spiral, as their extremism drives people away to new parties, leaving the extreme left and hard right to wither together.

It is a long shot. But as the example of the German Green Party shows, it’s not just populists who know how to organize. A party by definition composed of mavericks will have to work hard, however, to develop the discipline necessary to break the mold of British politics.
For an opposing argument by Matthew Goodwin, click here.

 

Garvan Walshe is a former national and international security policy advisor to the British Conservative Party and the Executive Director of TRD Policy.

British child raised in Pakistan jail returned to UK without mother

Khadija Shah gave birth to daughter Malaika, now 6, while serving a life sentence for smuggling heroin
Khadija Shah with Malaika in 2012. Photograph: Reprieve

Nazia Parveen,  @NParveenG-Sun 3 Mar 2019

A six-year-old girl who has spent her entire life inside a Pakistani prison after her British mother was convicted of drug trafficking has been released and returned to the UK.

Khadija Shah, 32, gave birth to her daughter Malaika while serving a life sentence inside the notorious Adiala prison in Rawalpindi, in the Punjab province.

Shah, from Birmingham, was caught at Islamabad airport with £3.2m of heroin in May 2012.

This week, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office confirmed that her daughter was returned to the UK three weeks ago.

Malaika’s current location has not been given, but it is believed she is living with family in the West Midlands.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: “Our staff continue to assist a British woman jailed in Pakistan. We supported her family in bringing her daughter to the UK, working with them and the Pakistani authorities.”

Shah narrowly avoided execution after being caught with two suitcases containing 63kg (140lb) of heroin.

During her time in prison, Shah has continually protested her innocence and claims she was asked to take the cases during a stay in an Islamabad guesthouse.

Six months pregnant and accompanied by her two children, aged four and five, Shah was arrested at Benazir Bhutto International airport. Police found 120 wraps of heroin concealed in the folds of garments in the cases. Her two other children were detained with her, but flown back to Britain after four and a half months, and are being cared for by their grandmother.

Foreign Office staff have visited the mother and daughter in prison several times, while charities and authorities have pleaded for the pair’s release. It is understood Shah and her daughter shared a cell with six other mothers.

Shah has previously spoken to the media about her time in the Rawalpindi prison, which houses 400 female inmates.

In 2014, she said: “Malaika likes to play with empty wrappers of food items. I usually try to keep our surroundings clean, too. If Malaika was not here, I would be crazy because things are very hard. She keeps me strong. I am still breastfeeding.”

Shah has been supported by the British legal charity Reprieve and was let out of prison for a day to give birth to Malaika.

Shahzad Akbar, a former Reprieve fellow and Khadija’s lawyer at the time, said in 2014: “Khadija was asked to carry the bags by the person she thought was her boyfriend, a British national, and who brought her to Pakistan, and she has given the authorities his details. The anti-narcotics force seems only interested in picking up the carriers – women and children – and it isn’t going after the big fish.”

Adiala prison is known for its dangerously unhygienic conditions, and saw a serious outbreak of tuberculosis in 2012.

In a 2007 report on overcrowded Punjab prisons, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn said: “Adiala inmates constantly complain of harsh and brutal prison conditions, especially of overcrowding, filth and stinking toilets.

“Most prison barracks smell terrible and lice, bedbugs and fleas abound.”