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Beyond the Politics of Invisibility: Remembering Not to Forget Palestinian
Hunger Strikers
by <http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/author/richardfalk/> Richard Falk
With a certain amount of fanfare in Israel and Palestine, although
still severely underreported by the world media and relatively ignored by the
leading watchdog human rights
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-governmental_organization> NGOs, it was
observed with contradictory spins that the Palestinian hunger strikes had been
brought to an end by agreement between the strikers and Israel. At least, that
is what most of us believed who were following this narrative from outside the
region, but like so much else in the region our understanding was a half-truth,
if that. Whether Israel abides by its assurances remains to be seen, and
although these strikes were courageous acts of nonviolent resistance it is not
clear at this point whether they will have any longer term effects on the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-occupied_territories> Israel’s
occupation, arrest, and prison policy, or on the wider Palestinian struggle.
Two things are certain, however. First, a much wider awareness that
Israel’s reliance on administrative detention, its abusive arrest procedures,
and its prison system deserves wider scrutiny than in the past, and that this
dimension of the prolonged occupation of Palestine has been responsible for
inflicting great suffering on many Palestinians and their families ever since
1967. Whether such a structure of imprisonment of an occupied people should be
viewed as a hitherto neglected dimension of state terrorism is an open question
that should be further investigated. Secondly, that the hunger strike as a mode
of resistance is now part of the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_people> Palestinian culture of
resistance, and an option that engages Palestinian political consciousness in
manner that did not exist prior to Khader Adnan’s 66 day hunger strike
initiated on December 17, 2011.
There were parallel and overlapping strikes: A sequence of
long-term strikes, first, Adnan, followed by Hana Shalabi, then Thaer Halahleh
and Bilal Diab, and maybe others, focusing on humiliating and abusive arrest
procedures, as well as administration detention as a practice; and then a
second wave of strikes, commencing on April 17, 2012, Palestine Prisoners Day
and ending 30 days later on the eve of the 2012 Nakba observance. This latter
protest involved more than 1600
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_prisoners_in_Israel> Palestinian
prisoners, who were initially inspired by the Adnan and Shalabi strikes, and
focused their challenge on deplorable prison conditions.
Supposedly Israeli prison authorities agreed under the pressure of
these latter strikes to reduce reliance on solitary confinement in its prisons
and to allow more family visits, especially from Gaza. Gaza prisoners had been
denied such visits for years as an unlawful reprisal mandated by the Knesset in
angry reaction to the capture of the Israeli soldier,
<http://enwikipedia.org/wiki/Gilad_Shalit> Gilad Shalit. What was this
pressure? It was not moral suasion. It seemed to be a calculated decision by
Israeli prison authorities that it would be better to make small concessions
than risk angry reactions to the death of any hunger strikers. The debate in
the Israeli press was entirely pragmatic: whether it was worse to have bad
publicity or to show weakness by giving in. Israel only seemed to give in. It
needs to be understood that Israel retains all the prerogatives to rely on
administrative detention in the future and continuing to have unmonitored
exclusive control over prison life.
In the background it should be appreciated that the whole structure
of this Israeli prison system violates the Fourth Geneva Convention that
explicitly forbids the transfer of prisoners from an occupied territory to the
territory of the occupier.
These uncertainties about the results of these past strikes should
certainly be kept in mind. What is presently of more urgent concern is the
failure even to realize that long-term hunger strikes were never ended by at
least two prisoners, Mahmoud Sarsak, without food for 70 days, and Akram
Rikhawi on strike for 40 days. Both are, as could hardly be otherwise, are
currently in danger of dying, and yet hardly anybody seems to know. Sarsak who
is 25 years of age and a resident of the
<http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=31.2886111111,34.2519444444&spn=0.1,01&q=31.2886111111,34.2519444444%20(Rafah)&t=h>
Rafah Refugee Camp in Gaza is hardly a nobody. When arrested in July 2009 he
was a member of the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_national_football_team> Palestine
National Football Team on his way to a match in the West Bank. He was arrested
under the ‘Unlawful Combatants Law,’ which offers a person detained even less
protection than is provided by ‘administrative detention.’ It is aimed at
Palestinians living in Gaza, a part of Palestine that is treated by Israel (but
not the international community) as no longer occupied since Sharon’s
‘disengagement plan’ was implemented in 2005. Iman Sarsak has bemoaned his
brother’s fate, “My family never would have imagined that Mahmoud would have
been imprisoned by Israel. Why, really why?”
There is reason to believe that rather than some conjured up
security concern, Sarsak was arrested as part of a broader effort to demoralize
the Palestinians, especially those long entrapped in Gaza. During the savage
attacks on Gaza at the end of 2008 (‘ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War>
Operation Cast Lead’) the national stadium used for football and the offices of
the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Football_Association> Palestine
Football Association were targeted and destroyed, and three members of the
Palestine team killed. All along, the team has been handicapped by curfews,
checkpoints, and harassments, as well as the blockade of Gaza, that has forced
the team to forfeit many games. The goalkeeper, Omar Abu Rwayyes has said, “if
you degrade the national team you degrade the idea that there could ever be a
nation.” Football, what we Americans call soccer, plays a vital symbolic role
in the self-esteem and national consciousness of peoples throughout the Arab
world, and elsewhere in the South, to a degree unimaginable for even a sports
crazy country like the
<http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=38.8833333333,-77.0166666667&spn=10.0,10.0&q=38.8833333333,-77.0166666667%20(United%20States)&t=h>
United States.
There has been some slight notice taken of the plight of the
Palestinian team in the football world. A few years ago Michel Piatini,
President of FIFA, warned Israel that it was risking its own membership in the
world association if it continued to interfere with the Palestinian efforts to
field the best possible team for international competition. But as with many
international gestures of protest against Israel, there was no follow through,
nullifying the original impulse. In fact, a disturbing reversal of approach
took place. Not long afterwards, Piatini actually presided over a process that
awarded Israel the honor of hosting the 2013 Under-21 European Championships. A
British NGO, ‘Soccer Without Borders’ was not so easily seduced, issuing a
declaration urging a boycott of the event in Israel, declaring that its
organization “stands in solidarity with Mahmoud Sarsak and all Palestinian
political prisoners.”
As is usually the case, the Israeli response in self-justifying and
cynical. A shin bet official insisted that Israel “can’t play by the rules of
bridge if everyone else is playing rugby.” This kind of assertion papers over
the degree to which Israeli society in recent years has enjoyed peace,
prosperity, and security while Palestinians have been enduring the rigors of a
cruel occupation and the severe vulnerabilities of a rightless existence.
Palestinians have also been experiencing the split reality of observing a set
of protective laws applied Israeli settlers (all of whom are part of an
unlawful enterprise) and an unregulated military structure applied arbitrarily
to the indigenous residents of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
With national athletes being such objects of interest it shows how
effective is this ‘politics of invisibility’ that keeps the world from knowing
the harm being done to the Palestinian people and how they are resisting, often
at great risk and self-sacrifice, as epitomized by these long hunger strikes.
One can be certain that if such repressive measures were taken by China or
Myanmar there would be a mighty cascade of interest, coupled with high minded
denunciations from the global bully pulpits of political leaders and an array
of moral authority figures. But when the Palestinians experience abuse or
resist by reliance on brave forms of nonviolence there is a posture of almost
total disregard, and if a few voices are raised, such as that of Archbishop
Tutu it is either ignored because his witness is treated as partisan or
according to Israel’s more zealous defenders, he is discredited by being
alleged to be ‘anti-semite,’ a denunciation whose meaning has been conflated so
as to apply to any critic of Israel. Even such a globally respected figure as
Jimmy Carter could not escape the wrath of Israeli loyalists merely because the
word ‘apartheid’ in the title of a book urging a just peace between the two
peoples.
The politics of invisibility is cruel and harmful. It is cruel
because it does not acknowledge a pattern of injustice because the victims have
been effectively stigmatized. It is harmful because it sends a strong signal
that victimization will only be given some sort of visibility if it shocks the
conscience by its violence against those who seem innocent. Such visibility has
a largely negative and stereotyping impact, allowing the oppressor to escalate
state violence without risking any kind of backlash or even notice, and
validating the perception of the victim population as undeserving, and even as
evil endorsers of an ethos of terrorism. Israeli hasbara has worked hard over
many years to stereotype the Palestinians as ‘terrorists,’ and by doing so to
withdraw any sympathy from their victimization, which is portrayed as somehow
deserved. These hunger strikers, despite all indications to the contrary, are
so described, attributing their supposed association with Islamic Jihad as
synonymous with an embrace of terrorism. A more objective look at the evidence
suggests that Islamic Jihad has itself for several years abandoned tactics of
violence against civilian targets, and is part of a broader shift in
Palestinian tactics of resistance in the direction of nonviolence. Such shifts
are either totally ignored by the politics of invisibility or there is a
refusal to acknowledge the shift so as to keep the negative stereotype before
the public.
It is one more challenge to global civil society to do what
international law is currently incapable of doing: treat equals equally. If the
world media renders visible the plight of Chinese human rights activists who
are abused by the state, might not at least human rights NGOs note this
emergency plight of Palestinian hunger strikers on the edge of death? And if
these NGOs are afraid to do so, should not those with eyes able to see such
torment, start screaming at the top of our lungs?
<http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/author/richardfalk/> Richard Falk | May 28,
2012 at 2:05 am | Tags: <http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/?tag=gaza> Gaza,
<http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/?tag=gilad-shalit> Gilad Shalit,
<http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/?tag=israel> Israel,
<http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/?tag=palestine> Palestine,
<http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/?tag=palestinian-people> Palestinian people,
<http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/?tag=palestinian-prisoners-in-israel>
Palestinian prisoners in Israel,
<http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/?tag=united-states> United States,
<http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/?tag=west-bank> West Bank | Categories:
<http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/?cat=271> Commentary,
<http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/?cat=70091244> Crimes of State,
<http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/?cat=2720> Human Rights,
<http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/?cat=65824> Israel/Palestine | URL:
<http://wp.me/p19Wt7-eR> http://wp.me/p19Wt7-eR
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