Abdallah Inshahsi's mother holds a picture of her son in their home in Jabaliya Refugee Camp.
No Family Visitation for Prisoners from Gaza: the Case of Abdallah Inshahsi
Sitting in their large empty cinder block living room in Jabaliya Refugee Camp, Omar Inshahsi and his wife, Umm Abdallah, told PCHR about life with a family member in an Israeli jail. This story is the story of thousands of Palestinian families who have to live without a loved one, but the situation for approximately 700 families in the Gaza Strip is exacerbated by the fact that Israel suspended the ICRC's family visitation programme for prisoners from the Gaza Strip in June 2007.
The Inshahsi family has 12 children, six of them boys and six girls. Abdallah was the oldest son, he is now 35. He was arrested at Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing point on the 3 March 2001 - it was a Saturday, as his father remembers. According to his father, he had been involved with Islamic Jihad and had been arrested by the Palestinian Authority for his involvement in the past. His parents had told him to stop, but he continued his work with the organization in secret. After the arrest, Abdallah's family knew nothing about his whereabouts until October 2001, when Israeli intelligence officers called Omar Inshahsi and told him to get a lawyer for his son.
"The court wanted to sentence Abdallah to 20 years imprisonment, for membership in Islamic Jihad and for planning an attack on Israeli soldiers inside Israel." The family worked with human rights organizations in Gaza that provided Abdallah with free-of-charge legal support. "With the help of a Palestinian lawyer from Yaffa, they were able to lower the sentence to 14 years." Abdallah is scheduled to be released in 2014.
For the first six years of Abdallah's sentence, none of his relatives were allowed to visit him, or even to send him clothes or other items he might need. When the family managed to obtain a permit for visitation, it was only for his mother, who was allowed to visit him every 45 days. "Later, we managed to get a permit for his little sister to visit him along with his mother. After that we got a permit for all family members to visit him, except me, his father," Mr. Inshahsi says. "They say it is for security reasons, they don't tell us why. Until today, I have never visited my son in prison."
Abdallah's mother explains what a typical visitation day looked like: "When we wanted to visit Abdallah, we had to leave the house here at 4 o'clock in the morning, we arrived at Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing at 7 in the morning, then we had to wait at Beit Hanoun (Erez) for two hours. I had to step into a body-scanning device; if the device beeps two times in a row, you are not allowed to enter Israel. We were subject to a thorough search - in a separate room where we had to take off our headscarf, our clothes and our underwear. There were cameras filming all of this. Inside Beit Hanoun (Erez), there is a lot suffering. We were also not allowed to bring any personal items through the checkpoint. If we had money, glasses, or mobile phones, we were forced to leave those things at the crossing."
"When we arrived in the prison, we were not allowed to enter before another search. We had to wait for another two hours. Then, when I saw my son, there was no physical contact -- he was behind a glass barrier and we could only talk through a telephone. The phone often did not work for 30 minutes, which only left 15 minutes for us to talk during the visit. There was an Israeli soldier behind me and one behind him, so it was impossible to talk about the conditions in the prison, or at home. We only said normal things like 'How are you? How are you doing? How are your brothers, your sisters?' I gave him news about the family. If I had food for my son, sometimes they would allow me to bring it inside the prison, and sometimes they would take it from me. Before they allowed food and other items in, they would let dogs smell our bags."
Since June 2007, the ICRC's prisoner visitation programme has been suspended. No one in the family has seen Abdallah since then. They have heard that he has stomach problems and is very weak. His eyesight is deteriorating. "We will try to send him new glasses through the ICRC," his father says. Every Monday, the family sends a letter to the son through the Red Cross, but they only receive letters from him every six months. The letters written to him arrive, but usually late. "We got news that he sent us a letter with photos, but it has not arrived until now." Abdallah's father explained that they also send money every month, usually between 500 and 600 Israeli Shekels, but there have been problems: "Abdallah does not receive the money directly, the prison administration only gives him the money every three or four months. Once, a prisoner who was released visited us here in our home. He asked us why we do not send money to Abdallah and that Abdallah did not receive any money for four months. We went to the post office and saw that the money had been received by the prison administration. We sent the receipts to the prison administration, so they were forced to pay the money to Abdallah. Another time, we sent money for four months, but the soldiers stole the money – they didn't give it back."
Asked how the absence of his son has affected him personally, Omar Inshahsi tells a story of the last time he was in touch with his son: "Once the prisoners had gotten hold of a mobile – I received a phone call and answered it. Someone said 'Hello, hello' but I didn't know who it was. I did not recognize the voice of my own son. It was Abdallah, but it took me five minutes to figure out who it was. When I finally realized it, I was shocked. I threw the phone away, I couldn't talk. For ten days after that, I remained unable to imagine that it had been my son talking to me. That is how estranged he has become."
Source: Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), 17 April 2011
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