Tag Archives for Grassroots campaigns

Lawyer says Mahmoud Sarsak will be freed July 10th and has finished his hunger strike

Even if the news are still very unclear, it seems that Mahmoud Sarsak could have put an end to his hunger strike and agreed to be freed on July the 10th.

To know more, read the article published in The Electronic Intifada below.

Ismael Mohamad / United Press International

Israel to free footballer Mahmoud Sarsak after epic 3-month hunger strike, lawyer says

Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Mon, 06/18/2012 – 18:11

Mahmoud Sarsak, the Palestinian national footballer player who gathered worldwide attention with a three-month hunger strike that brought him to the brink of death, is to be freed by Israel on 10 July, the Associated Press quoted his lawyer as saying today:

RAMALLAH, West Bank—A lawyer for an imprisoned Palestinian soccer player who has been on a hunger strike for more than three months says his client has agreed to resume eating and will be released July 10 in a deal with Israel.

The attorney, Mohammed Jabareen, spoke Monday after the deal was struck at an Israeli prison clinic. Israeli prison officials could not be reached for comment.

The soccer player, Mahmoud Sarsak, has been held by Israel for nearly three years without charges or trial. Israel claims he was active in the violent group Islamic Jihad. Sarsak denies the allegations.

Last Sarsak, who was critically ill and near death, had agreed to take milk for a few days to allow time for Israel to reconsider his demands.

Reasons for caution

If the reported deal is implemented, it would mark a major victory for Sarsak, who despite never being charged with any crime, has been maligned in the media as a “terrorist” by Israeli officials.

There are reasons for caution, however. Even if a deal has been struck, Israel has been reneging on an agreement ended a month-long mass Palestinian hunger strike in May.

Over 1 month has passed since mass hunger strike ended & family visits to Gaza prisoners have not resumed, in contravention to agreement.

Moreover, there is no word on Akram Rikhawi who is on his 68th day of hunger strike, and who was already in poor health.

Global Solidarity

In recent weeks, Sarsak, 25, gathered worldwide attention and support, including from top athletes Fréderic Kanouté and two dozen other athletic stars, football legend Eric Cantona and FIFA President Sepp Blatter, and FIFPro, the international association of professional football players.

Cantona, and other prominent international figures, even called on UEFA to reconsider its decision to allow Israel to host the 2013 Under 21 tournament.

Grassroots support continues

While the high-level support undoubtedly helped raise the pressure on Israel, grassroots actions have helped keep Sarsak’s struggle in the public eye, despite a dearth of international media attention.

Among the latest solidarity actions, fans in Edinburgh cheered loudly for Sarsak at a Scotland-Israel Euro 2013 women’s football qualifier. As Scotland thrashed Israel 8-0, the fans waved Palestinian flags and banners and shouted “Free Mahmoud Sarsak” and “Free Palestine,” video shows.

Other solidarity actions have taken place in Casablanca and in the French city of Bordeaux where solidarity protestors demonstrated and played football inside a Carrefour supermarket that sells Israeli goods.

Palestine solidarity activists protest inside a Carrefour supermarket in Bordeaux, calling for Israel to free Mahmoud Sarsak.

(CAPJPO-EuroPalestine)

Israeli military refuser joins hunger strike

Israeli refuser Yaaniv Mazor in solitary confinement on 7th day of hunger strike in solidarity with Pal prisoners

Meanwhile, an Israeli army reservist in jail for refusing to serve in the army, has launched his own hunger strike in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners, Haaretz reported:

An Israel Defense Forces reserves soldier, who has refused to partake in army duty to protest Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, has gone on hunger strike in military prison, in what he said was a show of solidarity with Palestinian administrative detainees.

Yaniv Mazor, a 31-year-old Jerusalem resident, was sentenced last week to 20 days in jail over his refusal to fill any position, be it combat or otherwise, in what he said was the occupying army. He was transferred to the IDF’s Tzrifin prison on Monday, launching his hunger strike the following day.

In a phone conversation with his attorney Michael Sfard on Friday, Mazor said that he had “become appalled over the last few months by the hunger strike initiated by Palestinian administrative prisoners, but I couldn’t do much about it.”

“I decided to start a hunger strike in solidarity [with the Palestinians], and in order to raise awareness on the issue of administrative detention, and not to prompt my own release,” Mazor added.

The Palestinian Authority and BDS

The “Palestinian Call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)” released 9 July 2005 “call[s] upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era”. Since 2005, hundreds of Palestinian and international organizations have endorsed the appeal.

The BDS call states that “nonviolent punitive measures should be maintained” until Israel meets all its obligations to Palestinian rights and international law, specifically: ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab land and dismantling the apartheid wall; recognizing the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.”

 

Reports published Monday 4 June said

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Sunday called on the international community to follow South Africa’s example and boycott products of Israeli settlements. Fayyad praised South Africa’s recent determination to outlaw the labeling of settler products as “Made in Israel.”

The South African Ministry of Trade and Industry last month published a notice in the Government Gazette requiring traders “not to incorrectly label products that originate from the Occupied Palestinian Territory as products of Israel.”

Fayyad met in Ramallah with the head of the South Africa Representative Office and thanked him for the decision. The PA prime minister expressed hope that such boycotts would be endorsed by the entire international community.

But the PA is not the greatest fan ever of the BDS movement. Ali Abunimah, in his article  The PA’s disingenuous boycott campaign written in 2010 at The Electronic Intifada, noted the following:

Despite the rhetoric of defiance and resistance, and exaggerated screams of anguish from Israeli settler groups, the PA effort actually appears designed to co-opt, undermine and abort the much broader Palestinian civil society campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), and to reassure Israel of the continued docility and collaboration of its puppet regime in Ramallah.

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BDS represents the broad consensus of Palestinian society, but the PA settlement boycott campaign actually violates and calls on people to defy the BDS call. During a photo opportunity where he affixed a sticker to the door of his house attesting that it was free of settlement goods, Abbas emphasized, “We are not boycotting Israel, because we have agreements and imports from it.”

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But the PA website even acknowledges that Israel itself does not abide by agreements and that “Israel forbids any of our products from reaching its markets. In addition, Israel places many obstacles that face Palestinian products waiting to be exported to foreign countries … Israel is even denying Palestinian rights which were agreed in the Paris agreement.”

The PA’s insistence on abiding by agreements Israel constantly violates is further evidence — if it were needed — of the PA’s terminal subservience. Given this reality, the main purpose of its campaign is actually to undermine both the methods and goals of the growing grassroots BDS movement and to preach to Palestinians that they must and should do business with Israel and allow Israeli goods in their markets and cooperate and normalize with Israel unconditionally.

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The PA is not just attempting to undermine the independent BDS and grassroots campaigns, but to co-opt them precisely because of their growing power, popularity and legitimacy as liberation strategies, in the hope that some of that legitimacy will rub off on the Ramallah regime.

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So while the Ramallah leaders — who have no mandate or authority from the Palestinian people whether under the PA or the Palestine Liberation Organization to negotiate on their behalf — make a show of boycotting settlement goods, their actual agenda is to promote economic normalization, undermine BDS and legitimize the settlements through “negotiations.”

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Palestinians and their allies should remain clearly focused on the simple truth that those who continue to coordinate with the Israeli occupation forces to hunt down Palestinians by night cannot don the mantle of popular resistance by day.