Ashjan Ajour
Truthout / December 9, 2024
Jarrar’s husband and lawyer describe abuses endured by the political prisoner, who has been in solitary since August.
As I write these lines, Khalida Jarrar’s isolation has been extended for another month until December 17, 2024, Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association reports. Jarrar, a Palestinian activist and elected official, has been held in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison since August 12, 2024, in an extremely small cell, described to Truthout by both her lawyer and her husband as measuring just 2 meters by 1.5 meters with no windows or ventilation. They report that she must stay close to the gap beneath the door to catch any semblance of breath. They say she fears being suffocated alive, and that she is being provided with only minimal water and meager quantities of poor quality food.
Jarrar is a prominent prisoners’ rights activist who has faced repeated arrests by Israeli forces. In an interview with Truthout, her husband, Ghassan Jarrar, described the brutality of Khalida Jarrar’s most recent arrest on December 26, 2023:
They invaded our home in a barbaric manner at 3 am. They used a special silent machine to break the door. We woke up to find ourselves surrounded by around 15 masked soldiers, both men and women with flashlights on their forehead. They began beating us while we were still in bed. The effects of beating are still visible, marked on my body. I was close to dying right there in bed. Then they took her. She has been in detention ever since and after that held in isolation.
Prior to her imprisonment, Khalida Jarrar worked as a researcher at the Muwatin Institute for Democracy and Human Rights at Birzeit University, where she earned a master’s degree in democracy and human rights. Earlier, from 1994 to 2006, she served as a director of Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association. In 2006 she was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council, where she now chairs the prisoners’ commission.
Jarrar’s latest imprisonment in 2023 has been under what the Israeli military terms “administrative detention,” which enables Palestinians to be incarcerated in Israeli military prisons without trial and held indefinitely, with a renewal of detention order approved every six months. She was initially detained at Damon prison in Haifa until she was transferred on August 12 to solitary confinement at Neve Tirza, Israel’s women’s prison in Ramla. Upon her arrival, Jarrar was forbidden to meet with her lawyer and was not informed of the reason for her isolation or the duration of her isolation.
Mahmoud Hassan, Jarrar’s lawyer, described to Truthout the extreme conditions she has faced in solitary confinement:
She has not had contact with the outside world and is subjected to ill treatment from the jailers. The jailers don’t speak with her, they deliver her food as if she doesn’t exist. Books and pens are forbidden, leaving her with nothing but the walls of her cell. There is no TV or radio, so she has no access to news or awareness of what is happening in terms of political or social events. Family visits are not allowed. She is even denied the ability to clean her cell to make herself busy in any way. She sometimes makes conversation with herself to preserve her mental strength, even talking to herself in English to retain her knowledge and analyse and evaluate her thoughts. As you know, a human is a social creature and isolation strips away an essential part of what it means to be human.
Jarrar’s solitary confinement is one part of the conditions of psychological torture that structure her imprisonment. Her efforts to preserve her mental strength through self-conversation reveal her remarkable resistance against these oppressive conditions, which appear designed to dehumanize political prisoners and strip them of their identity and agency. Hassan went on to elaborate on Jarrar’s condition in isolation:
The lights and electricity remain on 24 hours a day, depriving her of the ability to distinguish night from day. Without access to sunlight/daylight, she can’t tell the time, and constant brightness prevents her from sleeping. She repeatedly requested that the lights be dimmed to allow her to rest, but these requests have been denied. This means that she is constantly under surveillance by enabling cameras to monitor her at all times, but also this is a form of torture.
Her food is not only of poor quality but insufficient, leaving her hungry. The water is inadequate for both drinking and hygiene. She can’t bathe regularly because of the scarcity of water. She has no more than two pieces of clothing to change into, lack of a comb for her hair, and is given a minimal amount of toothpaste.
In a statement issued through her lawyers, Jarrar said, “They don’t allow me any space to breathe, even the gap in the door of my cell has been sealed leaving me suffocating from the lack of air and searching for oxygen to stay alive.”
When asked to elaborate, Hassan commented further: “Air in the cell is rotten as there are no windows, no sunlight, and no ventilation. She is denied outdoors time for days.”
Jarrar’s health and well-being have been severely impacted by the conditions of her confinement. The deprivation of necessities and the cruelty of her environment exemplify the systematic abuse Palestinian political prisoners endure daily. Her husband, Ghassan Jarrar, described Khalida’s dire situation in detail to Truthout, explaining that she also contends with various health issues:
Khalida takes five different medications, and now she is prescribed a sixth in this last imprisonment. However, there are times when prison administration didn’t give her medication, which forced her to knock on her cell’s door for hours demanding it. When they finally came, they argue with her, claiming that they have delivered it, which [is] unimaginable. We tried to call on human rights organizations and lawyers to intervene because no one can comprehend the conditions she lives under. They even cut off the water supply to the toilet, claiming there is a problem in the water pipes. The poor Khalida had reached a point where she tries to avoid drinking water just to avoid using the toilet. Her lawyers have documented these conditions in their reports. I am not allowed to visit her at all as they hardly allow the lawyers to visit.
The systematic torture and abuse inflicted on Khalida Jarrar are a form of slow death that appears designed to beak her both physically and psychologically. The escalation of this brutal torture mirrors the intensification of repression during the genocide in Gaza that began in October 2023. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has reported that more than 60 Palestinian prisoners have been killed in Israeli custody since October 7, 2023.
In my recent essay, “Resistance, Captivity, and Colonial Repression: The Struggle of Palestinian Political Prisoners During the Gaza Genocide,” I argued that this current period of genocide marks an unprecedented surge in violence against Palestinians. This is evident in the level of torture inflicted on Palestinian prisoners and the intensified detention campaigns, which have increased administrative detentions to the highest level ever recorded.
According to Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association, the political prisoners exceeded 10,100 at the beginning of October 2024, and the number of administrative detainees was 3,398 at that time.
This is the fifth time that Jarrar has been imprisoned. Her history of imprisonment began in 1989, when she was arrested in her 20s after participating in an International Women’s Day protest. She was arrested again in 2015. A short time after her release, she was rearrested again in 2017, and she was released in February 2019 to be arrested again in October 2019.
After holding her under administrative detention during her 2015 arrest, Israel eventually charged Khalida with incitement as well as with belonging to an “unlawful group,” a reference to her association with a leftist political party, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). She went through a military court trial, in which she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in a plea deal. She was sentenced again by a military court on those same charges in 2021, after she had already been detained for more than a year without any charges. She is currently being held in administrative detention, again, without any charges.
Khalida was elected to the Legislative Council to represent the PFLP, which is among the more than 400 groups Israel has deemed “unlawful.” That number includes all of the main Palestinian political parties — including the Palestinian Authority-controlling Fatah — as well as reputable international human rights organizations. The PFLP has both political and armed wings, but Israeli military prosecutors admitted to having no evidence that Khalida was involved in any kind of armed activity.
Khalida’s imprisonment throughout the years has solicited outrage from international organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, who used her story as part of a case study about the use of Israeli military orders to repress Palestinian civil society in the West Bank.
“It is both laughable and tragic,” said Ghassan Jarrar, “to think that one of her accusations is being a member of the Legislative Council and attending [an] event to honour a released political prisoner.”
Ghassan revealed that Khalida knew she was likely to be targeted for arrest again, which is why she refrained from any political activity or media appearance, dedicating herself to her academic work at Birzeit University. Despite distancing herself from the political world and focusing on her research and teaching, she was arrested once more. Before her arrest, she was deeply involved in a research project conducting interviews and was preparing to teach a master’s course in the Democracy and Human Rights M.A. program at Birzeit.
It is worth noting that during Khalida’s many imprisonments, she experienced the loss of several family members and wasn’t permitted to say goodbye. When I asked her husband about this he shared:
Khalida has been imprisoned four times since 2015. During her first imprisonment, her father passed away, and she was unable to bid him farewell, only visiting his grave after her release to say goodbye. During her second imprisonment, her mother died. In her third imprisonment, we lost our daughter — may she rest in peace — and in this current imprisonment, her nephew, whom we consider a son, passed away. Each imprisonment has brought enormous loss and heartbreak.
The case of Khalida Jarrar embodies the broader struggle of Palestinian political prisoners and reflects a systematic pattern of abuse designed to dehumanize and destroy them. Such inhumane treatment and torture weakens Palestinian society by targeting its national, political and social leaders. Khalida appears to be deemed a threat by Israel because she is a respected public figure and an emblem of resistance, making her a target in Israel’s effort to dismantle Palestinian national identity and leadership.
As an activist, politician, researcher and academic, Jarrar has been steadfastly committed to the Palestinian cause, constantly speaking and writing about Israeli violence and oppressive practices at both national and international levels. In Damon prison, she became a mentor to female prisoners, earning deep respect as a political leader and teacher with a political consciousness.
Her lawyer said her resistance highlights the brutality of her oppressors and the strength of her spirit. “[Khalida] is a strong individual who understands their aims and tries her best to resist the isolation,” Hassan said.
Khalida Jarrar exemplifies the Palestinian sumud (steadfastness) embodied by all Palestinian political prisoners fighting against colonial repression. Her indomitable spirit reflects the courage of Palestinians everywhere who hold onto hope in the face of despair. Justice demands not only her release, but also freedom for all political prisoners.
Ashjan Ajour is a Palestinian scholar currently residing in the United Kingdom and the author of Reclaiming Humanity in Palestinian Hunger Strikes: Revolutionary Subjectivity and Decolonizing the Body (2021)
