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Ahmad Sa’adat Confronts the Occupation’s Court (18/11/2007)

02 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by freehaifa in Free Ahmad Sa'adat, Prisoners

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Ahmad Sa'adat, Anapolis Conference, Nafha Prison, palestine, prisoners

(In 2007 I was observing Ahmad Sa’adat’s trial in the Ofer Military Court. Below is one report.)

Israeli Occupiers Punish Ahmad Sa’adat

For his declarations against the Anapolis Conference

Transferring him to the Nafha Prison in the Naqab Desert

The secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmad Sa’adat, appeared today, 18/11/2007, in the military court in ‘Ofer, for another hearing in the case against him. It is the first time he was seen in public after his recent deportation to the Nafha Prison, and it was a chance for him to make it clear why he was deported. The Israeli prison authorities punished him for his political position against the planned Anapolis Conference, and sent him to the remote Nafha prison, where physical conditions are harsh and where it will be very hard for his family or lawyers to meet him.

In spite of this suffering, Ahmad Sa’adat didn’t hesitate to size on the opportunity of his appearance at the court to state again his firm position against the Anapolis Conference. As he was brought in, he immediately started in loud voice to call on the Palestinian People not to give any faith in this “autumn conference”, and beware the goals behind it: To market the American policy, force the Arab regimes to normalize relations with Israel, continue the dealing with the Palestinian problem from the point of view of “Israeli security first”, perpetuation of the internal Palestinian divisions and give political cover to the belligerent Israeli policy of siege and expropriation against the Palestinian people.

He continued to call on Abu Mazen (the Palestinian President) not to take a one-sided decision to participate in the conference, as any decision should be taken by the whole Palestinian people, and as national unity was the only way to defend the suffering Palestinian people. These last sentences were hardly heard, as the security guards in the military court hurried to stand in front of him and throw the television crew of Aljazeera out of the court room.

The court’s hearing itself was very short. Only one witness was brought, and he refused to answer most of the prosecutor’s questions. He only said he was sentenced for membership of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and, yes, he knew Ahmad Sa’adat as the secretary general of the front. His only connection to Ahmad Sa’adat was that he visited him several times while Sa’adat was held by the Palestinian Authority in the Jericho Prison. Ahmad Sa’adat and his lawyer, Mahmud Hassan from el-Damir, continue to boycott the courts procedures, so there was no cross examination. The Military Judges frowned at the young officer that appeared for the prosecution for wasting their time. They called on the prosecution to reconsider its policy of bringing witnesses which adds nothing to the case.

Other witnesses were also invited to give evidence today, but as they were all since freed from the Israeli prisons, they didn’t care to come and it didn’t seem that the prosecution had any way to bring them.

The next court hearing was set to next Sunday, 25/11/2007.

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Ahmad Sa’adat Confronts the Occupation’s Court (30/5/2007)

02 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by freehaifa in Free Ahmad Sa'adat, Prisoners

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Ahmad Sa'adat, Apartheid Wall, Maluh, Military Court, palestine, PFLP, prisoners

(In 2007 I was observing Ahmad Sa’adat’s trial in the Ofer Military Court. Below is one report.)

Defiant Maluh Refuses to Testify

Against PFLP Secretary General Sa’adat

Ramallah, May 30, 2007

The Israeli occupation’s military court continues its hearing in the case against the Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Ahmad Sa’adat. Usually the hearings, held in the fortified Ofer military base near Ramallah, are very one-sided: Sa’adat refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the court, and forbids his lawyers from playing by the court’s rules. The lawyers ask the court to be reprieved from their impossible role, and are prevented by the court from resigning, but avoid any active defense. As a result, the sole manager of the court is the military prosecutor, a young and arrogant religious Jewish soldier-lawyer, and the 3 uniformed military judges follow his script to fill the trials files with “evidence”…

But this morning’s hearing was some exception. The prosecutor chose to bring as his next “witness” ‘Abed elRahim Maluh, the PFLP’s deputy secretary general. The aged Maluh (67), which was arrested in June 2002 and sentenced to 7 years imprisonment, proudly refused to be a witness, and the meeting of the two leaders in the courtroom allowed their common defiant stance to expose the court in all its ridiculous vanity.

Seven television crews were allowed in before the hearing started, but they were repeatedly warned by the Military public relations officer that they are not allowed to ask Mr. Sa’adat any questions, and anybody breaching this order will be promptly expelled. As he was allowed in, between military guards and prison officers, Sa’adat chose the moment, before the cameras, to give a well prepared declaration on the occasion of 40 years to the 1967 occupation and 59 years of the Palestinian Nakba. He called on all Palestinian parties, and particularly Fatah and Hamas, to stick to national unity against the occupation and avoid any internal clashes. He called on the international community to recognize the democratically elected Palestinian government and to defend the Palestinians against continuing Israeli war crimes. Before he went on to call for an end to the occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestine, the TV crews were all expelled out of the courtroom.

Later, when the judges came in, Sa’adat refused to stand up, reinstating his rejection of his supposed role as ‘defendant’. Than the guards brought in Maluh, just half the big man that he used to be before his arrest. Cuffed and in prisoner’s clothes, Maluh started with protesting at being brought without his consent. He declared he is not a witness, and doesn’t regard Ahmad Sa’adat as ‘a defendant’, and will say only what he finds fit. He said he was proud at his role as the deputy secretary general of the popular front for the liberation of Palestine, as he already declared in the military trial in which he was sentenced for this very ‘crime’. He said his main role in the PFLP was as responsible to political relations, and representing the PFLP in the Palestinian Liberation Organization, serving as member of the PLO’s executive committee. When asked who serves as secretary general of the PFLP, he said it was not his business to give such information to the court. At this stage Mr. Sa’adat from his bench intervened to ask the judges to stop this ridiculous show, as they know very well that he is the secretary general. Apparently, the judges changed tactics with Mr. Sa’adat, refusing to ‘recognize’ his declarations. One judge told Mr. Sa’adat that if he will stand in front of them they will write down his words…

An extra surrealistic flavor was added to the whole event by the incredible translator, a young Jewish soldier, which mixed almost every sentence. Apparently he couldn’t catch the difference between the popular front for the liberation of Palestine and the PLO, and had no knowledge of basic terminology like “the executive committee”. So the court was held in two separate worlds, the Arabic world of freedom fighters resisting the occupation, and the Hebrew occupation world where the resistance is posed as criminal activity. Any communication between these two worlds under Israeli Apartheid was based on misinterpretation, just as the Ofer military camp is posed in the middle of the Apartheid walls, separating between “Israeli” and “Palestinian” spaces.

As the court was dispersed until 29/7, Maluh and Sa’adat were dragged back to the Hadarim prison, and we went out from the Apartheid court to the Apartheid world. Most Palestinian families are not allowed to go out of the “Israeli” side of the fence, even though it is well within the 1967 occupied West Bank, within densely populated Arab area, while Israelis are not allowed at the Palestinian side. One old lady was stuck between the fences. She came with a Red Cross bus full of families that came to visit at Ofer prison, about 200 meters inside the blue side of the fence. But as she came to the court to see arrested relatives, she couldn’t cross again to Israeli territory to catch her bus. As we went away the international community was still failing to protect the rights of one old Palestinian lady to go back home.

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Message from Ahmad Sa’adat

03 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by freehaifa in Free Ahmad Sa'adat, Palestine, Prisoners

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Ahmad Sa'adat, palestine, prisoners

Message from the general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

In the ten years anniversary to his and his comrades’ imprisonment

Sent from his insulation in the desert Nafha prison

Dear ones,

I salute you and through you I salute the masses of our people in their steadfast, wherever they are, in the Homeland and in the Diaspora.

I salute the martyrs of our people, from the consecutive stations of our peoples’ struggle, which paid with their blood and their lives to defend the land, the people and the national cause…

I salute the prisoners of freedom, men and women, in the Zionist prisons and detention centers, and everywhere around the globe where people struggle for freedom, confronting injustice, oppression and tyranny…

I salute all of them and we promise them together that we will stay on the path of struggle until the achievement of the goals for which they sacrified or fell as martyrs or were imprisoned…

Dear ones,

Unfortunately we gather today to commemorate an occasion that is directly connected to the policy of detention and the security coordination and the submission to the Israeli and American dictates. This policy constitutes breaching of all the principles and ethics of patriotic struggle and damage the legitimacy of the resistance. Tens of militants paid the price of this policy with their freedom, spending long years in the occupation’s prisons without end in sight.

Our meeting here is a call, or rather a cry, to stop political detention on charges of political affiliation or resistance to the occupation. This call is especially relevant as this policy continues and expands its scope on the background of the divisions and it takes new dimensions under a variety of names. It is a call to stop all violations of the freedom and rights of the Palestinian citizens and of democracy in all its expressions. It is a call to put an end to the division, to translate to reality all the agreements and understandings for reaching reconciliation and to break the cycle of fragmentation and the undemocratic conflict. Conciliation will open the door and lay the base for reconstruction and reordering of the internal Palestinian house. It will be based on patriotic and democratic principles, using the tools of direct elections based on full proportional representation to all institutions. Particularly to the Palestine Liberation Organizations as framework for the unity of our people and our patriotic struggle – so that it will express all shades and political and social expressions of our people.

Conciliation will produce reconstruction and redesign of the patriotic political program for managing the conflict between our people and the occupation. This program will resume the priority and the consideration of our main and central struggle with the occupation. This program will take us out of the circle of futile negotiations under whatever name they come (exploratory, removal of excuses, etc.). Nobody disputes the fact that these negotiations lack any balanced reference, based on the resolutions of international legitimacy, as nobody can deny that they failed, reached a dead end and even constitute a cover for the crimes of the occupation against the people, the land and the holy places.

Our alternative is a program based on the resistance and the confidence in the ability of our people to achieve victory. It will concentrate in its political and diplomatic struggle on transferring the case to the United Nations and taking its resolutions as reference. It will lay the responsibility on the international community to place the occupation state under the international law, not above it, and force it to implement the resolutions of the international legitimacy, which respond to the national rights of our people, primarily the right of return, self determination and the establishment of the independent state with El-Quds as it capital.

Finally this is a call to support the struggle of the prisoners for the defense of the achievements of their struggle and their just demands and human rights. A call to intensify and concentrate the efforts to internationalize the cause of the prisoners and the resumption of recognition of their political and legal status as prisoners of war according to the international law and the 3rd and 4th Geneva conventions and their protection as part of the protection of our whole people.

In conclusion, I salute you and I assure you, and together with you, that our road is full of challenges, and that our masses are capable, with steadfastness and resistance, to achieve victory. Our ability to utilize the Arab revolutions and regional and international changes is dependant on the achievement of our national unity…

Glory to the martyrs!

Freedom to the Prisoners!

Dignity to our People!

We are definitely the Victors!

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Free Ahmad Sa’adat!

23 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by freehaifa in Arab Revolution, Free Ahmad Sa'adat, Palestine, Prisoners

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ahmad Sa'adat, Arab Revolution, palestine

It should have been a special Saturday in Ramallah. Thanks to Facebook and gmail, I was invited to three different events in Ramallah for Saturday, 21/1/2012. “Palestinians for dignity” were demonstrating in front of the Mukata’ah against the fruitless negotiations that the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is holding with occupiers. Others held a picket line in the central Manarah square against the brutal repression of the Syrian revolution. Yet, what I most wanted to attend was the Muharajan in commemoration of 10 years since the detention of Ahmad Sa’adat and his comrades in the Ramallah cultural palace.

Facebook makes the invitation easy, but it doesn’t help very much with the 8 meter high separation wall and with the line of military checkpoints that separate elQuds from Ramallah. The Israeli authorities care very much for the safety of peace loving Jews, so while it allows right wing extremists and religious fanatics to put their lives daily in danger by building provocative settlements on Palestinian land or in the middle of Palestinian towns, it strictly forbids Jews from going to visit friends in Ramallah. And if we forgot about these stupid laws, we received a fresh harsh reminder from the police officer on a provisory checkpoint just before the Kalandia checkpoint – which saved us even the bother of waiting in the long line for the main checkpoint. He signed our names and warned the Arab comrade that was driving the car that if the Jews that are with him will enter Ramallah he will be the first to be arrested. There was no sense of arguing with the officer that we are not Jewish – as Judaism is a religion and we are not following it in any way – they don’t believe in the right of self determination to other people, so they will surely not give up control of those they regard to be their own.

All this is not important, and it is not important also if we made it to Ramallah in some other way or were lost in the labyrinth of walls and checkpoints. What is important, and what I wanted to tell you about, is the Muharajan itself…

The cultural palace is pretty big, and it was almost full with more than 500 people that came to the event, more than in similar commemorations in the last years. Even more significant, the vast majority of the participants were young, and the mood was the rebellious enthusiasm of the new Arab revolution. Many of the participants took part in the other demonstrations that were held before. It was not a coincidence that the muharajan reached its climax when the “Dar Qandil” musical group performed, to the audience insistence, their popular song “liars” with direct and franc criticism of all the opportunistic leaderships that commercialized the Palestinian struggle for their self interests. The song promises “tomorrow the people will know you”, and the Shabab were standing, singing with the group and clapping their hands.

To hear the song in Arabic, you can follow the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMlGAI_oJ4s&feature=related

At this period of the Arab revolution, the situation in Palestine is different from any other Arab country by some essential aspects. First, of course, there is the Zionist occupation. The logic of mass, mostly peaceful, movement against a regime that holds all the means of oppression that the a modern state holds, is that there is a limit to the amount of violence and bloodshed that the regime can inflict on its people before the army itself dissociate itself from the regime or breaks along the same lines that split the rest of the society. This is not true for colonial armies and specifically not true for the Israeli army, which can inflict any amount of violence against the Arab population without major cracks in its internal coherence.

But there are important differences also in the internal dynamics of Palestinian politics. In the rest of the Arab world the majority of the people were totally alienated by totalitarian regimes. Social changes and popular demands found no expression for decades. The pressure accumulated beyond the dams of oppression until it was too high and went down like a flood in the revolutionary eruption. In Palestine all the powers of the people were mobilized for the struggle against the occupation. The level of political awareness and involvement of ordinary people is unequaled in most normal countries. There is no Vacuum to be filled.

All this explains why Palestine is not ripe for revolution like some other countries in the region. But it doesn’t explain the relative immobility and sometimes disintegration of many local political forces while the Arab Spring is changing the regional relationship of forces against Zionism. The revolution topples regimes that were serving imperialism and the status quo, of which Palestinians were the utmost victims. For the first time the Arab masses are a major player on the regional political scene. They are the Genie that comes out of the bottle, and they can drive the liberation of Palestine.

Here the answer may go deeper, to the price that Palestinians paid for being the symbol of the revolution in a totally reactionary period. In order to continue the struggle against their main tormentor, and to preserve themselves, some tools of the Palestinian revolution gave up the “extremism” of trying to topple the Arab reactionary regimes and became part of the regional order.

Now, when times have changed, there is a hard choice to do, between the methods that let them continue to exist through the hard times, and between the reasons that made this revolution start, and which are the only justification of its continued existence.

The Palestinian left is not free of these constrains, which influence other organs of the revolution. It is nowhere like the Fatah leadership, which maintains security coordination with the occupation and which, as the main party of government, is the vehicle of much self-interest, much like other Arab regimes. But cooperation with the Fatah leadership in the PA and the PLO, as well as institutionalization in the civil society, limits it freedom to pose an alternative as times are changing.

The story of Ahmad Sa’adat is a symbol of another narrative for the Palestinian left. Being a prisoner, sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role as secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, he is a live reminder to the fact the revolutionary leadership under the occupation is concentrated around the struggle for liberty and not about building institutions. Commemorating 10 years to his detention is a live reminder that he and his comrades were arrested by the security apparatus of the PA. It is an evidence how the security cooperation with the occupation is undermining the Palestinian struggle. Remembering the Israeli attack on the Jericho prison, in March 2006, where Ahmad Sa’adat and his comrades were held under international agreement with British guards, is another proof to the futility of imperialist “mediation” and “guarantees” to the Palestinian rights.

In commemorating the detention of Ahmad Sa’adat, the truly revolutionary spirit of the Palestinian left reunited with the new revolutionary spirit that comes from Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. It is the old dream and the new hope: Freedom for the Palestinian people.

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