OFER PRISON, West Bank — In a sprawling Israeli prison, Palestinian activist Hassan Karajeh sat through a hurried court hearing in a language he didn't understand under the authority of a military occupation he and his people reject. The translator in the cramped courtroom seldom bothered to relay the military judge's words, and the tall, bearded detainee spent most of the time whispering to his family. Outside Ofer Prison's walls and throughout the West Bank, Israeli troops have clashed in recent weeks with Palestinian protesters fed up with Israeli detention policies, an emblem of what they see as Israel's unjust rule over their lives. The violence raised concern in Israel that it could snowball into a third mass Palestinian uprising if either of two detainees on a months-long hunger strike dies, further burying hopes of reviving a long-stalled peace process. Some 4,800 Palestinians are held in Israeli jails and are feted at home as political prisoners or freedom fighters. Israel says the majority are terrorists with blood on their hands, and some have pleaded guilty to killing Israeli civilians en masse. But the arrests have netted 15 members of parliament, a football player, a political cartoonist, hundreds of stone-throwing youths and a handful of what Amnesty International calls human rights defenders and prisoners of conscience. Karajeh, a member of the “Stop the Wall” rights group that campaigns against Israel's vast metal and concrete separation barrier in the West Bank, has yet to be charged. “We're just confused,” said Sundous Mahsiri, his fiancée and a student at a local university. “Their group doesn't even organize protests, only advocacy work. None of this makes any sense to us.” Seized from his house in the dead of night on Jan. 22, Karajeh has spent the last five weeks in solitary confinement, and complains of being denied medicine for an old leg injury. When an apparently healthy, 30-year-old Palestinian died last month after a week in interrogation, massive demonstrations rocked the West Bank. Palestinian leaders said the man was tortured to death. Israel rejects this, saying cracked ribs and bruises found in an autopsy were likely caused by resuscitation efforts. But it said more tests were needed to determine why the father of two died. Samer Al-Issawi and Ayman Sharawneh, the two hunger strikers at the heart of the recent unrest, were sentenced by Israel to decades behind bars after being convicted of attacking Israeli civilians on behalf of armed groups. They were released in a prisoner swap in 2011 only to be re-arrested last year and told to serve out their full sentences for fleeing jurisdiction and engaging in unspecified “terror activities”. In coffins or as free men, they have resolved to extract themselves from the legal maze. The Palestinian Liberation Organization says those who are charged face a “staggering” 99 percent conviction case in the military tribunals. “Israel's military courts, in all the versions of their work, exist to facilitate the policies of its occupation,” said Jawad Boulos, a veteran lawyer for Palestinian detainees. More than the fate of the 108 “pre-Oslo” prisoners, it is Israel's use of “administrative detention” that remains a main lightning rod of popular anger. Scores of suspected militants are in jail under the measure, which was adapted from Britain's colonial laws when it governed Palestine, and relies on secret evidence that is presented in closed military courts. Led by a small group of administrative detainees, a mass Palestinian hunger strike last May was defused by an Egyptian-mediated deal in which prisoners agreed to back off from their protest if Israel curtailed administrative detention. Since then, the number of Palestinians held without charge has fallen from 308 to 178. — Reuters
