Free Palestinian political prisoner Mohammad Khatib!
I’m donating this post for an urgent call of action in solidarity with Mohammad Khatib, and all Palestinian political prisoners, issued for Friday, August 14 at noon at the Indigo Bookstore on the corner of St. Catherine & McGill college in Montreal, Canada. Actions like this should be happening all over.
For more information on Mohammad Khatib’s case, as well as the issues which face his West Bank village of Bil’in, visit www.bilin-village.org. Mo Khatib is a friend of mine and several other friends of mine. He is an individual whose drive, creativity, self-reliance and relentless campaign work — not just to save his own village from settlement expansion and loss of territory to the apartheid barrier, but for all of occupied Palestine — are constanly awe inspiring.
His enginuity for continous direct, disruptive nonviolent action has kept media attention on Bil’in far longer than is usually the norm in areas where land is being co-opted by annexation policies, and has even led to legal rulings in Israel against the military and pro-occupation policies. It is no wonder that he is considered such a threat. He now joins the ranks of political prisoners around the world, kidnapped and detained for exercising their rights under international law.
Israel continues to imprison Palestinian community
activist Mohammad Khatib from Bil’in village
in the West Bank
Mohammad Khatib, along with over twenty other Palestinians from Bil’in, has been arbitrarily arrested during a recent night-time raid carried out by the Israeli army. The agricultural village of Bil’in has gained international attention for its weekly protests against the Israeli apartheid wall. Bil’in has become a symbol for the Palestinian popular resistance to Israel’s ongoing military occupation.
Mohammad Khatib has now joined an estimated 8,000 Palestinian prisoners currently being detained by Israeli authorities. According to a recent report from Amnesty International, many Palestinian prisoners “face medical negligence, routine beatings, position torture and strip searches by Israeli prison authorities.” The Palestinian prisoner population includes over 400 children and over 100 women detainees.
Today, increasing numbers of Palestinian children, including youth from Bil’in village, are being arrested and detained by Israeli forces. According to the Palestinian section of Defense for Children International, “each year, hundreds of Palestinian children are arrested, interrogated, abused and imprisoned by the Israeli military authorities. In some cases, the abuse amounts to torture.”
Israel is targeting Palestinian community activists from Bil’in in an attempt to silence a popular resistance movement that is gaining international attention and inspiring other Palestinian communities in the West Bank to take-up similar popular protest strategies. Throughout the past year, several other Palestinian villages have also initiated weekly protests against Israel’s apartheid wall.
In June 2009, Mohammed Khatib traveled to Canada for the preliminary hearings of a historic lawsuit launched by Bil’in village against two Quebec-based companies, Green Park International and Green Mount International. Both companies are building illegal Israeli-only settlements on Bil’in’s lands.
At present, Mohammed Khatib, a father to two sons and two daughters, remains in Israeli custody despite the fact that no charges have been brought against Khatib.
Monday’s night-time raid is just one in a series of many carried out by Israeli forces in Bil’in since June 2009. These military raids coincided with the commencement of legal proceedings against Green Park International and Green Mount International in Canada.
We calling on Montrealers to participate in a demonstration this Friday to express solidarity with Mohammad Khatib, Bil’in village and the Palestinian movement against Israeli apartheid and occupation.
via Tadamon! » Rally: Free Palestinian political prisoner Mohammad Khatib!.
I have no emotional obligations to the practices of an ancestral religion and even less to the small, militarist, politically aggressive nation-state which asks for my solidarity on racial grounds.
