Sections of highway 60 around Beit Ommar were closed so that around five hundred settlers could cycle to Jerusalem for the march. Highway 60 connects Beit Ommar with the rest of the West Bank. Amidst an extremely heavy presence of soldiers and police the main entrance to Beit Ommar was also temporarily closed, almost completely halting Palestinian life as a result.

Many of the settlers shouted ostentatiously at Palestinian bystanders (many of whom were waiting for the roads and checkpoints to reopen in order to carry on with their respective journeys). A jeep playing loud celebratory music also accompanied the settlers.

As the procession neared the settlement of Gush Etzion (a few kilometres north of Beit Ommar), an 18 year old Palestinian man, Salah Zaghir, was shot by an Israeli soldier on the suspicion that he may have been carrying a knife and planned to attack a soldier or settler. He is thought to be in a critical condition.

Near Damascus Gate, East Jerusalem, a peaceful pro-Palestinian counter demonstration was forcibly suppressed by border police and horses. Five Palestinians were arrested.

Jewish youths provocatively danced in front of local Arab residents and cheered when the pro-Palestinian demonstrators were removed by police. Arab residents of East Jerusalem were also not allowed to reach their homes for several hours during the events.

In Beit Ommar today, soldiers began shooting teargas into the town at 9:30am. At 11am, they shot teargas at schoolgirls as they left school. The gas continued to pick up after a demonstration took place at 1pm, and continued to increase in intensity until about 5pm. The teargas was directed towards people’s homes, the Center for Freedom and Justice (where PSP activists were filming the soldiers), and at anyone walking through the streets. The teargas caused several fires near people’s homes, which were fortunately put out before any serious damage was done. One arrest was made: Hamidan Ahmad Abu Maria (age 17) was ambushed by soldiers and arrested while driving a tractor through the street to his farmland, and then was beaten by the soldiers.

The demonstration began with a march from the center of Beit Ommar to Karmei Tsur settlement, which was built on stolen Palestinian land. As soon as the demonstrators arrived near the settlement, about 30 heavily armed Israeli soldiers came to meet them. The soldiers beat the participants with their shields, batons and rifle butts. Many of the peaceful protestors were injured. Ahmad Abu Hashem, 46 years old, was arrested after being beaten and hit in the face by the soldiers. An international activist was injured after being caught in a headlock and dragged by her throat by Israeli soldiers while she was trying to protect Ahmad. Ahmad is the secretary of the Popular Committee in Beit Ommar. Two of his sons, ages 22 and 15, have been arrested in the past month. Arresting him and his family members is part of Israeli forces targeting the Popular Committee in Beit Ommar.

Yousef Abu Maria (age 38), the spokesperson for the Beit Ommar Popular Committee, was also injured, along with two other members of the Popular Committee: Mousa Abu Maria (age 34), who was hit in the forehead with a rifle butt, and Younes Arar (age 40), who was beaten on his legs with a baton. One of Ahmad’s sons, age 14, was severely beaten and kicked by the soldiers while on the ground. The demonstration ended with teargas being shot at demonstrators as they were leaving.

In Hebron, students from the Hebron district came together and marched in the center of town. Close to one thousand people were present with posters and flags, and youth from all the surrounding areas were present in the march.

In Beit Ommar, Israeli soldiers entered the town in the afternoon and occupied several people’s homes, firing teargas and rubber-coated bullets at the children in the street. In the evening, villagers marched in the town supporting Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahla. Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahla are both members of Islamic Jihad, and they are on the 71st day of their hunger strike. Their condition is critical, and the Supreme Court has recently denied their petition. Islamic Jihad has said that if any of the hunger strikers die, they will consider it as a political assassination and the truce between them and Israel will be broken.

Additionally, another 2000 or so prisoners are on their 21st day of hunger strike. The prisoners are protesting the torture and ill treatment they receive in prison, and demanding their legal rights (such as the right to a lawyer during interrogations) and an end to administrative detention. Under administrative detention, under which both Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahla are being held, prisoners are kept without any charges against them and without trial, for a period of up to six months which can be renewed indefinitely. 320 people are now being held under administrative detention.

This week, men, women and children protested in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners, particularly with those on hunger strike. Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh are on the 68th day of their hunger strike, and are in grave condition. They are both held under administrative detention, and demand their right to a fair trial and better conditions. In today’s demonstration, many residents of Beit Ommar came with pictures of their imprisoned family members. Israeli soldiers broke the glass of one of the framed pictures, and threatened to arrest the 30-40 demonstrators who were present, claiming that it was a closed military zone. Palestinians responded that they were simply on their own farmland and ignored the orders to leave, and no arrests were made.

By Jody Rudoren

KHARAS, West Bank — The newest heroes of the Palestinian cause are not burly young men hurling stones or wielding automatic weapons. They are gaunt adults, wrists in chains, starving themselves inside Israeli prisons.

Each day since April 17, scores of Palestinian prisoners have joined a hunger strike that officials say now counts more than 1,500 participants. And on Thursday, the Palestinian Authority’s minister of detainees said that if Israel did not yield to their demands for improved prison conditions, the remaining 3,200 would soon join in.

The two longest-striking prisoners, who have gone without food for 66 days, appeared in wheelchairs before Israel’s Supreme Court on Thursday morning, pleading for their release from what is known here as administrative detention — incarceration without formal charges. One of them, Bilal Diab, 27, fainted during the hearing.

“I am a man who loves life, and I want to live in dignity,” the other man, Thaer Halahleh, 33, testified, according to an advocacy group that had a supporter in the courtroom. “No human can accept being in jail for one hour without any charge or reason.”

As the strike has swelled, the prisoners’ names and faces have been plastered on protest tents in villages throughout the West Bank. With the peace process stalled and internal Palestinian politics adrift, many analysts here see nonviolent resistance as a critical tactic for the Palestinian national movement, and the hunger strike as a potential catalyst to bring an Arab Spring-style uprising to the West Bank.

While the revolutions around the region have helped elevate support for the Palestinian cause, they have also undermined the leadership it has long relied on, and until now the streets here have largely remained quiet.

Prisoners play a crucial emotional and political role in Palestinian culture. Virtually every family has been touched by incarceration, experts say, and there is a visceral sense of allegiance to people viewed as suffering for the broader community’s rights. The prisoners are highly organized, and influential even on the outside.

On Thursday in Ramallah, 300 women marched to Al Manara Square, chanting, “Yes for hunger strike, no to submission” and “Down with the olive branch, long live the rifle.” By late afternoon, hundreds of protesters carrying Palestinian flags had gathered outside Ramle Prison, where many of the strikers are held, near Ben-Gurion International Airport in Israel, and scuffles broke out between the police and demonstrators. Several people were arrested.

“There’s a real transformation in the way the prisoners are working — this time, people are willing to die,” Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said in a recent interview. “Look, the Palestinians may be quiet for a while, but they may erupt. There’s a sinking-in of the idea that nonviolent resistance gets results.”

This week, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, promised to take the prisoners’ case to the United Nations. Khader Habib, the leader of Islamic Jihad, warned that “the martyrdom of Bilal Diab or Thaer Halahleh or any other prisoner will put an end to the calm, and the occupation will be held responsible for the consequences.”

But so far, the solidarity demonstrations have been small. About 30 people gathered on Tuesday at the Beituniya checkpoint outside Ofer Prison, chanting for 15 minutes before dispersing into two hours of clashes with Israeli soldiers and border police officers that left several injured.

“It’s obvious that people don’t care,” said Rizek Fadayel, who stood in the center of Ramallah earlier on Tuesday, holding a Palestinian flag and a framed photograph of his hunger-striking son, Rami, as a May Day band blared by.

“If your hand is in the fire, it’s not like your hand is in the water,” Mr. Fadayel, 65, said to explain the difference between those directly connected to the prisoners and those not. “I want to raise their voices and achieve their goals. If this situation will continue, we’ll be heading to a third intifada.”

Hunger striking by Palestinian prisoners is not a new tactic. According to the Palestine Solidarity Project, the tactic was first used in the Nablus prison in 1968 and has been repeated at least 15 times since, with three men dying over the years. Qadura Fares, the head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, said that in 2004 virtually all of the Palestinians held in Israeli prisons took part in a two-week strike, and that the most ever was 11,000 prisoners, in 1992.

But social media have spread the siren this time, first on Khader Adnan, a member of Islamic Jihad who was released last month from administrative detention after a 66-day fast that left him in grave condition. Attention then shifted to Hana Shalabi, a female prisoner deported to Gaza after a 43-day strike, and is now focused on Mr. Halahleh and Mr. Diab, who also are members of Islamic Jihad, a radical and militant Palestinian faction.

In court on Thursday, after Mr. Diab fainted and Mr. Halahleh testified, the judge took a break to review their secret files, then returned without issuing a ruling, promising one soon, according to people who were in the courtroom.

Mr. Fares of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said the goals of the current strike were to remove some of the restrictions that were imposed on prisoners before the release of a captive Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, including isolation, limits on family visits and denial of access to university classes. Sivan Weizman, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Prison Service, said that a team was working to address the requests and would meet again with the prisoners’ leaders within a few days.

For most of the days since Mr. Halahleh stopped eating, his relatives, neighbors and friends have kept vigil at his home here in a remote part of the Hebron hills from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., many of them also going without food in sympathy.

The men sit on white plastic chairs outside, spilling from a makeshift structure of black burlap and green two-by-fours, topped with Islamic Jihad flags and a banner with Mr. Halahleh’s portrait and a picture of a shackled wrist. Inside the white stone house — where family members say the son was arrested at 1:30 a.m. on June 27, 2010, by soldiers who came with dogs — women crowd on cushions on the floor, their heads covered by hijabs and their bare feet by blankets, praying and talking and pleading with the television in the corner for any speck of news.

“I am sitting with the women, but I am not here — my heart and feeling is with him,” Thaer Halahleh’s mother, Fatmeh, 58, said in an interview Tuesday night. “Sixty-five days. After two hours we feel that we want to eat. What about 65 days? We calculate the seconds.

“I am very afraid, but at the same time I am very proud,” she added. “I wish every Palestinian woman had a Thaer.”

Shireen Halahleh, 29, a physics teacher from Jordan, said that she married Mr. Halahleh in July 2009, and that he soon stopped political activity. He was arrested two weeks before the birth of their 22-month-old daughter, Lamar, who has seen her father only six times and goes to bed each night with his picture.

“He is a strong man; if he took a decision, he will do it,” Ms. Halahleh said.

“He does not represent himself,” she added. “He represents all of the Palestinian people.”

International aid workers and Israeli peace advocates are among those who have made the pilgrimage to the tent in recent days, family members said. On Tuesday night, Mr. Halahleh’s father, Aziz Mahmoud Halahleh, fingered a strand of orange and yellow plastic beads as he shared the details he had learned earlier in Ramallah.

“This is the last weapon,” the elder Mr. Halahleh said of the strike. “If any of the prisoners will lose their life, Israel or the Palestinian Authority could not stop the Palestinian people.”

On Monday, April 30th and Tuesday, May 1st, 2012, around 200 people held a demonstration in support of the Palestinian hunger strikers.

The demonstrators gathered in and around a tent in central Hebron. Many mothers and fathers brought pictures of their sons, and signs on the walls read “stop the war crimes, free the prisoners” and “hunger strikers are heroes”.

Speeches were made in support of the prisoners and their heroic actions, calling for their release, and for Israel to abolish the inhumane practice of administrative detention.

Since the 17th of April, around 2000 prisoners have joined the Karamah hunger strikes, in protest at their inhumane and illegal detention by the Israeli state, and against conditions such as solitary confinement and restrictions on visits from family.

The two longest-hunger-striking prisoners, Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahla, are now over 65 days into their strike. Their conditions have now seriously deteriorated, with both being admitted to hospital.

In total around 50 soldiers appeared during the demonstration, preventing the 20 or so activists from reaching the fence. The soldiers pushed the non-violent activists roughly onto barbed wire and rocky ground, and soldiers kicked activists in their legs while pushing them with their shields. An Isaeli activist, Kobi, was arrested during the demonstration after arguing with a soldier. He was released late last night without restrictions after the judge ruled that he had the right to freedom of speech and protest. Meanwhile, Hossein Alamy, the 14-year-old boy who was arrested from the Beit Ommar demonstration last month, is still in jail and has not been granted access to a lawyer during his interrogations.

Mohamad Ahmad Khalil Abu Hashem, 15 years old.
Tareq Jamal Khalil Abu Maria, 17 years old.
Badran Jalal Badran Abu Ayash, 15 years old.
Wahed Hamdi Abu Maria, 44 years old.

The soldiers broke into their houses at night and harassed the families and fired several canisters of teargas. The ambulance was called because people were injured after inhaling the gas.

19 people have been arrested from Beit Ommar so far this month, and 13 of these are under the age of 18. Night raids are almost a nightly occurrence in Beit Ommar, to create fear in the community and to discourage people from resisting the occupation. Residents of Beit Ommar are frequently arrested with no charges held against them, and usually have to pay fines between 1000 and 4000 shekels in order to be released.

This was of course a frightening event for the whole family. Basel’s little sister was especially upset by the event, and is now scared at night, refusing to go to the toilet alone.

She and her other siblings talk about their big brother every day.

That same night, two other boys were arrested, with another three arrests taking place the following night. None of these boys have received a sentence, but are still imprisoned.

Basil is charged for throwing stones and for participating in demonstrations. But having already met in Ofer court seven times since being arrested, it is obvious Israel has nothing on him. This is a common practice being used by Israel to hurt families and so ultimately crush the popular struggle against the occupation.

Basel was, like most Palestinians, not allowed a lawyer during the first interrogation. In fact, he sees his lawyer only in court.

On May 9th, 2012, he will be back in Ofer court, for the 8th time! No one believes that the prosecutors have new evidence. At the same time, no one believes that this lack of evidence will lead to the release of Basel (as is the case in democracies).

Over 99% of the Palestinians arrested end up being convicted in these military courts.