Gideon Levy :Palestinian Hunger Striker Proves Israel Only Understands Force
How ironic: only as Mohammed Allaan lay dying did he become strong enough to force the state to release him.
haaretz.com
Hunger-striker Mohammed Allaan’s doctors do not know if the brain damage he suffered is irreversible; the damage to the State of Israel and its image is most certainly irreversible. Responsibility for Allaan turning into a vegetable for the rest of his life, and maybe even his death, is on Israel’s security and justice establishment. They bear the blame; they are the ones who played with his life with terrifying cynicism. Allaan’s blood is on the heads of those who sentenced him to a long jail term without trial, no less than it is on the heads of those who delayed criminally in negotiations over his release, even when he was deathly ill.
What exactly happened on Wednesday, when suddenly the state was ready to release him at the end of his second detention in early November (even before the brain damage was known)? Why wasn’t this proposal raised two months ago, at the beginning of his hunger strike? Why could not all this suffering have been avoided, along with the damage to Israel, which was presented as torturing, hunger-strikers Guantanamo-like, just about to force-feed him? Suddenly Allaan is no longer a security risk? Suddenly he can be released in November? Two months ago no, and yesterday yes? What exactly happened?
What happened? What always happens in cases like this: Israel doesn’t miss a single opportunity to prove that the only language it understands is force. Even a determined, weak, lone hunger striker can only dialogue with it by force. That is its only language, its official language. Stupid games of Shin Bet security service agents and those who slavishly do their bidding, the people of the state prosecution all on the back of a young attorney from the village of Einabus, an Islamic Jihad activist, whose parents waited for him six months ago at the Qalqilyah checkpoint after they were told he had been freed, and then told them that he had not – another six months in jail without trial. Oh, thou only democracy.
Two months ago Allaan was a threat to no one; he was in good health, and so he was not released. How ironic: only as he lay dying did he become strong enough to force the state to release him. A month ago that was exactly the way it released Khader Adnan, the baker from Arraba, not before he staged a 54-day hunger strike.
It was not Allaan’s life that worried the state and most of its citizens – as far as they were concerned he could have died a long time ago, and with him all the administrative detainees – but rather the damage to Israel’s image and the danger that his death would spark a conflagration in the territories that kept the decision-makers up at night. The media discourse over Allaan, as he hovered between life and death, between moments of lucidity and eternal dementia: an almost diabolical discourse, without a shred of compassion, the slightest humanity, in the face of a man fighting almost to the death for the freedom to which he is entitled.
On Thursday, Allaan’s fate was still unclear. His attorneys said that had been unable to communicate with him. They might never be able to. His fate may have been sealed. You can be sure, all you lawyers, Shin Bet agents, politicians and even journalists, public opinion in Israel does not take and never has taken an interest in his fate. For Israeli public opinion Allaan is a terrorist, a murderer with blood on his hands as the thugs of Ashkelon screamed – and to hell with the facts. To hell, too, with the moral image of a state who persists in jailing hundreds of people without trial and is prepared to let them out only when they become vegetables.
Allaan’s fate – if he recovers after long suffering, if he needs chronic care forever or if he dies – will haunt Israel for a long time to come. And rightly so.
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Gideon Levy
Haaretz Correspondent
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