Prison Diaries: From the Knesset to the Occupation Jails

28 March, 2023
Authors

As part of the Memory Palestine series, the ACRPS has published Prison Diaries: From the Knesset to the Occupation Jails by Basel Ghattas (319 pp.). Ghattas presents his diaries from several Israeli prisons in which he was held during a 23-month sentence, following his being charged and arrested in a case of smuggling cell phones to Palestinian convicts, discussing in detail the lives of Palestinian prisoners and the various aspects of their political and humanitarian issues from his perspective behind bars.

Ghattas’s diaries are testimony to Israel’s systematic policy for inmate treatment in its prisons whereby their basic human rights, such as seeing a doctor, visiting relatives, and even normal procedural matters like transportation to court or another prison, are made arduous. In his introduction, Marwan Barghouti affirms the distinct contribution of these diaries in documenting the pain and suffering of prisoners: the price they pay for the freedom of their people and their country. Long-time prisoner Walid Daqqa provides a foreword in which he writes that he read a draft of the work that Ghattas wrote while at Gilboa Prison, where the two were cellmates before being transferred to Nafcha then Ramon prisons.

Ghattas notes that the idea of supplying prisoners with cell phones first occurred to him in early 2016 while visiting the mothers of Karim Younis and Walid Daqqa, both sentenced to life in prison. He recalls that while visiting Marwan Barghouti, the two discussed the issue of allowing Palestinian political prisoners to make phone calls to their families like the rest of the inmates. This issue remained on his mind during several prisoner visits he conducted as a member of Knesset. When he managed to conduct a series of experiments and tests across successive visits in 2016 without anyone finding out, he was convinced he could bring in the phones without trouble, making use of his parliamentary immunity. But when he was caught, his immunity was revoked and he was interrogated, then imprisoned at Gilboa on 2 July 2017. He began writing his diaries the moment he arrived, with excerpts to follow:

Gilboa Prison – Thursday, 6 July 2017

Our real lives in the wing take place in the inside square, known as the fawra. We go there at 7 o’clock and return to our cells any time we want, save for two short periods from 10 to 11 o’clock in the morning and from 3 to 4 o’clock in the afternoon [… when] the count is conducted and the cells searched, which we call “window-knocking” [daqq al-shabābīk].

[…] The fawra has a shāwīsh, one of the prisoners [… who] is responsible for all aspects of the fawra. I asked him in all seriousness what would happen if all 140 inmates came out to the field at once. With the same sincerity, he told me that the alarm would sound and a state of emergency would be declared. I gathered that prison regulations prohibit more than 60 inmates from being in the field at the same time, and that this usually happens automatically, without the need for any measures.

The prison’s university city: academic study – Thursday, 27 July 2017

I’ve continued meeting with leaders of all the Palestinian factions about the need to hold an educational training course for the wing’s youth […] we agreed to form a special committee including all factions for planning and implementation.

While speaking to a young man, continuing my survey of the education level of juveniles, I asked:

“Do you know Galilee?”
“No.”
“Do you know the Negev?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know what the Negev is but not what Galilee is?”
“Negev, that’s Negev Prison.”

How awful! What kind of tragedy is this?! These young men, losing years of their lives due to their intrinsic association with anti-colonialism by protesting, throwing rocks and Molotovs, clashing with the police – most of them are truants, they only know the geography of the homeland they’re sacrificing themselves for through prisons.

“You’re free!” – Last day in prison

My last day, 26 May 2019, was normal, with feelings and sensations imbued with thoughts of those whom tomorrow I would leave behind in prison, and of the fate of the young men filling its wings still awaiting trial; would I see any of them ever again? […]

Everything was done in less than a minute. It turned out the vehicle was a bus: a small one with normal seats, not metal, but without windows. One of the wardens sat next to me, also Arab. I first expected them to take me to the prison’s main gate or a side gate, where I would be released. But after five minutes of driving, I deduced that it was someplace further […]

The bus stopped and an officer from Abu Snan, the one in charge of this task, opened the door and said: “You’re free.” […] Smiling widely as I breathed in the air of freedom for the first time in two years, I asked the officer, “Would such a large, intimidating apparatus such as the Department of Prisons plan and carry out an entire operation like this, just to stop me from seeing and embracing my family at the prison gate, with the media?” Then I took my first steps on the road to freedom.

Read Also

 

Events