Throughout her hunger strike, that of exactly 47 days, Hana Shalabi never
slept consistently for a number of hours. In the first few days of her strike,
she would doze off only to wake up with the sudden fear that someone was
trying to hurt her.
But after the first week of the hunger strike, having nothing but a few sips
of water a day, her body simply ceased to function in any normal way. So,
instead of sleeping, she would fall into a state of delirium, overtaken by
frenzied hallucination where memories and persisting future fears coalesced
into a sonata of night terror.
I interviewed Hana recently, through a series of discussions that extended for
hours, trying to understand what compelled her to risk her life to obtain
conditional freedom in Gaza, and to present her story as a showcase for the
phenomena of hunger strikes as a form of political struggle inside Israeli
prisons. Currently over 7,000 Palestinian prisoners are held in Israeli
prisons, over 500 of them without trial.
Hana was born on the 7th of February, 1982, the same year that Palestinian
factions were driven out from Lebanon and the refugees of the Sabra and
Shatila Camps were slaughtered en-masse. When her father, Yahya, and her
mother, Badia, were finished with having children, the final tally was ten. Of
the six females, Hana was somewhere in the middle, after Najah, Salam and Huda,
and before Wafa and Zahira. Samir was the youngest of the brothers, and only
two years older than Hana.
Hana's family originally came from Haifa. They were exiled from that beautiful
port city, along with hundreds of thousands who today constitute the bulk of
Palestinian refugees. After a relatively brief but arduous journey, they
settled in the village of Burqin, not from away from Safad in the north, and
adjacent to the town and refugee camp of Jenin.
Burqin, tucked gently near the Marj Ibn Amer Valley, offered the Shalabis a
temporary respite from an otherwise harsh existence. But that relief was
rudely interrupted when Hana was still a child. She was eight years old,
chewing on a hearty sandwich of Za'tar and eggs when a boy named Mohammed,
from the neighbourhood, dashed towards her as fast as he could.
He fell on his knees and whispered to her for the last time, ''Please help me.''
She stood motionless. When he finally collapsed, a large hole in the back of
his head revealed itself. He had been shot by the Israeli army moments
earlier. That took place during the first uprising, and the boy was one of
many who were killed in Burgin. Hana joined the rebellion by collecting rocks
for the boys who confronted soldiers as they raided the village almost daily.
Hana, now 33, speaks of these memories with the same purity of a child who was
swept with the euphoria of a revolution, which she barely comprehended in any
articulate sense. She was angry at the death of Mohammed, and that was that.
She grew up angry, a rage that was reflected in many people all around her.
Her brother, Omar, had joined the Black Panthers, whose members were all sons
of peasants and cheap Arab labourers in Israel. They met in caves deep in the
mountains and used to hide there for days before descending upon the villages,
masked and armed, to declare strikes and to mobilize the people to rebel. But
when Omar was injured during a nightly skirmish with the soldiers, the secret
became known to everyone, including her livid father, Yahya, who realized that
his constant attempts to keep his kids out of trouble had failed horribly.
The story of Omar was repeated, time and again, among her other siblings, who
were almost all involved in the Resistance in various capacities. Huda, the
older sister, was jailed for allegedly attempting to stab a solider, soon
after her fiancé was ambushed and killed by the Israeli army. His name was
Mohammed al-Sadi. He was killed while on his way to officially propose. Huda
learned of his murder on the radio.
Samir was the youngest of the boys. Soldiers, who raided the Shalabi family
home often, terrified him. He hid under the bed as they destroyed everything
in the house, tore his school books and urinated in their olive oil
containers. At 13, he left school and, a few years later, he brandished a gun
and joined the Resistance, living mostly in the mountains. When the Israeli
army killed him, he was one of 17 others marked for death, all fighters with
various factions. He was killed, along with a comrade of his, near the valley
where Samir spent many of his days playing as a boy and helping his father
care for their land.
Samir was an avid horseman, and Hana grew up to love horses, as well. However,
she resisted her father's incessant attempt at persuading her to become a
veterinarian. She wanted to study law in Tunisia, a dream that is yet to be
fulfilled.
Samir was her best friends. They shared secrets, and just before he marched
off to his last battle, he had asked her to make sure that his coffin was
covered with flowers, especially red Hanoun, that grew wild all around Burgin.
She kept her promise.
Later, the Israelis arrested her. They kept her in an underground dungeon and
subjected her to months of relentless physical and psychological torture. When
this, too, failed, they sentenced her to six months of administrative
detention that was renewed several times. After spending years in captivity,
she was freed on 18th of October, 2011 from HaSharon Prison. Her release, and
that of hundreds of others, was the outcome of an agreement between Hamas and
Israel, after which an Israeli soldier, who was captured by the Resistance
years ago, was also set free.
The celebration lasted for months; when it subsided, she was arrested again
and thrown in jail. Her latest experience was even more humiliating, details
of which are divulged reservedly by Hana. On the day of her second arrest, on
the 16th of February 2012, her jailors were particularly brutal, but she was
also exceptionally determined. Israeli newspaper, ‘Yediot Ahronot' claimed
that Hana was plotting to kidnap a solider, but Hana had no patience to engage
her interrogators in a discussion. Instead, she went on a hunger strike that
lasted for 47 days. Her main demand was her freedom.
In the latter stage of her strike, when death was looming, she opened her eyes
in an Israeli hospital where her arms and legs were chained to the bed. She
was in Haifa, a discovery that brought a smile on her lips. ''This is the land
from which my family came,'' she said softly as her smile grew wider. Her
declaration was communicated to the guards and, in turn, to the prison
authority, which immediately ordered her removal to outside Haifa. Hana had
never visited Haifa and, for a fleeing moment, had settled with the joyful
idea of dying there.
Following a deal signed under suspicious conditions, she ended her hunger
strike in exchange for her freedom, but only to be deported to the Gaza Strip.
The agreement stated that Hana was to be repatriated to the West Bank three
years later, but she never did.
Hana insists on embracing life, even within the confines of war-torn and
besieged Gaza. ''If I don't, the Israelis win. I cannot give them that
satisfaction,'' she told me. ''Resistance is insisting on living and thriving,
despite the pain.''
She still dreams of having the opportunity to travel and explore life beyond
the familiar horizon of life under siege.
(This article is based on a chapter entitled: Death Note, in my
forthcoming book on people's history of Palestine.)
– Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20
years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an
author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books
include ‘Searching Jenin', ‘The Second Palestinian Intifada' and his latest
‘My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story'. His website is:
www.ramzybaroud.net.
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