Gaza / PNN – Abdel Nasser Ferwana is equating the path of Nazism to that of the Israelis in regards to the prison system.
Some 11,000 Palestinians are in Israeli detention and are being subjected to what the researcher in Prisoners Affairs the collective experience of the Americans and Nazis. Ferwana was addressing today the construction and management of Israeli prisons where Palestinians and Arabs are undergoing “violations and cruelty.” He talked specifically about Jelboa as a prison run on the secret detention of people afforded no rights, the way of Guantanamo.
Ferwana said Saturday that the Israeli prisons of Al Naqab (Negev), Ofar and Meggido are similar to Nazi concentration camps. He noted the “criminal mentality” being used in dealing with prisoners and “countless violations committed without borders.”
He was marking the anniversaries of the deaths of the imprisoned, including a 19 year old from the Al Shawa family and 30 year old Bassam Asamodi. They were shot by heavily armed Israeli soldiers deployed in observation towers over the tents that serve as the cells of prisoners in the desert detention camp of Al Naqab’s Ansar 3.
Ferwana noted that the Israelis began using Al Naqab’s Ansar 3 as a detention camp, in the way of the Nazis, during the first Intifada. He noted 17 March 1988 as the time that it was made to accommodate “huge numbers of citizens who were rounded up and detained by the occupying forces during the first Intifada. The notorious prison camp was closed after the Oslo agreement and the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority
It reopened during the Al Aqsa Intifada on the first of April 2002 for the same goal, Ferwana said today, “which is to absorb the large numbers of citizens who have been arrested since the start of the Al Aqsa intifada on 28 September 2000.”
Ferwana added that the prison is located in a “closed military zone” and a dangerous area adjacent to the Egyptian border south of Palestine in the Naqab (Negev) Desert. It was primarily a camp for the Israeli army and was under the administration of the army and then moved up to direct military control for the administration of prisons in March 2006, without any change in the nature and circumstances in which and the method of treatment.
Ferwana equated Naqab with Auschwitz today and described a camp over a large area divided into several sections. In each section are a number of tents, barbed wire and shrouded by a high fence. In between each section soldiers roam between, heavily armed, and often train their firearms on the prisoners.
The prisoners issue expert continued to describe tear gas, beatings with batons, rubber-coated steel bullets and live ammunition from automatic weapons. It was during an uprising of stone and shoe throwing on the sixteenth of August 1988, that Al Shawa from Gaza City’s Al Shejaiyeh neighborhood and Asamoudi of Jenin’s Yamoun Village, were shot and killed.
In Al Naqab’s Ansar 3 the policy of medical neglect has led to more deaths, reports Ferwana. He noted a Gaza City man died 10-8-1989 as a result of medical neglect and Hussam Qur’an from Qalqilia who died 28-8-1990 as a result of torture. Ahmed Al Barakat was from Nablus’ Al Ein Refugee Camp. He died on 5-5-1992 as a result of torture.
Ayman Ibrahim Barhoum was from Rafah and died 27-1-1993 after being beaten by guards. Adel Abdul-Aziz Jawad was from Deir Al Belah in the central Gaza Strip and died on 28-7-2005 as a result of medical negligence. Jamal Hassan Abdullah Aserahin was from Beit Ula in northern Hebron and died 16-1-2007 due to medical negligence. Muhammad Safi Saida Ashqar was from Tulkarem. He died on 22-10-2007 after being shot directly in the head by guards.
Seven prisoners inside Israeli prisons and detention camps were killed by gunshot wounds, Ferwana added.
He said that the deaths of Al Shawa and Asamodi are being marked now, but more are expected as the excessive use of force and violent episodes are on the rise in the prisons and detention camps.
