Testimony from the front lines

Ten years ago, Jaber Wishah walked free from an Israeli prison, after almost 15 years of incarceration. The day he left prison, he vowed to leave his military past behind him and defend the human rights of ordinary Palestinians.

“I was arrested and sentenced to a life imprisonment for launching and leading military resistance against the Israeli occupying force. I was a terrorist in the eyes of Israel,” he said. “The shift to becoming a human rights defender was not easy.”

In May 1999, Ehud Barak won a majority victory over hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Barak came with the promise to repair the path to peace forged by Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered during his term as Prime Minister.

Wishah and 198 other Palestinian prisoners were all freed under Barak’s renewed Middle-East peace process. After his release, Wishah immediately established a relationship with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), and is now its Deputy Director.

Earlier this year, he watched from his home in the Nuseirat refugee camp, while the Israeli military fired artillery shells armed with phosphorus gas over crowded areas of Gaza.

Operation Cast Lead - Israel’s last offensive on Gaza – resulted in the complete closure of a 25-mile strip of land for more than three weeks. Subsequent human rights reports said the use of phosphorus shells were a pattern of policy.

“All these human rights reports may be of surprise to the outside world, but not for the everyday Palestinian. What is going on in Palestine now is more severe, brutal, oppressive and illegal then ever before.

“I met a group of South African delegates to Gaza recently, and one of the representatives told me that the situation in Gaza is worse than anything he ever witnessed in pre-apartheid South Africa.

“Today in Gaza, you cannot find food for your children, and due to the complete closure of our borders, no humanitarian supplies are getting in,” said Wishah.

“All the houses destroyed in the last offensive remain in ruins and thousands of people are still living in tiny tents.”

The PCHR have lodged more then 1,200 reports of human rights abuses to the Israeli occupying forces, since the beginning of the current Intifada, which was signalled by the start of Operation Cast Lead.

However, none of these complaints have led to the arrest, discipline or prosecution of any individual in the Israeli military or security services, which is “not unforeseen,” according to Wishah.

“One day Israelis will look at Palestinians at eye level and recognise their right to govern themselves and set up their own country. Until that day, it is reasonable to believe that Palestinians will fight against its occupier,” he said.

Wishah was deeply involved in that “fight,” prior to his imprisonment. A visit to his family village in the occupied territories was the pivotal moment in his life, and lead to his “armed resistance”.

“When I was in my early 20s, I went with my brothers and father to visit our old village of Beit Affa, which we were expelled from by Israeli forces in 1948.

“When we reached the place where Beit Affa stood, there was nothing left but a few newly planted trees and the old village well.

“I witnessed the humiliation of my father collapsing to his knees and crying in desperation. That event was only the spark of my radicalisation because, for my whole life, I watched ordinary Palestinians being embarrassed and oppressed.

“The history of suffering in Palestine led to my decision to become active against the occupying force - my father’s tears just stirred my emotions to fight against the oppressor,” said Wishah.

He joined the extremist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1977, and led attacks on Israeli troops. During this time, Wishah was also lecturing Physics at the El Azhar Institutes for Education in Palestine.

In 1985, a botched ambush on an Israeli battalion in Gaza City resulted in his arrest and sentencing to life imprisonment in Nafah prison in the desert of southern Israel.

Routine interrogations during his detention were so severe that he and his other detained colleagues tried to commit suicide. His first four and a half years were spent entirely in solitary confinement.

“The torture in Israeli prisons is so brutal it leads many prisoners to put an end to their lives. Nothing imaginable could ever really demonstrate what extent Israel is prepared to torture a human being.

“In Guantanamo Bay, American interrogators learned torture methods from Israeli interrogation experts, who were actually there giving training – history will uncover this fact,” said Wishah.

The turning point, at which Wishah decided to give up the armed cause and focus on human rights, came during a prisoners hunger strike.

“I was sick and badly needed treatment in the prison hospital,” he recalls. “My hands, in accordance with Israeli security regulations, were handcuffed behind my back, and my legs were shackled.

“The handcuffs were preventing the nurse from treating my condition properly, and I remember her having a heated argument with the doctor, who was refusing to remove the handcuffs.

“The doctor was clearly stating that I was a terrorist and had to remain handcuffed, but the nurse was arguing that above all, I was a human being and she stood up to the doctor on this principle.

“It made such an impression on me that it became the turning point in my life. I decided at that moment to leave the PFLP and focus my attentions on human rights.

“I am now actively helping Palestinian prisoners attain better rights in Israeli jails, and helping to coordinate education programmes for those prisoners, who are without any rights under the eyes of Israel.”