The evils of administrative detention
Hastings and District PSC (Palestine Solidarity Campaign) has been an active part of Hastings politics and Hastings community for long enough now that most people have a good idea what the issues are, but last weekend’s stall had a particularly sober tone.
Israel, which many of our own politicians treat as a modern democracy, nevertheless makes extensive use of the old colonial trick of administrative detention, regularly arresting people in Palestinian territories, simply because they can. There are currently around 3 000 Palestinians, some of them women and children, locked up without charge, without trial, just because Israel says so.
This is where it gets personal
One of the recent detainees is Hana Al Bidaq, a woman who helped with the thobe show at Hastings Palestine on the Pier 2022, quite a feat considering she didn’t get a visa in time to attend the event. Katy Colley (PSC Chair) told me how difficult it was, setting up that large, ambitious event with such a variety of activities and contributors.
She remembers Hana as a woman whose “capacity to organise and to make things work despite all the obstacles we faced (and there were many) was incredible.
Due to those visa complications, Hana was helping from afar that time, but she came to Hastings in 2023 and gave a talk about life under Israeli occupation. She spoke about how frightened she was for her sons, describing the terrifying power the IOF have over their lives, and the danger of just crossing a checkpoint as a Palestinian.
Hana is a computer engineer from Ramallah, a mother of four children, and a civil rights campaigner. It’s a well-known fact that regimes find it harder to mistreat and ‘disappear’ prisoners if people elsewhere are conscious of them and care about them – that’s why Hastings PSC were out this weekend publicising what has happened, and sharing Hana’s story.
PSC Twinning Officer Grace Lally told me Hana is not affiliated to Hamas or Fatah, she is a grassroots campaigner against Israeli repression, who concerns herself with issues of human rights, helping people unjustly imprisoned, ecology, and access to the countryside – a particular problem for West Bank dwellers, surrounded as they are by walls, fences and checkpoints – and then of course, there’s the problem of aggressive settlers.
As if all that wasn’t stressful enough, Hana told Grace she’s been aware all along that she might hear the IDF at her door one night. It’s a risk West Bank residents have had to live with for years, and now it has happened to her
When Hana came to Hastings, she stayed with Katy and her family and the two women found they had a lot in common – both vegetarians, both interested in local food production and our relationship to the land. Hastings PSC has been in contact with Hana’s family, trying to get news updates and found out today that Hana’s eldest has now had to postpone going to college. Their mother has been taken away without warning and they don’t know for how long so now, someone has to stay at home to look out for his younger brothers.
Hard to over-state
It’s hard to over-state how much hearts are aching for Hana, and other Palestinians who had become friends of Hastings, and whom we’ve now lost track of. Some, we know have died in Gaza or the West Bank – but what will happen to Hana?
Sometimes, those arrested in the night by the IDF turn up a few weeks later – bruised, terrified but otherwise okay. Other times, they’re released months or years later, half-starved and bearing undeniable marks of torture. Sometimes, they just disappear and are never heard of again.
The left have long campaigned for an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine, believing that the modern world should not tolerate settler-colonialism.
But, since October 7th, because of the endless, horrific videos and reports coming out of Gaza, millions have taken up the campaign and many have, like us, made personal contact with Palestinian campaigners like Hana – not politicians, not terrorists, but citizens of Palestine who’ve been reaching out, seeking help from the world.
It is our job now to encourage everyone to find out more about what has been happening to the people of Palestine, not just in the last two years but for the whole of the last 75 years – and, of course, to keep talking, writing and campaigning about people like Hana, until they are all released, and have a safe, Palestinian home to go back to.