Wissam and Rula live with their two daughters by the Palestinian Authority compound near the centre of Ramallah. This is the compound where President Arafat spent the last years of his life.
At a little bit past 8.00 am in August 1994, Wissam was reading his newspaper on the terrace in the front of the house when two cars pulled up outside and four or five officers from the Shabak (Israeli internal security) got out and approached him. Moments later two Israeli army jeeps with soldiers arrived outside the house. One officer placed the barrel of an M-16 machine gun to Wissam’s head and asked for his i.d.
“I’ll give you my i.d. when you take the gun from my head.”
The officer lowered the gun and Wissam presented his i.d. Before being taken away Wissam insisted on saying goodbye to his mother who lived in the house. At first the Shabak officers refused but Wissam insisted saying that they could shoot him if they liked but he was going to say goodbye to his mother. This was the start of Wissam’s first stint in administrative detention.
Between 1982 and 1991 Wissam was living and working underground, wanted by the Israelis as a member of the PFLP and editor of its newspaper. When he was finally captured in 1991 he was sentenced to five years imprisonment which was later reduced to three years. When the Shabak came for Wissam on that August morning in 1994, he had been out of prison for just one and half months.
In August 1994 the PLO were preparing to return to Ramallah as head of the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli army was preparing to pull out of a number of West Bank towns pursuant to the Oslo Accords. The PFLP was vocally opposed to Oslo because, in their view, it did not serve the best interests of the Palestinian people. Dissent to Oslo was not going to be tolerated and in August 1994 Israeli forces started rounding up opponents, including prominent members of the PFLP.
Wissam was taken from his home to the Shabak offices in Ramallah. A Shabak officer said to Wissam:
“You are too dangerous to be out of prison – you are still PFLP, why are you against Oslo?”
Wissam replied that he was entitled to his own opinion and it was none of the Shabak’s business. The officer responded:
“You’re free to have your opinions, and I’m free to put you in prison.”
The military commander for the West Bank issued Wissam with a six month administrative detention order – no charges, no recognizable trial. The military review committee confirmed the order. The only official reason given to Wissam for the order were the standard one:
“A threat to the security of the region.”
One month later, Arafat returned from exile to lead the Palestinian Authority from Ramallah and the Israeli army withdrew from the towns to other parts of the West Bank.
It was obvious to everybody rounded up that summer that this was a political maneuver to silence Palestinian opposition to Oslo. When he received the first six month administrative detention order, Wissam knew, due to the political situation, that the order would be renewed at the end of the first six month period. Wissam prepared himself mentally to spend the next two years in prison, although of course, with administrative detention orders he could have no way of knowing for sure how long his incarceration would last. During the next four years Wissam’s administrative detention order was renewed 17 times, sometimes for six months, sometimes less.
Wissam recalls being told by his lawyer in 1995 that the Shabak told him that Wissam and all the political prisoners could be released on condition that the PFLP gives up the armed struggle.
Wissam and the other detainees rejected this overture as they believed that the PFLP had every right to resist the occupation, with force if necessary, and through their lawyers told the Shabak that if they wanted to negotiate they should do so with the PFLP leadership in Damascus as the detainees had no authority to bind the movement. The Shabak used techniques like this to try and weaken the resolve of the detainees and get them to make concessions.
After two years in detention public pressure mounted in Europe and Israel itself for the release of Wissam and the other detainees, including the core “Group of 11” PFLP members of which Wissam was a part. Amnesty International UK campaigned on Wissam's behalf. This mounting pressure gave Wissam and the other detainees hope that they might soon be released.
One of the cruelest aspects of administrative detention is the uncertainty as to when the incarceration will end. In some cases detainees were told a day before the expiry of the order that it had been renewed for another six months – in other cases they were told a few hours before they hoped to be released. This process caused enormous stress and anguish amongst the detainees and their families leading to inmates setting fire to their beds and going on hunger strike in protest. The families of detainees would often wait outside the prison or at the nearest checkpoint on the expiry of the order not knowing for sure whether their loved ones would be released or not – the pain and disappointment cut very deep. Wissam would communicate with Rula and his mother through his lawyers and told them not to hope for an early release, however administrative detention became much harder to bare once he became a father.
As the date for expiry of each administrative detention order approached, Rula would buy a new set of clothes for Wissam to celebrate his hoped for release. When she heard that the order had been renewed she would put the new clothes in the wardrobe and repeat the process again and again, order after order, year after year.
Just before Christmas 1997, Wissam’s mother came to visit him just before the expiry of his 17th administrative detention order. She was at that time living in the US. The stress of not knowing when her son would be released was clearly affecting her health. Wissam asked a prison officer whether his detention order was going to be renewed but the officer did not know. It was a Thursday and Wissam remembers telling the officer that if he was going to be released it had to be on the following day, Friday, before the Sabbath. Wissam also asked the officer to check with the Shabek and see if he was to be released. The officer agreed to do so and went away. The following three to four hours Wissam describes as “hell, total hell”, not knowing whether he would be released the next day or not. At 9.30 pm on that Thursday night the prison officer returned and informed Wissam that he was to be released the next day, 2 January 1998, after four years in detention. Wissam believes that he was released at the start of 1998 due to the mounting pressure in Europe and Israel, and the increasing difficulty the Israeli authorities faced in trying to justify detention without charge or trial for over four years.
On hearing the news that Wissam was to be released the whole section of the prison started singing and shouting. Wissam was the first of the administrative detainees held since 1994 to be released. This gave the other detainees hope that they too might be released soon. This was a very difficult time as the joy of being released was mixed with the sadness of leaving the other detainees behind. After four years together living in very close proximity with each other, they had all forged very close bonds.
Wissam’s mother asked him to call her the moment he was released – she was very nervous after so many hopes in the past had been dashed. Whenever Wissam’s detention orders were about to expire his mother would put on her best traditional clothes which were Wissam’s favourite. Wissam’s mother waited for him at the family home in Ramallah as she was too nervous to go to the checkpoint. When he arrived home his mother was almost paralyzed with emotion – she was very red in the face and could not speak for a long time.
Rula did not know that Wissam was going to be released and was studying and working in Bethlehem at the time. At 10.00 p.m. on the Friday she received a telephone call from Wissam. She got a colleague to cover for her and drove that night to be with Wissam before returning to work in Bethlehem four hours later. That weekend they both met up in Ramallah and Rula recalls that:
‘they tried every restaurant and café in Ramallah!”
After 17 consecutive renewals of the detention order Rula had not been expecting Wissam’s release. All of the other political prisoners detained with Wissam were released by May 1998. Wissam was never charged or tried with an offence relating to his administrative detention.
After his release, Wissam and Rula married and had two daughters, Anmar and Dara.
In March 2002 the Israeli army invaded Ramallah. Wissam and Rula took their children to Rula’s mother’s place across town as their house was close to Arafat’s compound which the Israeli’s had laid siege to. Two days into the invasion the Israelis started rounding people up – Wissam’s i.d. was checked but he was not taken into custody and so assumed that he is not wanted. Three days later Wissam was picked up along with approximately 15,000 others who were rounded up at this time. The soldiers picked Wissam up from his mother-in-law’s house whilst he was still in his pyjamas and took him blindfolded to a temporary detention centre in the middle of Ramallah.
One of the Shabak officers said to Wissam -
“this is just for a short time, five minutes, so that I can sleep tonight”.
At the detention centre another Shabak officer typed Wissam’s name into a computer and when his details came up said:
“Oh my god, they shouldn’t have picked you up in your pyjamas, they should have put a bullet in your head.”
Wissam was initially given a six month administrative detention order which was followed by four months and then three months. He was released on 1 May 2003 after nearly 13 months in detention. He was never charged or tried with any offence.
Wissam found his second stint in administrative detention much harder than the first as he now had two daughters, Anmar and Dara. When Wissam was taken away his eldest daughter was three and the youngest was just one. Although the family house was surrounded by tanks, Rula took the children home after Wissam was taken away to give them a sense of familiarity.
The eldest daughter, Anmar, visited Wissam twice whilst he was in detention. Rula was prohibited from visiting her husband. Wissam recalls that one of the visits was a highly traumatic experience for both father and daughter. The day that Anmar came to visit Wissam was meant to be in court. He told the prison officer that he did not want to go to court as his daughter was coming to visit him. On the day of the visit Wissam was informed that the judge had said that he must come to court but not to worry as it would only take 15 minutes and he would be back in plenty of time for the arrival of Anmar at 12.00 pm. Wissam went to court and waited there from 12.00 pm to 6.00 pm. Meanwhile Anmar was waiting in the visitors room, which was small and surrounded by wire mesh, for six hours. She saw other visitors come and go and started to believe that her father was asleep and did not want to see her. When Wissam did finally arrive his daughter was very tense and in tears. She had been up since 4.00 am in order to catch the Red Cross bus from Jerusalem to the detention centre. Father and daughter were permitted to spend 30 minutes with each other separated by wire mesh. Wissam asked the soldier if he could touch his daughter through the mesh and was told no. Wissam shouted at the soldier who eventually relented and allowed them to kiss each other through the wire. This, says Wissam, was the hardest moment he experienced throughout his years of detention, to see his daughter in this terrible state.
Just as Wissam was about to lodge a petition to the Supreme Court challenging his detention, the Shabak told his lawyer that if he didn’t lodge the petition they would release him on 1 May, 2003.
The effects of Wissam’s detention on his children are still felt today, three and a half years later. When Wissam first arrived home his youngest girl, Dara would call him by the name “Papa Prison” and refused to get in to the car with him alone – it took about a month for her to accept that he was her father. Dara still has difficulty sleeping all through the night which started from this time and remained in nappies far longer than would normally be expected.
The eldest daughter, Anmar, was always very close to Wissam. When he was released from administrative detention in May 2003 she would never leave his side for fear that he would disappear again. Anmar is still afraid of soldiers and particularly afraid of checkpoints where she will say something like – “will they take Daddy?”. Rula says that Anmar still remembers every detail of the day the Israeli army took her father away in his pyjamas.
Rula found Wissam’s detention difficult, particularly she says, because of the effect it had on the girls.
“You would try to compensate – give them more love, more time, more toys – but nothing can compensate for the absence of their father.”
The girls would sleep with Rula whilst their father was in detention as they did not like to sleep alone in their own bedrooms. At kindergarten Dara was asked by the teacher what her father did for a living – she responded:
“I don’t have a father, he’s in prison.”
Rula says that at that point Dara’s teacher began to cry:
“There is just no compensation – it is very hard to be both a mother and a father. You can’t be a father as well, it’s not the same.”
Rula recalls how hard it was to be without her husband and how she always had to put on a brave face for the children when inside the pressure on her was enormous. She describes this time as an “ongoing nightmare”. Throughout the West Bank the population was in constant fear of arrest and detention. Whenever fresh arrests were made the phone would ring constantly with friends checking to see if a loved one had been taken away and placed in administrative detention.
During these tense times Rula was terrified that she too might get arrested and then who would look after the children? She avoided going through checkpoints which meant that she could not leave Ramallah to go to work at near by Birzeit University. She was lucky that the university was able to give her some field work which she could conduct from within Ramallah. Even today, Rula and Wissam are cautious about traveling together with the children in case they are both arrested.
Wissam remembers that about a month into his second detention it was Anmar’s birthday. Wissam gathered together all the inmates in his section and they divided up their cigarettes and apples and shared them together to celebrate Anmar’s birthday. All the detainees sang happy birthday to Anmar from the prison. One of the prison guards questioned what they were doing and the response was:
“We are like life – not like you. We sing under these circumstances.”
When asked whether he fears being taken into administrative detention again by the Israelis, Wissam responds:
"This is always a possibility. Whenever there is trouble the Israelis always round up anybody who has been in administrative detention before".
(Interviewed on 7 February, 2007 in Ramallah)
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