Continuing south, we pass the Litani river and on to Khiam, a mixed Shia’a Muslim and Christian village. A roadside sign points out El Madrasa Issa Ibn Mariam (School of Jesus, son of Mary). “You see, in the heart of a Shia’a village there are Christians living uninterrupted,” M tells us. He’s already pointed out the scattered Christian villages around his area and the mutual Christian and Shia’a support for Hezbollah for their resistance to and victory over the occupying Israeli army.
Our car twists up the road through the village, the snow-topped Jebal el Sheik (Mount Hermon) emerging and dominating the eastern landscape, and arrives at the former Khiam prison. A chipped, hand-written sign announces:“the prison is open.”
The prison, M says, was built by the French in ’33, originally a military post, but from 1984 to 2000 was used by the occupying Israeli army as a prison for both women and men. His brother, imprisoned there in ’84-’85, motions to the small cement building at the entrance to the prison on which a sign reads: “A room for meetings every three months after the entrance of the Red Cross.” No, he says, when I ask if he was ever visited by the Red Cross. As we enter the former prison, he begins pointing out familiar rooms, like the torture chambers and the cells. We pass a large sign, the faces and names of 10 martyrs of the prison, killed through torture, he says. Among the ten is a man in his fifties, head covered in traditional white scarf and face like that of a farmer.
A former prisoner, now a guide for the open prison, tells us that another 6 prisoners died as a result of their illnesses which their keepers would not allowed to be treated.
“I was a prisoner here for 4 years,”he says. “I was released on ‘Liberation Day’.” On 25 May, 2000, with the expulsion of occupying Israeli forces, prisoners were set free. “In 2006, the Israelis bombed Khiam heavily, for revenge, to destroy this symbol and real history of the power of the resistance.” They were, he explains, pissed off at their 2000 expulsion. The bombing destroyed many of the complex’s buildings and killed 4 UNIFIL posted at Khiam who right up until their deaths had been pleading for the IOF to stop bombing.
The Guardian reported:
Israel suffers some of its most severe criticism from the west after an air strike kills four UN observers at Khiyam in southern Lebanon, despite 10 warnings from UN officials that they were in the building. UN secretary general Kofi Annan calls the strike “apparently deliberate” and asks Israel to investigate the attack.
Behind the prison, with a view overlooking occupied Palestine kilometres away,a monument to the martyred UNIFIL soldiers reads “in the service of peace”. A swath of trees grows near the actual site of the bombing, “but the resistance didn’t want to take land belonging to civilians, so they built the moment over here,” roughly 20 metres away.
The guide walks up to a metal, ladder-like pole—behind which a tangle of razor wire marks the prison walls—and re-enacts the exhausted sag of a prisoner strapped naked by one arm to the pole for hours, too tired to stand, unable to sit, and tortured all the while.
Prisoners were also hung upside-down, completely naked, from the metal pole, says the guide. “They put a tight cover over our heads. Soldiers would pass by and hit us, kick us in the head. In winter — it’s very cold here,it snows — the prison guards would douse us with hot water and cold water while whipping and beating us…hot, cold, hot, cold… and when the prisoner was completely soaked the guards would bring an electrical charge and electrocute us.”
“They strapped me to this pole from 8pm to 2 am every night for 8 months. While I was locked to this pole, they beat me with a whip and batons all over…on my back, my shoulders, my legs…After that, from 2 am they’d take me to another room, where another 6 prisoners were and start shocking us. I was tortured by my own pain and that of my cellmates (hearing the screaming of other inmates is yet another form of psychological terror).”
At the same time, families of the imprisoned suffered as they knew of the torture going on — word traveled from those released or of those who died of torture.
“Collaborators would come by the house, offering to get a prisoner released if paid for it,” M tells me. Another type of psychological torture…giving false hope when release was impossible.
The “visits,” when family members would stand outside the Khiam prison to view their loved ones who were rooftop-only, occurred thanks to bribes to prison guards.
Our guide, while explaining the prison life, speaks with the familiarity of one who has given this speech before, and one who has endured untold cruelty at the hands of his captors. Nonetheless, he doesn’t describe in detail what his the prison guards did to his wife, saying only, detachedly: “They used to bring our wives and sisters and torment us by being vulgar to them, threatening them…When I hadn’t given in after 5 months of detention and torture, they brought my wife, took off her headscarf, and stripped her naked…I can’t talk about the rest.”
The guide and A take us to a telephone booth-sized cement isolation cell, oven-like during summer months, freezing during the winter.
“I was held in this room, a 1m x 1m cement block, for 2 months. They’d put a bag over my head and leave me in this concrete cell day and night, with a bucket for a toilet,” says A.
Bending over, he draws a line with his hand, cutting the box halfway to that of a container just above knee height. “There was another box made of cement. They called it the ‘sardine’ box,” he says, clapping his hands together as though crushing something, effectively how one would feel stuffed inside the ‘sardine’.
Back near the prison complex entrance, we enter a display room where a miniature model depicts the prison (before the IOF bombed it). A display case houses various instruments used to torture prisoners, including one similar to a car battery, used to electrocute prisoners.
“They put a wire around a finger of each hand, around the waist, and on the head,” A demonstrates with his mutilated fingertips. Also on display, a panel of hand-made stitching and prayer beads. The guide pulls out a denim backpack with zippers. “I was arrested in these pants. Later, I made them into a backpack to carry my things in.” He points out flowery wall-hanging of coloured beads. “I worked the names of my wife and children into it,” he says. [I am reminded of Palestinian prisoners I've met in occupied Palestine who crafted similar things, using olive pits to make prayer beads...or incredible projects like Anwar (a medic in Rafah, Gaza Strip) who crafted an ornate sailboat and the Dome of the Rock, using pieces of wood, beads and the ample time of being imprisoned by the occupation.]
Another display holds remnants of IOF bombs used on the prison, including an American-made “smart bomb” M notes. The walls are adorned with various photos of former prisoners, resistance martyrs, and one, the guide laughs as he points it out, of IOF soldiers sinking into Lebanese mud.
He shows us IOF uniforms left behind, and pulls out a IOF jacket, pointing to the Hebrew letters for “IDF” then pointing to a photo in which Hezbollah resistance spelled “IDF” in Hebrew using IOF boots. As he reaches the glass-encased model of the prison, he takes the IOF jacket and begins shining the glass. “We use this for cleaning,” he laughs, “but it doesn’t clean anything.”
Later, back at M’s with various siblings and relatives sitting around talking, the Khiam visit comes up and they start talking of the imprisonment of their loved ones. M’s mother—a feisty and very kind woman—suffered not only the imprisonment and torture of M’s brother A but of her husband and various relatives. Recalling those years, they argue over dates of loved ones’ imprisonment, one man using his own period of imprisonment as a reference to figure out the date of his cousin’s.
A relative tells me of his imprisonment in Palestine and in a different prison complex called Ansar, closer to Nabatiya:
On June 6, 1982, the Israelis invaded Lebanon again. On July 7, the Israeli army took me from my house when I was sleeping. I wasn’t a member of the resistance, but I was vocal about supporting Palestinians. They took 30 other the same night, taking us to a prison in (occupied) Palestine, as the Khiam prison wasn’t in use yet.
After 1 month, we were transferred to Ansar prison, which consisted of 31 prison camps, 500 prisoners per camp. It wasn’t just Lebanese and Palestinians, there were Syrians, Bangladeshis,…many foreigners in Lebanon at that time were rounded up and treated like the Israelis treat Palestinians. After 6 months, they separated the foreigners and sent them back to their countries, leaving just Lebanese and Palestinians in the prison.
They tortured us during the initial stage of our imprisonment. They’d beat us with sticks and shock us with electricity… to try to make us confess something.
Our food was sparse. We got half an egg per person or half a piece cheese and 1 piece toast per meal. When we were allowed to bathe, we had to use cold water year round. And we had to go to bathroom in front of everyone, in buckets.
After a long time, they realized they had nothing on us and didn’t want to care for us, so they began releasing us as it cost them money to imprison us.
I was 20 years old.
The Canadian government is complicit in Israel’s ongoing use of mass imprisonment against the Palestinian people when it vocally supports Israeli aggression in the UN and around the world.
Despite the harsh conditions of imprisonment, the frequent use of isolation, ransacking of cells, confiscation of media, and denial of access to education among Palestinian prisoners, the Palestinian prisoners’ movement is central to the Palestinian struggle for freedom and liberation. Palestinian prisoners are not only victims of an unjust and oppressive legal/military structure – they are part of an entire people seeking their freedom and liberation, including the end of occupation, the right of return of Palestinian refugees, and full rights for all Palestinians.
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
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