Ex-Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar facing ‘slow’ death in Israeli jail: Rights group

An international rights group has raised concern about Khalida Jarrar’s health, warning the 61-year-old female Palestinian detainee is facing “slow and deliberate killing” at the hands of Israeli prison officials.

Jarrar, a scholar, feminist, leftist and former lawmaker, has been in arbitrary incarceration under the Israeli regime’s illegal administrative detention since last year.

She is kept in solitary confinement in Neve Terzia prison where she was moved to from Damon Prison last month.

Despite requiring five different medications for her heart and health ailment related to blood pressure, diabetes, and cholesterol, she is denied food and medication on time, while locked up in an airless solitary cell measuring 1.5 x 2.5 meters, a concrete bed and open toilet with no curtains, lacking water.

To breathe, reportedly, Jarrar is forced to lie on the floor to draw some oxygen from the crack under the cell’s door.

According to Palestinian human rights advocate, B’tselem, 60 detained Palestinians have died in Israeli jails since the regime forces launched a genocidal war on Palestinian people in Gaza on October 7, 2023.

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EuroMed Human Rights Monitor has detailed the conditions of Jarrar’s arbitrary detention and cruel solitary confinement, calling on the international community to demand for her immediate release and an end to arbitrary detention of Palestinians.

“Compel Israel to stop the slow and deliberate killing of Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar,” the rights group said in a report published on Thursday.

It also called on the Working Group on illegal arbitrary detention of Palestinians and the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Al-Salem, to take effective and immediate action in this regard.

EuroMed Human Rights Monitor, in an urgent letter, wrote a detailed report about the conditions of Jarrar’s arbitrary detention and cruel solitary confinement in the Israeli prison intended for female criminals to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls.

The report includes a complaint received by EuroMed Monitor from Jarrar’s husband, Ghassan Jarrar, on his wife’s dire condition in prison.

Jarrar’s husband told the rights group her wife remains in isolation for unknown reasons.

He said there was also no legal basis for her to be moved from the prison where she was being held before to Neve Terzia, a prison meant for female offenders. 

Additionally, Israeli authorities did not notify him she was being moved to the Neve Terzia prison.

He noted the most serious problems facing Jarrar in prison as: lack of oxygen in the cell; not being allowed to go outside for “recreation”; the water to the toilet is cut off; the temperature is abnormally high; and that the purposeful delay of food and medicine are all “conditions of killing, not isolation”.

“Do they want to kill Khalida this way?” Jarrar questioned. Despite her critical health condition, no one answers her calls when she urgently needs anything, with “four hours [going] by before anyone answers”.

He summarized her suffering in this letter sent by his wife to her lawyer.

“I die every day. The cell looks like a tiny, airtight box. The cell is equipped with a toilet and a small window above it, which was closed a day after I was moved to it. They did not leave me any space to breathe. Even the so-called porthole in the cell door was closed. I spend most of my time sitting next to a tiny opening that allows me to breathe. I wait for the hours to pass while I suffocate in my cell in hopes of finding oxygen molecules to breathe and survive,” she wrote.

“The high temperatures make my isolation even more tragic. Put simply, I am inside a very hot oven. The heat has made it impossible for me to sleep. Not only did they put me in this situation alone, but they also purposefully turned off the water in the cell. It [initially] took them at least four hours to bring me a bottle of water. After eight days of confinement, I was allowed to leave the cell once, to go to the prison yard. Additionally, they purposely postpone the awful dinner for hours,” she added.

Khalida Jarrar was arrested on December 26, 2023 from her home in Ramallah, in the central occupied West Bank.

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Initially, she was kept in Damon Prison with other female inmates without being charged or given a chance to defend herself, until she was recently moved to solitary confinement.

Before her 2023 arrest, Khalid Jarrar had been an ex-prisoner who served five years in Israeli jails. She is a human rights and feminist activist and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Nearly nine-thousand Palestinian detainees are currently suffering physically and mentally from the regime’s illegal arbitrary arrests, harsh and degrading detention conditions,  torture, and punitive and retaliatory measures, including starvation and solitary confinement—which are all unlawful practices violating human rights which have intensified since the start of Israel’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip on October 7.

Some 260 Palestinian detainees have been killed in Israeli prisons and detention facilities since 1967.

This figure does not include the dozens of Palestinian prisoners and detainees from the Gaza Strip who have been killed since last October. The exact numbers and identities of most of these individuals remain unknown.

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