Solitary Confinement Prisoners
Ibrahim Hamid was born and raised in the West Bank village of Silwad, north-east of Ramallah.
He obtained a BSc degree in political science from Birzeit University and worked as a researcher at the Centre for Refugee Studies. He has written and published several papers on the depopulated Palestinian villages.
"To see my children is tastier than food, and being with other human beings is more stimulating than drink"
Abdullah al-Barghouti is on hunger-strike to obtain a mere fraction the rights he is entitled to as a human being and as a father. He has been prohibited from seeing his family since he was arrested over ten years ago and has remained in solitary confinement for the same duration.
Ahmad Sa'adat is the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. He was born in the West Bank town of Al Bireh in 1953, the son of a refugee family who were expelled from their home in the village of Deir Tarif, near Ramleh, in 1948.
Mr Sa'adat is a math teacher by training and the father of four children. He has been involved in the Palestinian national movement since 1967, when he became active in the student movement. Prior to his detention in 2006, he was held as political prisoner in Israeli jails on numerous occasions which total a period of ten years in all.
It is almost two weeks since Palestinian prisoners began their hunger strike for dignity and freedom. Hundreds are held without charge or trial, and scores have been locked in solitary confinement for years, some more than ten years. By waging this 'battle of empty stomachs', they seek to draw to the attention of the international community the utterly degrading and inhumane treatment meted out to Palestinian prisoners in Israel's prisons. Two-thirds all those held are ordinary labourers and bread-winners for families subjected to more than four decades of military occupation. In this series, MEMO features the profiles of the prisoners held in solitary confinement.
