Issawi’s mother to Obama: Save my son’s life

Layla Issawi holds a picture of her son, Samer, alongside European politicians of the Council for European Palestinian Relations (L to R) Niccolo Rinaldi from Italy, Jim Hume and Sandra White from Scotland, on 2 March 2013. (Photo: AFP – Ahmad Gharabli)

The mother of jailed Palestinian hunger striker Samer Issawi called on US President Barack Obama Tuesday to “immediately intervene” to save his life in an open letter posted to Facebook.

In the statement, which comes on the eve of Obama’s visit to Israel and the West Bank, Layla Issawi urged the US president to cleanse his hands of her son’s blood by pressuring Israel to free him.

“I … call on you – the most important ally of Israel, as you describe yourself, and the president of the most powerful country in the world, as others describe you – to immediately intervene to save my son’s life,” the letter read.

“This is your chance to save Samer from the fangs of this brutal occupation, so as not to ask myself with millions of others around the world: why did you come to us?”

Family members of the prisoner, on day 241 without food, say he is near death. A February 21 hearing said he would be released on March 6, but he remains in detention.

He has been refusing food since last July to protest his detention without charge.

The letter continued:

I am a Palestinian mother like thousands of other Palestinian mothers who ache and suffer. I am the mother of Fadi who was assassinated by Israel in 1994 … and the mother of Midhat who is now in Israeli prisons and the mother of Ra’fat whose home Israel demolished, leaving his family homeless. I am the mother of Shireen, Firas and Shadi who could not avoid the repeated detention and torture. We are a family that Israel deprives of water, and would have deprived us of food and medicine if they could.

Issawi’s siblings living in the occupied West Bank have blamed Israel for cutting their electricity and water as punishment for Samer’s hunger strike, which helped draw international attention to the plight of Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel without charge.

On 31 December 2012, Israeli forces demolished the home of the prisoner’s brother, Ra’fat, in the family village of Issawiya.

Issawi was first arrested in 2002 and sentenced to 30 years in prison over weapons possession and forming a military group. He was released in an October 2011 prisoner swap agreement between Israel and Hamas in which the Jewish state freed 1,027 prisoners in exchange for an Israeli soldier captured in 2006.

He was rearrested on 7 July 2012 and accused of violating the terms of his release by entering Jerusalem. Israeli prosecutors are seeking to cancel his amnesty and detain him for 20 years, the remainder of his previous sentence, despite there being no other charges against him.

Obama has described his commitment to Israel as “unshakeable,” and staunchly defended Israel’s recent eight-day assault on Gaza in November 2012 that led to the deaths of over 170 Palestinians.

The United States is Israel’s top financial backer, and in 2007 signed a deal to provide the Jewish state with $30 million in military aid over a 10 year period.

But Obama has also criticized Israel’s expansion of illegal West Bank settlements.

At least one other Palestinian prisoner, Younis al-Haroub, is on a long-term hunger strike according the Palestinian Prisoners Society.

(Al-Akhbar)