Yesterday, the Ofer District Court sentenced Sami Huraini, Youth Of Sumud activist and coordinator of the Popular Committees for Nonviolent Resistance in Masafer Yatta, where Mediterranea Saving Humans is active with the Mediterranea with Palestine project, to one month in prison on probation for assault and organising an illegal demonstration.
In early 2021, Huraini and hundreds of other Palestinians had organised a spontaneous march to demand truth and justice for Harun Abu Aram, who was killed by the Israeli army in Al-Rakeez, a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, while trying to prevent the theft of an electricity generator by the occupation forces. Many videos presented as evidence in court show that Huraini did not attack anyone, but that it was the Israeli army that attacked the peaceful demonstration.
Huraini's conviction is part of a wider system centred on the use of detention as an instrument of oppression to which Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories under Israeli administrative and military control in Area C, where more than 2,500 military orders regulate almost every aspect of their lives, are subjected. The conviction rate of Palestinians, who, unlike Israeli citizens, are tried by military rather than civilian courts, is 99.9%.
Specifically, any gathering of more than 10 people discussing politics is considered an unauthorised demonstration, an offence for which Huraini was convicted, and participants risk up to 10 years in prison.
Throughout the West Bank, Israeli occupation forces have for decades carried out a slow but steady ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population, manifested in killings, assaults, arbitrary arrests and detentions, the burning and demolition of homes and buildings, the theft of livestock and the destruction of cultivated fields by Israeli settlers, army and police.
Once again, instead of prosecuting the murderers of Harun Abu Haram and so many other civilians, Israel is persecuting Palestinian activists fighting for their land, justice, self-determination and peace for their people.
