XPost: or.politics, alt.usage.english, alt.society.liberalism   
   XPost: sci.logic   
   From: void@invalid.noy   
      
   Dozens of patients stand in line for hours outside the pharmacy booth   
   in the Kuwaiti Hospital compound. They all start out by asking the   
   pharmacist the same question: is my medication available? The answer   
   for most is no.   
      
   Amid the long lines of the elderly, the ill, and mothers carrying   
   their children, a man appearing to be middle-aged leaning on a young   
   boy arrives, speaking in a loud voice and asking to be allowed to jump   
   the line — he’s just been released from prison, and can barely stand.   
      
   “I spent sixty days of constant beating and humiliated,” he says.   
   “They just released me, and I need to just get my medicine. Please let   
   me take it without having to wait any longer.”   
      
   Everyone lets him through, allowing him to collect his medications   
   from the booth and leave.   
      
   I stand beside him in the hospital courtyard and ask him how he came   
   to be arrested by the Israeli army — and how he was eventually   
   released.   
      
   Haytham al-Hilou, 56, was displaced from Beit Hanoun to southern Gaza   
   on October 27 of last year. He says that on his journey south, he was   
   made to pass through a mechanized checkpoint that the Israeli army had   
   set up at the Netzarim junction on Salah al-Din Street. When he passed   
   through the metal doors, and the Israeli cameras picked up his image,   
   Israeli soldiers called out his name through a microphone, instructing   
   him to step aside. Al-Hilou was sent to an Israeli detention center,   
   where he would endure sixty days of torture and humiliation   
   interspersed with interrogations for any piece of information that   
   might be of use to the army in identifying and reaching specific   
   targets.   
      
   “When I reached the detention point, the soldiers ordered me to take   
   off all my clothes,” he says. “They told us to go wait in a ditch dug   
   by the army a distance away from the checkpoint.”   
      
   When he slid down into the ditch, he noticed it was already occupied   
   by dozens of Palestinians who had also been detained, all of them   
   naked and blindfolded. Not much time had passed before soldiers   
   arrived and blindfolded him as well.   
      
   Haytham had been fleeing south with his wife and five children, and   
   when he was arrested, there was no one left to look after them.   
   Al-Hilou says his family suffered immensely during his period of   
   imprisonment, struggling to find any shelter that would take them in.   
      
   “When I was released, I found my family homeless and in the streets,”   
   he continues. “No shelter, no food, no drink. Every drop of water and   
   piece of bread that they managed to find was after a long period of   
   suffering.”   
      
   He says it was a miracle that he found his family alive at all,   
   especially since all his children were very young, including his three   
   daughters and two young boys.   
      
   When he was first arrested, he didn’t know where he was being taken.   
   After a long journey, he found himself in Ofer Prison, outside of   
   Ramallah in the West Bank.   
      
   At Ofer, he was interrogated and subjected to physical and   
   psychological torture. Israeli intelligence officers denied him food   
   for long periods, holding interrogation sessions for hours on end.   
   They would ask him about the hiding places of Hamas leaders like Yahya   
   Sinwar and demand to know whether there were openings to tunnels   
   inside his home. He kept repeating the same answer.   
      
   I am a normal civilian. I am uninvolved in any military activity.   
      
   The interrogators would beat him severely and often. As an older man   
   with graying hair, a short frame, and a fragile build, he was unable   
   to endure what had become standard treatment by the Shin Bet.   
      
   And the questions would continue. Where are the Hamas leaders? Where   
   are they hiding?   
      
   His answers turned into shouts at one point. I don’t know! I don’t   
   know! I am not a Hamas member! I have nothing to do with resistance. I   
   have nothing to do with military activity. I don’t know where the   
   Hamas leaders are, I don’t know anything about them. Civilians don’t   
   know these things, only leaders do. Normal people don’t know who they   
   are. They’re always in hiding.   
      
   Despite all this, al-Hilou is grateful that he was eventually released   
   and allowed to return home and that he is now in his family’s arms.   
      
   He says that prison during the war is different than in any other   
   period. Prisoners from Gaza are worried about their families,   
   wondering whether they’ve been able to find shelter, whether they were   
   able to secure food, or whether they were dead or alive.   
      
   Haytham maintains that there was no reason for his arrest, and no   
   evidence pointed to his involvement in any resistance or military   
   activity. He does mention that between the ages of 17 and 20, he   
   engaged in public activities that supported the resistance but which   
   were not military by any stretch.   
      
   “Maybe Israel wanted to punish me for my youth, years that are behind   
   me and well in the past,” he speculates.   
      
   In those youthful years, the activities showing support for the   
   resistance that he and his friends had participated in were not at all   
   uncommon. After all, who, in all of Palestine, doesn’t support   
   resistance against the occupation?   
      
   Arrested twice in the same day   
      
   There are endless stories of arbitrary incarcerations that have taken   
   place at the numerous Israeli military checkpoints throughout the Gaza   
   Strip, where the army maintains control. Some people were arrested   
   once, twice, and even three times during their stay in Gaza City,   
   having refused to leave as part of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of   
   northern Gaza. Eyad Eleywa is one of those residents. He is still in   
   Gaza City, while several of his children chose to flee south. They are   
   now in Rafah.   
      
   Eleywa resides in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood along with his wife,   
   three of his children, his daughter-in-law, and a number of his other   
   relatives who had fled from the areas north of Gaza City to the city   
   itself. His son Muhammad lives in a tent in the neighborhood of Tal   
   al-Sultan in Rafah. I get to see him every now and again. He recounts   
   the time his father was most recently arrested in northern Gaza.   
      
   Muhammad’s father has already been arrested three times, and two of   
   those arrests happened on the same day. Muhammad says that at the   
   beginning of the ground operation in Gaza City, soldiers took his   
   father from his home in Sheikh Radwan and ordered him to take off all   
   his clothes before blindfolding him and leaving him out in the cold   
   while conducting field interrogations.   
      
   Where are the tunnel openings? Where are the Hamas fighters? Who do   
   you know who owns weapons in the city? The questions weren’t asked   
   only once, and he was detained from the early morning until the late   
   afternoon. When the soldiers were done with him, they dropped him off   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)