Palestinian/ Israeli update12/17/2015..ethnic cleansing

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Hungry Warrior: The Untold Story of Hana Shalabi

……………..Samir was her best friends. They shared secrets, and just before he marched off to his last battle, he had asked her to make sure that his coffin was covered with flowers, especially red Hanoun, that grew wild all around Burgin. She kept her promise.

Later, the Israelis arrested her. They kept her in an underground dungeon and subjected her to months of relentless physical and psychological torture. When this, too, failed, they sentenced her to six months of administrative detention that was renewed several times. After spending years in captivity, she was freed on 18th of October, 2011 from HaSharon Prison. Her release, and that of hundreds of others, was the outcome of an agreement between Hamas and Israel, after which an Israeli soldier, who was captured by the Resistance years ago, was also set free.

The celebration lasted for months; when it subsided, she was arrested again and thrown in jail. Her latest experience was even more humiliating, details of which are divulged reservedly by Hana. On the day of her second arrest, on the 16th of February 2012, her jailors were particularly brutal, but she was also exceptionally determined. Israeli newspaper, ‘Yediot Ahronot’ claimed that Hana was plotting to kidnap a solider, but Hana had no patience to engage her interrogators in a discussion. Instead, she went on a hunger strike that lasted for 47 days. Her main demand was her freedom.

In the latter stage of her strike, when death was looming, she opened her eyes in an Israeli hospital where her arms and legs were chained to the bed. She was in Haifa, a discovery that brought a smile on her lips. “This is the land from which my family came,” she said softly as her smile grew wider. Her declaration was communicated to the guards and, in turn, to the prison authority, which immediately ordered her removal to outside Haifa. Hana had never visited Haifa and, for a fleeing moment, had settled with the joyful idea of dying there.

Following a deal signed under suspicious conditions, she ended her hunger strike in exchange for her freedom, but only to be deported to the Gaza Strip. The agreement stated that Hana was to be repatriated to the West Bank three years later, but she never did.

Hana insists on embracing life, even within the confines of war-torn and besieged Gaza. “If I don’t, the Israelis win. I cannot give them that satisfaction,” she told me. “Resistance is insisting on living and thriving, despite the pain.”

She still dreams of having the opportunity to travel and explore life beyond the familiar horizon of life under siege.