Instead of celebrating her graduation, the Palestinian doctor Nizar Kayed is busy these days circulating the messages of his daughter Lian, who is detained in the Israeli Damoon Prison on charges of being active in the student movement at Birzeit University in the central West Bank.
Layan wrote to her family describing her taking to Damoon Prison in Mount Carmel in northern occupied Palestine, "I did not go up to see Haifa - like Ahmed Al Arabi in the poem of Mahmoud Darwish - but that even my stars were absent while I was absent from you. Carmel was not a ladder, but a cross that I take to him in The black one, which is nothing but a representation of a moving coffin on wheels, and imprisonment is not only a residence and a room, but a way to imprison a prison, and through it a prison for the present and an attempt to imprison our future.
The girl with the eloquent messages had placed on top of her Facebook page before her arrest, an immortal Palestinian poetry: "The night is fleeting ... Neither the investigation room remains nor the chains are stranded."
Layan Kayed was arrested last June 8 at an Israeli checkpoint while she was traveling from her village of Sebastia near Nablus to Birzeit University to finish her graduation transactions and receive her diploma in the field of sociology.
Her father says that she was held in poor conditions in the Israeli Hasharon Prison, where she was subjected to a harsh investigation, but she denied all charges against her.
He directed the occupation to participate in a student march, incitement to throw stones at the occupation, activity in "student poles", one of the student blocs in Birzeit, and "participate in preparing a popular meal that is falafel and presented in an anti-Israel activity", and participate in a political seminar within a book fair in the University.
Extension of the trial
The Occupation Prosecutor considered the "student pole" a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and that Lyan Kayed was one of his activists at Birzeit University, so the court refused to release her, and her trial was extended until August 5.
According to her father, Lyan was only held in a cell with surveillance cameras, and subjected to continuous insults from criminal detainees in the corresponding cells, but her repeated transfer from Hasharon Prison in northern occupied Palestine to Ofer, west of Ramallah in the West Bank to complete the investigation, was another way to pressure and overburden her.
Layan Kayed is one of 41 Palestinian women prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons, among whom are four students from Birzeit University who are arrested by the occupation on charges of activity in the student movement.
The oldest of these is Media School student Mays Abu Ghosh, from the Qalandia refugee camp north of Jerusalem, who is serving a 16-month prison sentence since her arrest at the end of August 2019.
Abu Ghosh went through a severe experience of violent physical torture for more than 30 days, during which she was subjected to prolonged ghosts and prevented from meeting with her lawyer during this period.
Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights said that the Israeli military courts were fully aware of the torture of the student Abu Ghosh and a number of detainees accused of belonging to the Popular Front, who were arrested in the aftermath of the bombing of a bomb targeting settlers near Ein Popin, west of Ramallah in August 2019, and the operation led to A settlement was killed and two of her family were injured.
After her investigation was completed, Abu Ghosh was tried for activity in the student movement in Birzeit. Last May, I sent to her family saying, "I suffer from pain in the spine, hands and head ... I sometimes feel the electricity sweeping the left side of my head," and she talked about her need to be transferred to the hospital as soon as possible.
The investigation continues
Besides Lian and Mays, the last student detainees, Ruba Al-Assi, 21, are still moving between the Hasharon and Ofer prisons in Israel, while continuing her investigation and postponing her trial for the third time since her arrest on the ninth of this month from the town of Betunia, west of Ramallah.
Assi is studying social sciences in her third year, and her father, Fahmy Al-Assi, says that the occupation allowed her to call for a few minutes to tell her family that she is still under investigation.
As for their fourth wife, Elia Abu Hijleh, another session of the court happened on Wednesday. On July 1, she was arrested from her home in the Al-Tirah suburb of Ramallah, days after she had obtained the first rank at the level of Arab universities, and the eighth position in the world in the mock trial competition within the Law Students' Team at Birzeit University.
In the past two months, the occupation released the two students, Samah Jaradat and Shatha Hassan, who kept the arrest of her brother Muhammad Hassan al-Talib in Birzeit, and the two girls were also accused of being active in the student movement.
Jaradat, who was serving a nine-month sentence, said that she was subjected to a harsh investigation that lasted for three weeks, during which she suffered from ghosts in a chair for days, and was prevented from sleeping, using the bathroom, and from meeting with her lawyer.
Targeting the university and its students
The arrested students are part of a broad Israeli campaign against Birzeit University students, since last September, scores of students have been involved, along with teachers and administrators.
Last December, Birzeit University faced incitement from the Israeli army after extensive detention campaigns for its students. The occupation army published a video of student activities in support of the Palestinian resistance on its campus, and accused the university of allowing the organization of "terrorist activities".
In early November, Israeli intelligence summoned dozens of Birzeit students for investigation, and most of them refused to respond.
70 detainees in months
According to Birzeit University's active “Right to Education Campaign,” more than 70 students have been arrested from July 2019 until the beginning of this month, along with its media professor, Widad Barghouti.
Thirty students are still on trial, while the occupation transferred six students to renewed administrative detention (detention without charge).
Birzeit University says that the Israeli occupation forces continue their "widespread, systematic aggression that targets and obstructs their work and deprives their students of their right to education and academic freedom."
Despite the suspension of working hours and student activities since the Corona pandemic began in the West Bank last March, the occupation forces arrested 21 Birzeit students, as well as a member of an administrative body and an assistant researcher in it from his home.
According to the university, I have been informed by Al-Dameer Association for Prisoner Care and Human Rights about the increasing number of cases of severe physical torture during interrogation with students, and these prisoners, along with all prisoners, missed the necessary precautions and preventive measures to avoid infection with the Corona virus.