The occupation did not find a specific charge to bring against Diyala Ayesh, so it resorted to transferring her to administrative detention (social networking sites)

Ramallah -

On January 17, the occupation arrested the lawyer and human rights activist, Diala Ayesh, after detaining her at the military container checkpoint connecting Bethlehem and Ramallah. The family did not know the fate of their daughter except through the passengers of the public transport vehicle, who informed them of her arrest after detaining her and examining her card. .

Then, a few days later, prisoner institutions informed them that Diala was being held in Ofer Prison, after which she was transferred to the Sharon Crossing and from there to Damon Prison, and transferred to administrative detention for 4 months.

Al-Dameer Foundation for Prisoner Care and Human Rights said that during her arrest, Diala was attacked, threatened, and insulted by occupation soldiers during her arrest, and was detained after her arrest in difficult conditions, as she was placed in a bad cell.

Diala is known as a lawyer and activist defending human rights. Over the past five years, she has worked as a lawyer for detainees in the occupation prisons and for political detainees as well. The occupation did not find a specific charge to bring against her, so it resorted to transferring her to administrative detention, that is, detention according to a secret file that not even her lawyer can see or show. It is a charge against someone who has no charge before the Israeli occupation authorities, as is the case with Diala and approximately 3,500 Palestinians who are now in Israeli prisons.

Diala's father told Al Jazeera Net that "the occupation is trying, through these arrests, to exclude activists and actors from the Palestinian street." What confirms the father's statement is that Diala, even days before her arrest, was visiting prisoners in Ofer prison without facing any prevention from the occupation authorities, so how? “She has a secret file under which she will be administratively detained within days.”

Unprecedented rise

What Diala’s father said is consistent with the interpretation of prisoner institutions that have been monitoring this detention for years, and have monitored an increase in the number of administrative detention cases since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club Foundation, the number of administrative detainees that it was able to document until the end of last January There were 3,484 prisoners, including 40 children, 11 women, and 21 journalists.

Under this detention, Israel is detaining activists, lawyers, lecturers, freed prisoners and public figures in its prisons, as Amani Sarhana, spokeswoman for the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, says, all with the aim of “undermining any situation of confrontation in the West Bank, which is repeated in every period of confrontation with the occupation.”

Farajneh told Al Jazeera Net, “The increase in cases of administrative detention in Israeli prisons began two years ago, but the unprecedented increase in more than 35 years occurred during this war.” She adds that most of those who are now in administrative detention are released prisoners, who spent previous years in prisons, and she explains. This Israeli action is not linked to any organization alone.

Time out

The arrest of lawyer and human rights activist Diala Ayesh is her first arrest, but for a large number of administrative prisoners, administrative sentences in Israeli prisons have exceeded ten years or more, as is the case with journalist Nidal Abu Akar from the Dheisheh camp near Bethlehem.

Nidal's last administrative detention was in July 2022, and he had been released only 40 days before from an administrative detention that lasted two continuous years, and until now he is still detained after the Israeli occupation renewed his arrest for the fourth time on January 28 of last year.

Abu Akar spent 18 separate years in Israeli prisons, including 13 years in administrative detention without charge, and the longest period was a detention that lasted for 5 continuous years, when the occupation prosecution filed an indictment against him to circumvent the length of the detention period.

His wife, Manal Abu Akar, told Al Jazeera Net, "We have begun to deal with his repeated arrests as if he were going out for a time out, every time we knew that he would not spend a long time with us."

Manal, whose three children have grown up and graduated from schools and universities, does not remember any occasion in which Nidal was present, even when he lost his father or when her father died. Perhaps what saddens her most is her husband’s inability to continue his journalistic work, which he loved, as he presented a program on Al-Wahda Radio in The city of Bethlehem about the prisoners.

Source: Al Jazeera