Tali Fahima was detained on 8 August 2004 and has since been held in prison under torture and in isolation. Following two months of interrogation by the General Security Services (GSS) and after approximately three months of administrative detention, ridiculous and baseless charges were filed against her. Tali is being persecuted because she challenged the walls and checkpoints, the very system of separation being built between Jews and Arabs in this country; because she came out against the policies of illegal assassinations; because she made contact with Palestinians based on solidarity and struggle against the occupation, and in the framework of humanitarian-educational activities.
Tali’s trial will be held from 17-19 July and 18-19 September 2005. The High Court ruled that she will be detained until the trial conclusion. Tali will sit in prison for at least 1.5 years (prior to the ruling) for all the things each one of us thought, did or wanted to do but did not have the courage.
Tali was held in isolation for more than nine months. Following her petition to the District Court she is no longer held in complete isolation, but is able to walk around for four hours daily in the wing in which she is held, and on weekends she is able to telephone her mother and attorney (the other female prisoners in jail are allowed to walk around all day and can use the public phone freely to speak with whomever they want).
Ever since Tali’s detention, the Israeli security authorities and judicial system have created the impression that Tali committed serious crimes against “state security” as she assisted in carrying out attacks, and that she is a danger to the public. The campaign against her borders on bloodletting.
Tali Fahima is a political activist. Out of political and human considerations she forged connections with Fatah members (the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades) in the Jenin refugee camp. In the wake of the Israeli assassination attempt against the organisation’s leader, Zachariah Zbeidi, Tali publicly declared in the past her willingness to act as his ‘human shield’. She visited the Jenin refugee camp several times and from May 2004 began to establish an enrichment programme (library and computer room) for the children of the camp, a goal thwarted by her arrest. All of Tali’s activities were done publicly and many of them were covered, at the initiative of Tali, by the Israeli press.
Tali Fahim is in prison, isolated and silenced. Her very activities amongst the Palestinians, her very identification with the Palestinian struggle to end the occupation, threaten the fundamental Israeli view that negates any type of struggle against the occupation. Her very presence in the Jenin refugee camp threatens the Israeli propaganda which equates the struggle against the occupation with the desire to annihilate Israel and the Jews – this view which produces terror and its ramifications; the view which builds settlements, demolishes homes and infrastructures, implements a policy of assassinations, builds walls and checkpoints.
On Sunday 30 January 2005, in the High Court in Jerusalem, Judge Eliyakim Rubenstein published his decision to accept the State’s appeal of the District Court ruling to move Tali Fahima to house arrest, and decided to remand her in custody until the conclusion of legal proceedings. Amongst other things, Rubenstein wrote that “before us is the dangerousness of a person who significantly identifies with an ideological goal, at a time when the border between expressing solidarity for acts of assistance was blurred and even erased; and so a person becomes “a prisoner of a goal” and this is “even if others could read the material”.
On 24 January 2005 Judge Gorfinkel of the Tel Aviv District Court decided to reject the state request to remand Tali to custody until the conclusion of legal proceedings and ruled that Tali should be moved to house arrest. Unlike the tens of other judges who ruled before him in the matter of Tali, it appears that Judge Gorfinkel was the first who actually carefully read the legal file and was not simply influenced by the State Attorney’s Office, which is unsupported by any evidence, and the GSS campaign of fear and threats. Judge Rubenstein reversed the decision and again closed ranks with the system.
On Sunday 26 December 2004, charges were brought against Tali involving “assistance to the enemy at time of war, providing information to the enemy for his benefit, contact with a foreign agent, possessing firearms with no legal authorization, support for a terrorist organization and the violation of a legal directive.” These frightening charges, conviction for which can lead to long years in prison, are based on the suspicion that Tali Fahima read and explained to Jenin’s Fatah activists a document left there by the Israeli army, and which documented an operation intended to kill or detain the “wanted persons” detailed in it. “In the wake of the explanations of the accused”, notes the charge sheet, “Zbeidi later ordered the wanted persons to hide until the conclusion of the military operation…the wanted persons, who carried out Zbeidi’s directive and hid, were not detained.” Tali was further charged with supporting a terrorist organization due to her statements in the press against the assassination of Zbeidi and declaration that she would serve as his ‘human shield’. More minor charges in the charge sheet refer to the contention that Tali held a rifle and fired one shot, in addition to her very entry into Jenin and the meeting with fighters in the camp. One does not need to be an expert in security to know that wanted persons do not need Tali Fahima to know that the Israeli army is searching for them, and certainly not to read military documents which fall into their hands. When one sees the “confidential document” which contains primarily pictures and aerial photos, it is unclear what needs to be read and and what needs to be explained.
Tali Fahima was detained on 9 August 2004 on her way to Jenin, and was subsequently questioned during a grueling 28 day GSS interrogation. The interrogation included sexual harassment, a filthy cell which was lit 24 hours a day, eye covering and painful cuffings. During the “interrogation”, the interrogators attempted to “make Tali into a good Jewish girl” (so they told her) and convince her that there is no occupation. Despite Tali’s repeated questions, they refused to tell her with what she was specifically charged. When no evidence against her was found, they placed her in administrative detention. For three months Tali was held in isolation in the Neve Tirza prison, a victim of abuse by the jailers who were the only people apart from her mother and attorney whom she was allowed to see. Almost one month of the three was spent by Tali in solitary confinement, during which she was punished and not allowed canteen privileges, cigarettes, personal items such as shampoo, toothpaste, letters and books. On 5 December, one day before the District Court hearing concerning the extension of her administrative detention, she was once again taken for three weeks of interrogation by the GSS. This interrogation also included torture and physical and mental abuse. In the first days of the interrogation, Tali’s hands were cuffed behind her to a chair, she was prevented use of the toilet and medical attention. At the conclusion of this interrogation a charge sheet was presented.
No to legal and political persecution! No to detentions without trial! No to the assassination policy! No to separation! No to walls! No to checkpoints!
For Palestinian-Israeli Solidarity against the Occupation!
