Solidarity with Palestinian Hunger Striker Remembering Pat McGivern and well done Breanndán O Beaglaoich

Léargas: A Podcast by Gerry Adams

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It’s Gerry Adams and in this podcast I want to deal with a number of issues: a hunger strike by a Palestinian prisoner Maher al-Akhras and the success of Breanndán O Beaglaoich

First of all I want to welcome, after 103 days, the end of the hunger strike by Palestinian prisoner Maher al Akhras.

It is a testimony to his courage and fortitude and determination to highlight a grave injustice by the Israeli authorities.

There is a close affinity between the people of Ireland and the people of Palestine.

We both have a long history of being colonised.

We have both been the victim of occupation, state violence, discrimination and forced emigration.

And the experience of struggle has also been similar.

Last week we in Ireland and throughout the world remembered the deaths on hunger strike 100 years ago of Terence MacSwiney, Michael Fitzgerald and Joseph Murphy.

It is therefore relevant in terms of our own memory, and in particular of that of the 1980 and 81 hunger strikes when 10 Republican prisoners died, that we express solidarity with this Palestinian internee.

Maher was arrested on 27 July and spent the following 103 days on hunger strike protesting against his detention.

He is a father of six children.

He is a dairy farmer from a village in the occupied West Bank.

He has not been charged with any alleged offence.

Like thousands of Palestinians over recent years he is the victim of administrative detention.

This procedure is effectively ‘internment without charge’, internment without trial.

It is a practice used by the British state and the old Unionist Stormont regime in every decade since the creation of this state, until the 1970s when it was used for five years.

A person arrested under administrative detention is held with a trial.

The Israeli state does not have to accuse him/her of having committed an offense.

There is no time limit on the length of the time they can imprison someone.

In some cases it has lasted years.

Currently according to the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, 355 Palestinians are being held under administrative detention, two of them are minors.

In the last 20 years the Israeli government has enforced over 30,000 administrative detention orders.

The Irish govt is now a member of the UN Security Council. It campaigned for membership on the themes of “Partnership, Empathy and Independence”.

If it is to be true to these it demand that the Israeli government end the use of administrative detention. It should also move now to fulfill motions passed in the Oireachtas several years ago and recognise the state of Palestine.

I would also urge readers to write to Maher who is being held in the Kaplan Medical Centre, Pasternak St. P.O.Box 1, Rehovot 76100, Israel or email its Public Relations Dept at [e-mail]