Abdallah Abu Rahma, known for his role as coordinator of the Popular Comittee of Bil’in and as a member of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Coordination Committee platform, received a four-month suspended prison sentence on 23 February, and a fine of about US$1,300. He will have to serve the sentence if he does anything in the next three years that the authorities consider that involves violence or “obstructing a soldier in the line of duty.”
Abdallah Abu Rahma is 44 years old, father of two young boys and a girl, and he used to be a primary teacher in the Palestinian town of Bil’lin. Today he is a pro-human rights activist, recognised by the European Union. On the 21st of October of 2014, the Ofer military court close to Ramallah, declared him guilty for interfering in the work of a soldier during a pacific demonstration commemorating the Naqba (the catastrophe), and in solidarity with the political prisoners, many of them on a hunger strike.
On the 13th of May of 2012, Abdallah stood in front of a bulldozer preventing his operator from repairing a fence built in the town of Beitunia. According to the activist, this structure was intended to control and shoot the palestinian population. “They said I was in front of a bulldozer, that I did not let them continue working and it is for that reason the military court has declared me guilty” he explained to Al Jazeera. His version of the story has been corroborated by an Israeli military.
It is not the first time Abdallah is convicted of crime: in 2010 he was condemned to 12 months of prison for collecting tins of tear gas and bullets – shot at demonstrators by the Israeli military-, that he was using to show the violence committed against Palestinian activists. This first sentence, is an evidence of the legal persecution Palestinian activists suffer, with the objective of silencing and disarming them.
Despite the fact that, in his sentencing hearing, the military prosecution described Abu Rahmah’s nonviolent protest as an ideological crime, the Palestinian activist affirms that he will not give up in the fight against the Israeli occupation and will continue protesting actively against the occupation of palestinian territory. “We have a right to protest and express our opinion- this is the way to defend human rights and refuse the occupation” declared, “the court’s decision is disappointing and unacceptable, the purpose of the punishment is to make us stop our struggle.”
According to his lawyer, Gaby Lasky,“Abdallah is a human rights defender and has the right to protest against the occupation. There is no existing legal base that can justify his arrest”. According to Lasky “it seems that persecuting a Palestinian for a symbolic act of nonviolence against the occupation has more of a political meaning than a criminal one”.
Abdallah and other demonstrators during a pacific protest in Bil’lin, 2009.
When the judge issued the sentence, he noted (LINK AMNESTY) that Abdallah Abu Rahma had not been convicted of participating in a demonstration. This was in direct contradiction, according to his lawyer, to the court’s October 2014 findings. In his explanation of the sentence, the judge concluded that Abdallah Abu Rahma’s action had been neither pre-planned nor violent but an act of passive resistance which had not resulted in any substantial harm. The court also acknowledged evidence presented by the defence that in 2010 the European Union had declared Abdallah Abu Rahma a “Human Rights Defender committed to non-violent protest against the route of the Israeli separation barrier through his West Bank village of Bil’in”, as well as materials from Amnesty International which argued that he was being prosecuted for exercising his right to peaceful protest.
As a member of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Coordination Committee platform, Abdallah is part of a popular movement opposed to the construction of the separation wall, the occupation and the expansion of settlements, and that reports human rights violations committed against the Palestinian population under the Israeli apartheid. Abdalllah is also the head of the Popular Committee Against the Wall of Bil’in, an occupied West Bank village known for its weekly protests and which has become the reference for nonviolence in the West Bank since the year 2005, when the mobilizations began. For this reason, Bil’in is also one of the military objectives of the Israeli army, and his members report continued arrests and aggressions. Up to the date, three citizens have been assassinated by the Israeli military, the three of them being Abdallah’s relatives: Bassem Abu Rahmeh was shot during a protest in 2009; his sister Jawaher Abu Rameh died of excessive inhalation of tear gas; and his brother, the activist Ashraf Abu Rameh, detained in 2008, was handcuffed, blindfolded and shot dead. The investigations of these crimes have been stopped and the Israeli soldiers responsible for these murders still enjoy impunity.
Catherine Ashton, the EU High Representative of Foreign Affairs has shown her concern for Abdallah’s inability to exercise his rights such as demonstrating pacifically defending his human rights and those of his people and has recognized him as a human rights defender: ” the possible imprisonment of Mr Abu Rahma is an attempt to prevent him and others activists exercising their legitimate right to protest peacefully against the existence separation barrier .”
In response to the sentencing, these were Lansky’s words: “It’s about time that the military occupation regime stop viewing everyone nonviolently opposing it as a criminal. Instead, the police and army should enforce the law against those settlers whose crimes the law chooses to ignore, including violence and land theft.”
