‎Finally, I visited Palestine . This is my experience in Israeli detention after my arrest and my colleagues in the “Steadfastness Flotilla”…‎ ‎*… By Dr. Lina Tabbal, Lebanese Academic and Researcher, France‎

• ‎Finally, I visited Palestine

  This is my experience in Israeli detention after my arrest and my colleagues in the “Steadfastness Flotilla”…‎

‎*… By Dr. Lina Tabbal, Lebanese Academic and Researcher, France‎
 
‎This is how this article begins, and this is how the message addressed to me by my friend and sister, “Um Al-Qassam”, the wife of the militant “Marwan Barghouti”… Yes, I finally visited Palestine, a painful and beautiful visit, and a crossing between two wounded.‎
‎I saw the Negev desert stretching in front of me with endless inertia. I watched it for two hours from a narrow opening in a closed metal truck, not even suitable for transporting udamaged goods. The occupation decided to test our ability to remain silent under pressure, extreme heat, and the noise of their air conditioners… But the vision of the land of Palestine has made time stop, and no longer is the favorite ritual of torture of the occupation… When the truck stopped in front of the airport to deport us, they threatened to re-arrest us if we raised victory badges.‎
‎A heavily armed army, the fourth in the world, and a nuclear state that is afraid of raised fingers! What power is this that terrifies of a symbol??‎
‎We went out quietly, with our heads held high, singing a quiet song about Palestine, and chanting slogans and signs of victory.‎
‎Then I saw the mountains in front of me… The remote mountain range stretches to the horizon. That moment was a moment of tranquility, calm, and a spiritual feeling like no other…‎
‎I assure you, yes, the vision of Palestine is clear. Worth it all.‎
‎The mountains, then close your eyes… Imagine it in front of you.‎
‎We are a group that wanted to sail and break the siege of Gaza on a humanitarian mission, not a violent one. We carried flour, medicines, and the rest of our conscience and humanity. You know the rest of the story: we were kidnapped in international waters, under the sun and at sea, but we came close to Gaza… We saw Gaza at dawn: Yes, we saw it while we were kidnapped, and above us the sky of Palestine.‎
‎The interception was “professional,” as the IDF likes to describe its crimes exactly: illegal, inhumane, but justified as usual.‎
‎They took us to the port of Ashdod, and there began the usual Israeli parade: insults, threats… The same hatred that has not changed in decades is the same language, the same vanity, the same racial decadence.‎
‎They threw us in the trucks… Those that are not fit to transport anything, not human beings, not even damaged goods. A policewoman pushed me into a metal cell that was no more than one and a half meters away, barely holding four human breaths. I hit my head against the metal wall of the truck, and for a moment I thought she had shot me… Next to me, Rima Hassan, a member of parliament, turned to me and said, “They beat me too; they will probably take us to my solitary confinement, but at least we are together.” We laughed because fear, when it gets tired, turns into cold irony.‎
‎Soon after, the policewoman threw a 70-year-old Algerian woman named “Zubeida”, a former deputy, into the cell, along with “Cyrine”, a young activist.‎
‎Four women from three continents in one cage that doesn’t even hold their breath. The atmosphere is suffocating, and the air the truck breathes is a mixture of violence and threats… Our bodies were wet with sweat, and when they were completely burned from the heat, they decided to turn on the cold air conditioner, not out of mercy, but as part of a careful engineering of torture… The occupation is adept at torture: it changes the temperature cold… Then hot… Then cool.‎
‎They took us to the detention center, to our rooms in Sections 5 and 6….The women were divided into 14 cells. I was put in cell number seven. A nice number, but it brought me bad luck on the first night, and at 4 a.m., Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of the ominous spell, came to us. He stupidly said, “I am the Minister of National Security. He brought his army and his police dogs to the middle of the cell to threaten sleeping women. He asked me about my nationality, shut up. What if I say Lebanese? No… I’d rather sleep now than open a battle.‎
‎Didn’t I say to you, Ben-Gvir, before you move or speak, consult artificial intelligence? At least he has “intelligence.”‎
‎As for your stupidity, if it were renewable energy, it would light up the entire Negev desert, and perhaps illuminate the darkness of your mind as well.‎
‎In the morning, they woke us up to a repeat count: 14 women, yes, every morning, and every time they count, the number does not change… They come again, but the number does not change; they insist on counting a lot, especially at night… We would laugh at every count and go back to sleep.‎
‎Food is almost non-existent, water is not water, and the threat of death and gas is always present. We have no rights, no lawyer, no doctor, no medicine. Even paracetamol does not exist.‎
‎Every day, we were driven to the cage that looked like the Guantánamo cages. It is 15 meters in size, and they cram about 60 women under the Negev sun for five or seven hours, under the pretext of going to see a judge who may not come, sometimes doesn’t. One time, the policeman pointed his gun at my head because I didn’t put my hands behind my back. “I’m going to kill you,” he said with pathetic seriousness, and I smiled at him.‎
‎Our favorite game was when we challenged them with one voice: “Come on, kill me!” … “Kill us”… Words with which we extinguish fear as one extinguishes a candle and then rekindles it. The Israeli police didn’t understand from which planet we came. We tried them. We were singing and shouting “Long live Palestine”, staring directly into their eyes with a firmness and a smile that might have embarrassed them from themselves… One of the cops told me, “What you’re doing is good…‎
‎I don’t deny my fear: I was scared, nervous, and tired throughout my detention, and the possibility of worst-case scenarios was constantly present. But he has the right and is not afraid to claim it over and over again, is he not, my friend?‎
‎We kept shouting and shouting, and then they would come to us with weapons, gas, and dogs, and as soon as they got away, we would return the ball again.‎
‎The most beautiful thing I have read in my life was written on the walls of the cells of this detention center… Names engraved with nails and with a pen bullet we found behind the window… Abu Iyad, Abu Ma’mun, Abu Omar, Abu Muhammad from Beit Lahiya, Jabalya, Hay al-Amal, Shujaiya, and northern Gaza. They wrote the dates of their arrest on the walls, the last of which was September 28, and they said that we were deported from here today… Maybe they emptied it and prepared the cells for us.‎
‎In cell number 7, the youngest was Judith, a young German woman no more than eighteen, along with Lucia, a Spanish MP, Marita, a Swedish activist, Jona, an American politician and singer, Zubeida, an Algerian MP, Hayat, a correspondent for Al Jazeera, Patty, a member of the Greek parliament, Dara, a Greek filmmaker, and others. We are all from different cultures, we have become one voice behind bars: “Long live Palestine!”‎
‎I decided to deal with the jailers the way a human rights defender deals with the facts: first by documentation, then by classification. There is the “good”, the one who smuggles the news to me as if it were secret letters, the date of his release, and the visit of the consuls. Then the “villain” who shoots his gaze every morning to remind you that hatred exists. And finally, the “apathetic” is the one who does not hate or like, only executes neither hates nor likes. It is a type of management robot that spins without conscience.‎
‎Then came the time for cultural entertainment: they forced us to watch a propaganda film about “October 7September 28.” We refused, simply shouting “Stop the genocide in Gaza”… They went crazy and we rejected it again and screamed again… This was our last little battle, and we won it as well.‎
‎I forgot to tell you that we were in a detention center called the Negev. In Hebrew, they call it “Katsioth”, and in the first intifada, its name was “Ansar 2 Detainee”. A window of my cell overlooks a stadium. There is a giant plaque of a destroyed Gaza with the words “New Gaza” written underneath it, and on the wall is a huge, arrogant Israeli flag.‎
‎This is how my visit to Palestine was: a party of torture, threats, and a temporary imprisonment in an occupied territory. But I saw the mountains, I saw Gaza from afar, and I saw the Israeli fear up close.‎
‎Yes, finally… I visited Palestine,‎
‎And the rest of the story … Wait for us in December, the ships stop a bit, but keep sailing.‎
‎*… By Dr. Lina Tabbal, Lebanese Academic and Researcher/France‎
Finally, I visited Palestine. This is my experience in an Israeli detention center after my arrest and my colleagues in the “Steadfastness Flotilla”… By Dr. Lina Al-Tabal, Academic and Core Researcher.

# Translated from Arabic by Ibrahim Ebeid.