Khalida Jarrar: A Palestinian Activist Dedicated to Literacy

Khalida Jarrar. Photo via social media.
 

By Leni Villagomez Reeves

In Gaza, statistics are important. We can know the official count of the dead, but also realize that this represents only those who have been identified and that many more bodies remain – dead but unidentified and uncounted – under the bombed homes and hospitals, schools and refugee camps. We can know that most people in Gaza are displaced and hungry. The number of doctors killed, the number of reporters, the number of children injured and without medical care: these are important numbers.  But numbers have no faces. However, it is possible to see ourselves in the life of Khalida Jarrar, a Palestinian woman, human rights and women’s rights activist and scholar, who has recently been arrested after writing a research paper titled "Violations against Female and Male Prisoners during the Genocidal War on Gaza," in which she detailed the violations and crimes committed against prisoners inside Israeli occupation prisons since October 7th.

Khalida was born in Nablus in the West Bank on February 9, 1963 and now lives in Ramallah. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and a Master’s degree in Democracy and Human Rights from Birzeit University. She served as a Director of Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association from 1994 to 2006, when she was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) – the Palestinian parliament. She now heads the PLC’s Prisoners Commission, in addition to her role on the Palestinian National Committee for follow-up with the International Criminal Court.

Khalida has been arrested and imprisoned numerous times, first in 1989 on International Women’s Day when she spent a month in prison for taking part in the March 8 rally. After attending the Human Rights Defenders Summit in Paris in 1998, she was banned by Israeli authorities from traveling outside of the occupied Palestinian territories.

Her most recent arrest, on Dec  26, occupation forces broke down her door at 5AM, her husband, Ghassan Jarrar, told media outlets. It is not clear if it is the publication of the paper, published only a few days earlier, or her involvement in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a faction in the Palestine Liberation Organisation, that led to the arrest. The PFLP is considered a “terrorist” group by Israel, the US and the EU, according to media reports. "Khaleda Jarrar, a wanted terrorist, was arrested... along with other PFLP activists," the army said in a statement.

The PFLP, in a statement, added that Israel's army launched a "vast campaign” that morning to arrest “leaders” of the group in the occupied West Bank. "These arrests will not break the will of our people," it said.

History of Arrests Without Trials

In 2015, Khalida was seized in a pre-dawn raid by Israeli occupation soldiers, who stormed her house in Ramallah. Initially, she was held in administrative detention without trial but, following an international outcry, Israeli authorities tried Khalida Jarrar in a military court on 12 charges, based on her political activities. Some of the charges included giving speeches, holding vigils and expressing support for Palestinian detainees and their families. She spent 15 months in prison.  

Khalida Jarrar was released in June 2016, only to be arrested again in July 2017, in a raid on her home by Israeli soldiers. She was again held under administrative detention. She was interrogated at Ofer Prison before being transferred to HaSharon Prison, where many Palestinian female prisoners are held. During this period of imprisonment she developed a literacy program for Palestinian women prisoners. She was released in February 2019, after spending nearly 20 months in prison. 

She was re-arrested in Ramallah in October  2019 and held without trial or charge until March 2021, when she plea-bargained with the Israeli military court, “admitting” that she was a member of PFLP, in order to avoid indefinite detention.  She was released in September 2021.

Khalida’s husband Ghassan, whom she met when they both were students, is also an activist. Ghassan has been arrested 14 times and has spent about 11 years in administrative detention in Israeli prisons, without charges. They had two daughters, Yafa, who has a law degree, and Suha, who had an MS in climate change science and policy. Suha died in 2021 of cardiac complications. Khalida, who was imprisoned at the time, was denied compassionate leave to attend the funeral.

In Her Own Words

“Hope in prison is like a flower that grows out of a stone. For us Palestinians, education is our greatest weapon. With it, we will always be victorious.” — Khalida Jarrar.

Khalida wrote about her prison literacy campaign, carried out during her own periods of imprisonment. She said she decided to “make it my mission” to focus on the issue of education for women who were denied the opportunity to finish school, whether as children or those who were denied such a right due to difficult social conditions.

“Just seeing the excitement on the faces of the girls when I floated the idea by them inspired me to take on the daunting task, the first such initiative in the history of Palestinian women prisoners in Israeli jails.

“We had few school supplies. In fact, each class had to share a single textbook that was left by Palestinian child prisoners before they were transferred by IPS to another facility. We copied the few textbooks by hand; this way, several students were able to follow the lessons at the same time.”

In another account she writes:

“In July 2017, the Israeli military arrested me again, this time for 20 months. I returned to the same HaSharon Prison. There were many more female prisoners than before. Immediately, with the help of other qualified prisoners, we began preparing for the fourth group to graduate. This time, nine female prisoners were studying for the exam. There were more volunteer teachers and administrators. The prison had suddenly bloomed, turning into a place of learning and empowerment.

“The prison administration went crazy! They accused me of incitement and began a series of retaliatory measures to shut down the whole schooling process. We accepted the challenge. When they closed our classroom, we went on strike. When they confiscated our pens and pencils, we used crayons instead. When they hauled away our blackboard, we unhooked a window and wrote on it. We smuggled it from one room to another, during the times that we had designated for learning. The prison guards tried every trick in the book to prevent us from our right to education. To show our determination to defeat the prison authorities, we named the fourth group ’The Cohort of Defiance’.  In the end, our will proved mightier than their injustice. We completed the entire process. All the girls who took the final exam passed with flying colors.

“In the end, we did more than fashion hope out of despair. We also evolved in our narrative, in the way we perceive ourselves, the prison and the prison guards. We defeated any lingering sense of inferiority and turned the walls of prison into an opportunity. When I saw the beautiful smiles on the faces of my students who completed their high school education in prison, I felt that my mission has been accomplished.”

Khalida’s International Women’s Day statement, issued during one of her many periods of imprisonment reminds us that the struggle of women includes not only women in prison, but all struggling for freedom from oppression:

“On this day, we affirm that we are Palestinian prisoners of struggle, and part of the Palestinian women’s movement, and that the national and social struggle goes on constantly and continuously until we win our freedom from occupation, and our freedom as women from all forms of injustice, oppression, violence and discrimination against women. On this day, Palestinian women mark this occasion in light of the crimes of the occupation against Palestinian women, children, elders and youth. This year, our call focuses on the freedom and self-determination of our people, and the freedom and self-determination of Palestinian women: achieving equality and liberation, and ending all forms of oppression and injustice committed against them. We stand as part of a global struggle with all the world’s women freedom fighters: against injustice, exploitation and oppression.”