An Israeli military court issued a six-month Administrative Detention order against feminist Palestinian leader, lawyer, activist, and member of the Legislative Council Khalida Jarrar, holding her captive without charges or trial.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) said the leftist leader received the arbitrary Administrative Detention order Thursday, only sixteen days after Israeli soldiers kidnapped her from her home.
Jarrar was kidnapped on December 26, 2023, when the soldiers stormed and ransacked her home, causing damage.
Israel kidnapped Jarrar many times since she was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006, and during her imprisonment, her daughter, Suha Ghassan Jarrar, 30, died of a heart attack, and her imprisoned mother was deprived of the right to bid her farewell.
Suha was also a committed Palestinian human rights defender who worked with the Al-Haq Human Rights organization and spoke around the world, defending and upholding Palestinian rights and liberation.
In 2014, Khalida resisted – and defeated – an Israeli attempt to forcibly displace her from her family home in Al-Biereh to Jericho.
In April 2015, she was kidnapped by Israeli occupation forces and ordered to administrative detention and imprisonment without charge or trial. After a global outcry, she was brought before Israeli military courts and faced 12 charges based on her political activity, from giving speeches to attending events in support of Palestinian prisoners. She served 15 months in an Israeli prison – and was then free for only 13 months before her 2017 arrest.
During her imprisonment in 2017, the feminist leader was also imprisoned by the Israeli occupation authorities; during her imprisonment, her father died, and she was deprived of the right to bid him farewell.
On November 1, 2019, the army abducted Jarrar only eight months after her release from 20 months in Israeli administrative detention – imprisonment without charge or trial – after her last arrest by occupation forces in 2017.
During her detention from 2017 to 2019, over 275 organizations signed an international call for her release.
The 2019 attack by Israeli occupation forces also came as she prepared to teach at Bir Zeit University on international law and the Palestinian movement, the forced cancellation of her class accompanying the targeting of students for their own political and student activity on campus.
Israeli soldiers kidnapped Jarrar for the first time in April 2015 and held her under the same arbitrary Administrative Detention orders for six months.
In December 2015, she was sentenced to 15 months in prison after a plea bargain was struck between the military prosecutor and her lawyers. She was released in June of 2016 but was then abducted and imprisoned under the same administrative detention orders for a second time the following month.
From 1994 to 2006, Khalida served as the General Director of Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association, a Palestinian non-governmental civil society organization that works to support Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli and Palestinian prisons. Since then, she became a member of the Board of Directors of Addameer, serving on the board until late 2017.
