From Jerusalem…
December 11, 2015 

We visited Leila Issawi’s house, mother of Samer Issawi,
who is a hero of the resistance in Jerusalem and is on jail with his brother and sister

It’s an honor for me being together with Leila Issawi, mother of today imprisoned Palestinian resistance hero Samer Issawi; other two children of hers are also in prison: Shireen Issawi brave fighter for the freedom of all political prisoners and her brother Medhat, a fighter against the Zionist occupation.
We are at the Isawiya neighbourhood (East Jerusalem); everyone already knows where the home of Leila and Tareq -"Samer parents-" is. It is a large family and today three of their children are incarcerated (Samer, Shireen and Medhat); another son was killed long ago, and their son Shadi - who has been released for now-, is not allowed to finish his studies and getting a job is difficult for him.
In addition to this, at Isawiya, one of the neighborhoods of Jerusalem where the regime of terror is felt daily, people suffer everyday harassment, and the situation is unbearable. Tareq, the father says that in many of the Arab neighborhoods on the outskirts of downtown Jerusalem the same happens. There is a security post (check point) which soldiers close the quarter when they want to, so no one can leave or enter. When they do not close it, the militarized police check everyone wanting to pass through to decide who is allowed to enter or not. Effectively, at the entrance of Isawwiya, the main street that connects it with other streets and roads there is a security post. Fascist security forces go up the bus, ask us for our identification and just then we can move on.
Leila tells us that with no reason, to add insult to injury, just in order to scare people they throw tear gas toward the neighborhood randomly, though they often choose some houses and throw the canisters specifically to each one as it has already happened to her. She tells us: "This is not all; in the prisons, the situation is even worse. For example: due to the over-population that prisons have had in recent months Shireen together with other 14 Palestinian woman prisoners had to be taken from the prison where they were (Hasharon) and carried to Damon (which is another jail for women in the middle of occupied Palestine)." And she added: "We have a right to be here, this is our land, and it belongs to us. They want to take our children and lives, our homes. We will not allow them. I don't fight just for my children, but for the children of all the Palestinian mothers."
The Palestinian masses both in Jerusalem and in the West Bank and Gaza live under a reign of terror by the fascist occupation of Israel and already in the same capital the latter have Palestinians living into real prisons... in true ghettos. The escalation of killings and repression on them goes on daily: every day in the news we can hear that a young man has been killed in Hebron or the same Jerusalem, in Ramallah, in Gaza... They have already killed more than 120 Palestinians in the last weeks. The repression has increased since the uprisings began.
The plan is not an isolated fact; the more the Grand Coalition of imperialist countries and their minions attacks and massacres in Yemen and Syria, disputing the oil business, the more Zionism imposes a regime of terror to the interior of the West Bank and Gaza making Palestinians live in ghettos and being used as cheap labor to the large maquiladoras, to collect fruits to transnationals linked to agriculture and to work in the construction. The Palestinians, especially their youth know that Zionists’ advance on their land means more hunger and lack of freedom, and working as slaves.

Pamela Parson,
Correspondent of International Worker Organizer