Word: ansar
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...where he languished in a cell for nearly three months. One day a judge handed down an order for six months of "administrative detention," based on charges contained in a file marked SECRET. On May 4, Aryan was transferred to the Negev camp, known officially as Ketziot. Like most Ansar prisoners, Aryan is presumed to be an activist and a security threat...
Today Aryan is among 28 men who spend searing days and chilly nights in a tent at one of four 200-man compounds in Ansar's Camp B, which constitutes one-third of a canvas village that sprang up on the desert plain three miles from the border with Egypt. By day the men loll on wooden pallets that are cushioned by a layer of foam and a rough gray blanket. At night prisoners are required to retire to their tents, close down the side flaps of their dwellings by 9 p.m. and not come out until reveille...
...more serious troublemaking can earn a stay in solitary of two to four days. Three times daily the prisoners are mustered outside their tents, hands behind their backs, heads down, to count off. Dr. Abdul Aziz Rantisi, once a pediatrician from Khan Yunis and now an administrative detainee at Ansar, is known as No. 561. Says he: "Our hearts are bleeding, and we prefer to die rather than do this...
...Everything is done to break our spirit," says Mutawakel Taha, 30, a journalist from Khalkilya. "We are completely isolated from everyone," says Raji Saalim, 28, who used to live in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza. Newspapers are rare at Ansar 3, books -- except the Qur'an -- and radios are unavailable. Few of the prisoners at Ansar 3 have seen any relatives, not even those who are detained in another section of the camp. The army responds that family visits to the prison have been prevented by "activist Palestinians," who intimidate relatives. The families complain about the cost, the long...
...Ansar 3 prisoners who managed to appeal their detention orders have won release. The brief appeals hearings before a three-man military tribunal generally amount to little more than ritual. And so the prisoners will continue to languish in their tents, with little to do but discuss politics. Detention, says Inmate No. 1,231, Kassan Ali, 29, of Gaza, "only strengthens our demand for national rights. Conditions here create more hatred...