Israel releases sick Palestinian mother after month-long prison ordeal

A Palestinian mother with health conditions was released on bail after being held in an Israeli prison for a month, Palestinian prisoner activists have said.

Suhair Barghouti, a mother of six, was taken by Israel on February 5 from her home village of Kobar, north of occupied Ramallah after one of her sons was killed by Israeli forces and another, along with her husband, put in an Israeli prison.

The Palestinian Prisoner Society in a statement said she was placed in exceptionally grim conditions at the central Israeli prison of HaSharon before moving to Damon prison where she was held in a desolate cell in very cold weather conditions.

The advocate group said Barghouti, 59, was constantly transferred to the court via bus, deliberately given bad food and was refused a change a clothes, which made her all the more sick.  

On Monday she was released on a 10,000 Israeli shekels (around $3000) bail - a price considered extortionate considering the average income per capita for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank stands at $1,924, while the poverty rate is marked at 13.9 percent.

Barghouti’s son Saleh was killed by an Israeli soldier on 12 December and her other son Assem is currently prison for allegedly killing two Israeli soldiers the day after his brother died in a revenge attack.

Her husband Omar, 68, is currently being held in administrative detention.

Israel says administrative detention is intended to allow authorities to hold suspects while continuing to gather evidence, with the aim of preventing attacks in the meantime.

But the system has been criticised by Palestinians, human rights groups and members of the international community who say Israel abuses the measure.

“This is the treatment reserved to Palestinians of all walks of life whenever they have the gall to resist their oppressors” activist Malia Bouattia wrote in an article for The New Arab.

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