Gideon Levy

"I felt very sorry that I had not met this man."

"She is perhaps the bravest woman living today under Israeli control."

"Jarrar could end up spending the rest of her life in prison; there is no legal impediment to this since all the pathetic arguments used to justify her continued detention could be deemed valid indefinitely. If she’s dangerous today, she’s dangerous forever. Political prisoners, detention without trial and unlimited imprisonment define tyranny."

"The resistance should no longer be directed solely against the occupation. The resistance is to the regime in place in Israel. Her imprisonment is the regime and she opposes the regime under whose boots she lives."

"All those who support her continued detention, anyone who is silent while she remains in jail, and all those who make her detention possible are saying: Forget democracy. That’s not what we are. Get used to it."

"The greatest threat facing Israel is the democratic threat. There is no greater danger to the regime in Israel than its turning into a democracy. There is no society that opposes democracy like Israeli society. There are plenty of regimes opposed to democracy, but not a free society. In Israel the people, the sovereign, is opposed to democracy. This is why the current struggle, which presumes to be about democracy, is a masquerade."

"What good have all of Arafat’s compromises done for the Palestinian people? What came out of the recognition of Israel, of the settling for a on 22 percent of the territory, of the negotiations with Zionism and the United States? Nothing but the entrenchment of the Israeli occupation and the strengthening and massive development of the settlement project. In retrospect, it makes sense to think that if thats how things were, maybe it would have been better to follow the uncompromising path taken by Habash, who for most of his life didnt agree to any negotiations with Israel, who believed that with Israel it was only possible to negotiate by force, who thought Israel would only change its positions if it paid a price, who dreamed of a single, democratic and of equal rights and refused to discuss anything but that. Unfortunately, Habash was right. Its hard to know what would have happened had the Palestinians followed his path, but its impossible not to admit that the alternative has been a resounding failure."

"Not much is left of his ideas. What has come of the scientific idealism and the politicization of the masses, the class struggle and the , the and of course the transformation of the struggle against Israel into an armed struggle, which according to the plans was supposed to develop from into a national war of liberation? Fifty years after the founding of the PFLP and 10 years after the death of its founder, what remains? Habashs successor, , was assassinated by Israel in 2001; his successor’s successor, Ahmad Saadat, has been in an Israeli prison since 2006 and very little remains of the PFLP. During all my decades covering the Israeli occupation, the most impressive figures I met belonged to the PFLP, but now not much remains except fragments of dreams. The PFLP is a negligible minority in intra-Palestinian politics, a movement that once thought to demand equal power with and its leader, Arafat. And the occupation? Its strong and thriving and its end looks further off than ever. If that isn’t failure, what is?"

"A war was on. ... On July 14 he was expelled from his home with the rest of his family. He never returned to the city he loved. He never forgot the scenes of in 1948, nor did he forget the idea of violent resistance. Can the Israeli reader understand how he felt?"

"The continued detention of Palestinian parliament member can no longer be presented as a worrisome exception on Israel’s democratic landscape. Nor can the incredible public apathy and almost total absence of media coverage of her plight be dismissed any longer as a general lack of interest in what Israel does to the Palestinians. The usual repression and denial cannot explain it either. Jarrar’s detention doesn’t only define what is happening in Israel’s dark backyard, it is part of its glittering display window. Jarrar defines democracy and the in Israel. Her imprisonment is an inseparable part of the Israeli regime and it is the face of Israeli democracy, no less than its free elections (for some of its subjects) or the pride parades that wind through its streets. Jarrar is the Israeli regime no less than the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty. Jarrar is Israeli democracy without makeup and adornments. The lack of interest in her fate is also characteristic of the regime. A legislator in prison through no fault of her own is a political prisoner in every way, and political prisoners defined by the regime. There can be no political prisoners in a democracy, nor detention without trial in a state of law. Thus Jarrar’s imprisonment is not only a black stain on the Israeli regime; it’s an inseparable part of it."