Israel: Imprisonment made policy

Treatment of flotilla participants echoes Palestinian experience

- Hasina Kathrada

Unbowed: The South Africans who participated in the Global Sumud Flotilla, who were detained briefly by Israel, at a press conference after their arrival in Johannesburg on Wednesday. Photo: Global Sumud Flotilla

(Global Sumud Flotilla)

Israel’s prison network has become the backbone of its occupation, a machinery that turns confinement into governance and makes humiliation routine.

New evidence from Palestinian legal organisations, together with testimony from South Africans briefly detained after joining the Global Sumud Flotilla, shows how imprisonment functions not as punishment but as policy.

The flotilla, a multinational civilian convoy carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, was intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters on 1 and 2 October. More than 450 participants from 44 countries were detained.

Among them were six South Africans who were later released and deported via Jordan.

Fatima Hendricks, Zaheera Soomar, Zukiswa Wanner, Reaaz Moola, Carrie Shelver and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Mandela, returned to South Africa on Wednesday. Their accounts mirror conditions Palestinians have endured for decades.

The Adalah Legal Centre, which coordinated legal representation for most of the detainees, said they were blindfolded, denied legal counsel and treated as “illegal entrants”, despite being seized outside Israeli territorial waters.

“They were forced to enter Israel,” lawyer Lubna Tuma said.

Adalah argues Israel’s use of domestic immigration law in these circumstances breaches international maritime and humanitarian law, the same legal elasticity that allows occupation to pass as administration.

A fact sheet released on 7 October by the Palestinian Prisoner's Society, Addameer and the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs places these incidents in scale.