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February 25th, 2022 
Awake Goy An Israeli court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli anti-apartheid activist Neta Golan, after she refused to appear in court in solidarity with a months-long boycott of Israeli courts by Palestinian administrative detainees.
The magistrate court in Ashdod issued a warrant for Golan, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), on February 21st after she refused to appear before the court for a hearing regarding an indictment against her.
The case against Golan is in regards to her participation in solidarity protests on the Gaza border in 2020.
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In her letter to the court, Golan wrote: “This act is in solidarity with the 500 Palestinian administrative detainees who are currently detained without a time limit, without an indictment and without their or their lawyer’s access to the suspicions against them…I join the detainees demand that Israel stop it’s extensive and cynical use of administrative detention against Palestinians.”
Since January 1st, 500 Palestinian administrative detainees, who are being held in Israeli prison without charge or trial, have engaged in a collective and comprehensive boycott of Israeli military courts.
As part of the boycott, the detainees have refused to participate in court procedures and hearings on all levels, while their legal counsel have also refused to participate in court procedures on their behalf.
“The court that allows me rights as a Jew by virtue of my ethnic origin, and does not offer the same rights to indigenous people of another origin, is part of a discriminatory system that aims to encourage the preservation of a Jewish majority between the river and the sea,” Golan wrote in her letter to the court.
“The same system commits criminal acts for the purpose of maintaining a regime of control by one racial group over another racial group and their systematic oppression. This is the definition of the crime of apartheid. And I’m not willing to cooperate with this crime,” she said.
In her letter, Golan highlighted the case of Palestinian teenager Amal Nakhleh, who has been imprisoned by Israel under administrative detention for over a year, and suffers from a rare auto-immune disease.
Nakhleh is one of 500 Palestinian prisoners currently in administrative detention, and one of 180 Palestinian children imprisoned by Israel.
Detainees protest punitive measures in Israeli prisons
In addition to the boycott being carried out by administrative detainees, Palestinian prisoners across Israeli prisons have been engaging in boycotts over the past weeks, in protest over Israel’s “collective punishment” of prisoners.
The boycotts began on February 6th, after the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) decreased the amount of time and number of prisoners allowed outside at once for yard time, in violation of previous agreements between the prisoners and the IPS.
Since then, prisoners have been refusing to leave their cells for their allotted yard time, also called “Fora.”
Over the past few weeks, Al Jazeera reported that IPS authorities threatened prisoners with solitary confinement in Hadarim prison, conducted raids and assaulted prisoners in Ofer prison, and subjected prisoners to arbitrary searches in the Nafha prison.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society has condemned the actions of the IPS, saying “the administration’s attempt to impose more control over the duration [of fora], as well as the number of prisoners, is part of the attempts to impose more control and oversight on prisoners.”
PPS noted that historically, through countless strikes and boycotts, increased yard time has always been high on the list of demands of prisoners.
PPS noted that yard time plays an important role in prison life, as it “effectively transforms this space [prison] into a forum in which knowledge, struggle and social relations are built, and contributes to organizing the daily life of the prisoners, in addition to the importance of the prisoner’s physical and psychological health.”
“A central goal [of IPS] is to strike the prisoners’ collective life framework at the organizational and detention levels, and to reduce the role of leadership frameworks …. which will negatively affect the prisoners’ ability to organize their organizational, detention, cultural, social and educational programs.”
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