A shattered dream
IN 2009, Mahmud Sarsak set out from Gaza to sign on with a West Bank football team, but what he thought was the start of a dream career quickly spiralled into a nightmare.
Three years later, the young athlete is lying in a bed in an Israeli prison clinic after spending more than 80 days without eating in protest at his being held without charge. With his case drawing more and more attention, the Israel Prison Authority said that Sarsak had ended his strike.
But the Ramallah-based Palestinian Prisoners’ Club denied the claim, as did his family, although his lawyer Mohammed Jabarin admitted Sarsak was “drinking milk” in a move which he said did not amount to breaking the strike.
Sarsak, 25, was born in Gaza and dreamed of becoming a professional footballer. As a teenager, he played several times for the Palestinian national team in Europe and the Middle East, attracting favourable attention from coaches.
So when he set out for the West Bank on July 22, 2009, he felt he had a promising career ahead of him. But he never even got there.
As he tried to pass the Erez crossing into Israel, Sarsak was arrested and has been held ever since under Israel’s socalled unlawful combatants law, which allows suspects to be held without charge under a procedure similar to administrative detention. Israeli of cials accused Sarsak of planning attacks and bombings,” but have not made public any charges or evidence against him.
“They want to kill my Mahmud,” says his mother Umm al Abed, sitting outside a solidarity tent by International Committee of the Red Cross headquarters in Gaza City. “Why isn’t the world doing anything?”
Sarsak began his hunger strike on March 23 as a wave of similar protests swept through the population of Palestinians being held in Israeli jails.
Most of the prisoners sought improved conditions, including visits from relatives living in Gaza, greater access to lawyers and an end to solitary con nement.
But many, including Sarsak, also sought an end to Israel’s use of administrative detention, a practice under which military courts can order individuals held without charge for six-month periods.
Each detention order is renewable inde nitely, and based on secret evidence which the individual and even his lawyer are often unable to see.
Sarsak’s detention has been renewed multiple times since he was rst arrested.
“We call on all the Arab and European clubs to save a footballer’s life. He could die at any minute,” his brother Imad said.
Imad Sarsak says the family has no idea why Israel is holding Mahmud, who was in his third year of a computer programming degree when he was arrested.
“They want to kill his dream as a footballer who just started his professional career,” he said. “We don’t know why they are still holding him without charge. He only cares about football and has nothing to do with politics.”