Therese Halasa 1954-2020
Therese Halasa was a Palestinian revolutionary and political prisoner. She was born in occupied Palestine in 1954, just six years after the Nakba and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians from their land. Halasa grew up under Israeli martial law and was drawn into the liberation struggle from a young age. She visited the West Bank and witnessed the conditions of suffering, poverty and destitution that are endemic to the racist Zionist occupation of Palestine, and in 1971, aged 17, she left Palestine to join the resistance in Lebanon.
In 1972, she and three others hijacked the Sabena Flight 571 into Tel-Aviv, demanding the release of 315 Palestinian and Arab political prisoners being held in Zionist prisons. She was shot and captured by Israeli special forces disguised as Red Cross workers and aircraft technicians. This crack team included two future Israeli prime ministers, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli special forces killed two of the group and a passenger; Halasa, and Rima Tannous were captured. Sentenced to 220 years in prison, Halasa continued to participate in the struggle.
Despite the repression designed to crush the spirit of political prisoners, she fought back, and was taking part in a collective hunger strike when she was released in 1983 in a political prisoner swap after serving 12 years. She was expelled from occupied Palestine and lived the rest of her life in Jordan, working as a nurse caring for patients with disabilities. She participated in countless sit-ins and demonstrations for Palestine in Jordan.
Thousands of Palestinian women have been detained as political prisoners by the Israeli occupation. They continue to resist and lead the struggle even within the brutal repression of the Zionist prisons. In April 1970, Palestinian women prisoners at Neve Tirza prison launched one of the first collective hunger strikes of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement when they refused food for nine days. Their demands were an end to beatings and solitary confinement, as well as access to women’s sanitary supplies.
Therese Halasa died without seeing the liberation of her country. It is our duty here in Britain to support the struggle of the Palestinian people in their fight to exist, and it is also our responsibility to expose the role of imperialist Britain in supporting the racist occupation of Palestine. We need to continue the work of Halasa and all of the revolutionary Palestinians and political prisoners. Freedom for Palestine! Victory to the Intifada! Imperialist hands off the Middle East.
