Church Alarmed at Israel’s Refusal to Release Young Anglican Woman Detained without Charge
Bishop’s Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land Urges Awareness of Threats to Christian Minority in Israel/Palestine
From the Bishop’s Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land:
Last month, the 81st General Convention of The Episcopal Church passed Resolution D075 calling for the Immediate Release of Ms. Layan Nasir, 24, from Administrative Detention in Israel. The Episcopal Office of Government Relations was asked to advocate to the US government to pressure Israel to end the practice of administrative detention. Episcopalians are asked to pray daily for Layan and to advocate for the immediate release of Layan and all other Palestinians held under administrative detention, an unjust practice embedded in the apartheid system that Israel imposes on the occupied West Bank. On July 19, the International Court of Justice ruled that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal.
Many will remember Fr. Fadi Diab from his parish visits in the Diocese of Olympia one year ago. Layan Nasir is a member of Fr. Diab’s congregation at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Birzeit, a small community near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. In the early morning hours of April 7, a military patrol appeared at the family home, and while holding her parents at gunpoint, arrested, blindfolded, handcuffed, and arrested Layan without warrant or charge. At a July 11 hearing, a military judge denied her release from Israel’s notorious Damon prison, where severe deprivation and threatening conditions are reported. No evidence or explanation for Layan’s imprisonment has ever been given, and she has been denied contact with her family or her priest. Both Archbishop of Canterbury Welby and our own Presiding Bishop Curry have called for her release.
Administrative detention is a quasi-legal practice of military law that enables Israel to hold a Palestinian suspect indefinitely without formal charge or trial. Military law has been applied to Palestinian residents since 1967, when the West Bank was occupied by Israel. According to Israel’s B’tselem and other human rights NGOs, this two-tiered justice system discriminates against all Palestinians, both adult and children, while Israeli settlers living in the West Bank are entitled to trial by jury in civilian courts.
Administrative detention allows Palestinian children as young as 12 years to be removed from their homes (typically during night-time hours), taken to prison in Israel, and detained indefinitely without due process. Reliable reports indicate that more than 500 children are arrested each year. While some prisoners are able to obtain legal representation, many are not. When a trial does occur, a 95% conviction rate is the rule. Currently, nearly 4000 Palestinians are reported imprisoned under administrative detention. Layan is the only Christian woman now being held.
Layan’s detention is only one example of the continuing harassment of Christian laity and clergy in the West Bank and Gaza that threatens the future existence of Christians and the Christian church in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As the occupying power, the State of Israel is obliged by International Law to protect those at risk.
Along with many other Palestinian Christian leaders, Fr. Diab is urging that we, as fellow Episcopalians, pray and advocate for the release or Layan Nasir and actively press the U.S. government to facilitate the end of the injustice and human rights violations of the illegal Israeli Occupation.
