Israel has detained a Spanish humanitarian worker without charge for two weeks

Juana Ruiz Sánchez, Spanish citizen and project coordinator of the Health Work Committees (HWC), imprisoned in Israel.

The Israeli Shin Bet (internal intelligence service) has been detaining the Spanish citizen Juana Ruiz Sánchez, 60, who has lived with her Palestinian husband near Bethlehem since 1984 without charge for two weeks. the military jurisdiction in force under the occupation, which allows the arrest of suspects for questioning to be prolonged up to 75 days. He has worked for three decades for a Palestinian NGO, where he coordinates the aid of humanitarian associations and Spanish public entities for health programs. The Consulate General of Spain in Jerusalem was not officially informed by the Israeli authorities of her arrest, the first of the humanitarian worker after 37 years in the Middle East.

This Monday he is scheduled to appear in the West Bank prison of Ofer, 17 kilometers north of Jerusalem, before a military court that must decide on the possible extension of his detention. Juana Ruiz is in the Hasaron prison, 25 kilometers north of Tel Aviv, and has finally received consular assistance after her relatives reported her situation to the Spanish diplomatic services. Due to the protocols in force during the pandemic, the new court appearance will be carried out electronically, although the detainee has been transferred on several occasions to a Shin Bet interrogation center in Ashkelon, 58 kilometers south of Tel Aviv .

Diplomatic sources familiar with his case assure that Ruiz is in apparent good condition, within the prolonged detention, although he has not been able to receive the personal effects that his relatives want to give him. A doctor recognized her in prison after she alleged that she needed medication to treat an illness. Her lawyer, Ibrahim al Araj, told Efe news agency that she is very concerned, as she does not understand why she is being held after three court sessions to extend her arrest. “Juana is not well; he is suffering a lot and every day [he appears] in court he cries without stopping ”, the lawyer assured.

The humanitarian worker was detained by a score of Israeli soldiers in the early morning of the 13th at her home in Beit Sahur, in the province of Bethlehem, where she lives with her husband, the Palestinian Christian Elías Rismawi. The two children of the marriage reside in Spain. The operation came a month after the Army stormed the headquarters of the Health Work Committees, the NGO in which the Spanish citizen works, in Ramallah, the administrative headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, according to a campaign statement. of solidarity organized in Spain for his release.

In the raid, in which files and computer equipment were seized, the head of the NGO's accounting department, Taysir Abu Sharbak, was arrested. "These circumstances make us suspect that those responsible for the arrests seek to demonstrate some type of crime related to the financing of the projects carried out by the organization and that they intend to involve Juana Ruiz in this accusation," the statement reads. The organizers of the campaign demand that the Spanish Government "take action on the matter" and manage the "immediate release" of Ruiz, since they fear that the system of "administrative detention" will be applied, which allows the Shin Bet to indefinitely prolong the deprivation of liberty without the need to press charges.

A spokeswoman for the family in Palestine considers that the arrest of the Spanish humanitarian worker and the search at the headquarters of the NGO where she works are part of a "strategy of the Israeli security services against Palestinian civil society organizations." .

The arrests and searches take place on the eve of the legislative elections in Palestine next month, the first elections to be called in 15 years.

Legislative elections in Palestine

Amid the official silence of military spokesmen on the situation of the detainee and the charges against her, Israeli media have indicated that on the list of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine party - classified as a terrorist group by Israel, EE USA and the EU after the Second Intifada (2000-2005) - Walid Hanatsha is listed as a candidate, arrested after being accused of being involved in an attack in which an Israeli teenager died in the West Bank in 2019. Hanatsha had previously held the position of administrative and financial director of the Work Committees for Health. Another of those arrested for the same attack filed a complaint against the Shin Bet for torture during his interrogation, which was finally shelved by Israel's attorney general.

The organizers of the campaign for the release of Juana Ruiz rule out that she may have diverted funds from her NGO, since she does not handle the accounts - she speaks Arabic, but writes and reads it with difficulty - and is dedicated to coordinating health cooperation programs with Spanish organizations, which receive funds from institutional donors, and whose execution is audited in Spain. The family spokesperson in Palestine also highlights that the missions with mobile clinics of the Work for Health Committees aimed at attending to the population without health coverage in Area C of the West Bank (60% of the occupied territory, which is under exclusive control of Israel) are seen as interference by the Israeli security services.

In a confidential report addressed two years ago to the heads of the EU Foreign Service in Brussels, the ambassadors of the European countries to the Palestinian Authority called for a reform of the Israeli military justice, in order to “guarantee a fair trial and trial. in accordance with international law ”, given the“ systematic legal discrimination ”suffered by Palestinians in the West Bank after more than half a century of occupation. While Israeli civil law applies to Jewish settlers in the settlements, martial law applies to Palestinians in the West Bank. As Juana Ruiz Sánchez is now checking.