British aid worker goes on hunger strike in Israeli jail
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Your support makes all the difference.A British university research fellow was on hunger strike in an Israeli jail yesterday after being arrested while on a humanitarian mission.
Josie Sandercock, 32, was among a group of International Solidarity Movement activists trying to act as a human shield in the Balata refugee camp by staying with Palestinian families, documenting events and accompanying ambulances. As she and seven other protesters were returning home down an alleyway on Saturday night, they were cornered by Israeli soldiers, arrested and bundled into trucks.
Ms Sandercock, a research fellow in the Department of Public Health and Epidemiology at the University of Birmingham, was being held at the Ramle women's prison near Tel Aviv with two others from the group – Darlene Wallach, an American, and Valery Courreges, who is French. Five men, from Australia, Jordan, Japan, Iceland and Denmark, were also arrested.
Dr Amanda Burls, a university colleague, said Ms Sandercock had managed to get a call through to her. "She told me that she and others had begun a hunger strike because they were being detained illegally – no charges had been brought. She was speaking very quickly because she only had a limited time on the phone but asked me to reassure her mother. Josie seemed all right, a little distressed and a little emotional but not really scared. She was very calm.
"This was her first humanitarian mission abroad. She had been on demonstrations before but this was the first time she had really been active."
Another colleague, Dr Tom Marshall, a lecturer, described Ms Sandercock, from Bearwood, Birmingham, as a very genuine, hard-working teacher, who was affronted by injustice. He said: "People are quite calm about this. We realise she is not in any immediate danger. The people she went to help are really in a lot more danger and I think she recognises that herself. We expect to see her back here before too long."
Ms Sandercock and 17 fellow protesters had been working as part of a human shield at the Palestinian refugee camp in the disputed territory of Nablus. She flew to the region last Tuesday, using her annual leave for the three-week trip.
Ms Sandercockis now appealing against a deportation order with the help of a lawyer from the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment.
Elana Wesley, a peace activist, said she had spoken to Ms Sandercock soon after her arrest and said she had appeared in relatively good spirits. Ms Sandercock and Ms Wallach, who were sharing a cell, had refused food, accepting only water. "They are doing very well considering. So far they are OK," Ms Wesley added.
British consulate officials visited Ms Sandercock on Tuesday, a Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday.
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