Days of Palestine – Ramallah
Israeli occupation prison services continue to perpetrate crimes and human rights violations against Palestinian prisoners.
The Israeli occupation regime continues to detain 4,450 prisoners, including 32 female prisoners, 160 children, and 530 administrative detainees held without charge or trial.
Since the beginning of 2022, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have arrested over 2,140 Palestinians, the majority of which took place in the occupied Palestinian cities of Jerusalem and Jenin. Arrests escalated during March 2022 and with the beginning of the Holy month of Ramadan, reaching their peak on April 15, when IOF raided Al-Aqsa Mosque during dawn prayer and carried out arbitrary mass arrests of over 450 Palestinians, including many children.
The number of sick Palestinian prisoners has reached over 600 prisoners, 200 of whom have been diagnosed with chronic illnesses, including 22 prisoners with cancer and tumors of varying degrees. Such cases among Palestinian prisoners are faced with deliberate medical negligence by the IPS, resulting in the death of many prisoners like Sami Al-Amour and Hussein Masalma. The number of Palestinian prisoners who died due to deliberate medical negligence has reached 72 cases.
Since the beginning of 2022, Israeli occupation authorities have issued about 400 administrative detention orders, most of which were renewals of orders against existing detainees. The highest number of orders occurred in March 2022, reaching 195 administrative detention orders.
Israeli occupation authorities systematically pursue the practice of indefinite administrative detention, without charge or trial, against all facets of Palestinian society, including students, journalists, women, children, the elderly, the sick, and the wounded. The administrative detainee is held without charges and no legal trial. Administrative detention is ordered under the pretext of a “secret file” that neither the detainee nor their lawyer has access to.
On different occasions, Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails protested against what they say describe as escalating repression by the IPS through various actions. For more than 140 consecutive days, over 600 Palestinian administrative detainees in Israeli prisons have been boycotting Israeli Military Courts.
The Palestinian detainees have been boycotting the Israeli Military Courts since January 1, 2022. The boycott includes initial hearings to uphold the administrative detention order, as well as appeal hearings and later sessions at the Supreme Court.
Moreover, thousands of Palestinian prisoners resorted to hunger strikes as it became a testament to prisoners’ desperation. Palestinian prisoners would rather risk death by refusing to eat than accept their abysmal treatment: solitary confinement, humiliating strip searches, sleep deprivation, and beatings.
The Palestinian administrative detainee in Israeli prisons, Khalil Awawdeh, continues his open-ended hunger strike with serious deterioration in his health condition. The detainee suffers from severe fatigue, and he has not been provided with clothes or even allowed to bathe by the IPS for 40 days.
