Human rights and legal organizations today called on international bodies, organizations, and bar associations to take immediate action and intervene to stop the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli occupation authorities against Palestinian detainees and hostages in Israel.
The organizations called in a press conference held in Ramallah on the Human Rights Council to form an international committee to investigate the abuse by the Israeli occupation against the detainees. They also called on the International Committee of the Red Cross to clearly state its position on the war crimes committed against the detainees and to pressure the occupation authorities to respect its role and international conventions related to detainees.
They also called on the states parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 to hold an emergency conference to discuss ways to ensure that they implement the provisions of the convention and honor them regarding the guarantees and rights of Palestinian d
etainees, and hold them accountable for violating them or obstructing their work by the Israeli occupation authorities.
They also stressed the need for human rights organizations and bar associations in the world to assume their legal responsibilities to confront Israeli violations and practices against the detainees and their systematic subjection to torture by activating accountability, prosecution, and trial of the perpetrators of these crimes before their national courts.
The organizations called on the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, the Subcommittee against Torture, and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to take urgent action to confront the violations and crimes committed against detainees and to use all available mechanisms and powers to stop the intentional killing and torture of the detainees.
The head of the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission, Qaddoura Fares, said that the occupation authorities have escalated their ongoing crimes against detainees, by halting and
suspending the rights and guarantees granted to them under international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.
He pointed out that the systematic arrest campaigns escalated and affected all groups of the people, to terrorize them.
Fares said their organizations documented 3,200 arrest cases in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, after October 7 until mid-November, including more than 100 women, and 145 minors, while accurate data were not available about detainees from Gaza as the occupation refused to provide the International Committee of the Red Cross with any clear data about their numbers, identities, places of detention, and health status, in addition to issuing 1,464 administrative detention orders against Palestinians since the beginning of the aggression against Gaza Strip.
He stated that the number of detainees in the Israeli prisons as of mid-November reached more than 7,000, including about 80 female detainees and more than 250 children, and the number of administrative detainees to dat
e reached 2,200, while the number of detainees from Gaza reached 105.
The organizations documented a significant escalation in systematic retaliatory measures against detainees, especially after the International Committee of the Red Cross stopped visiting Israeli detentions, and families and lawyers were not allowed to visit the prisoners.
The occupation prison administration began imposing collective retaliatory measures against detainees, including raids at their cells, placing them in isolation, converting their rooms into cells after stripping them of all their possessions, seizing all the electrical tools they used to meet their basic needs, and the repression units carrying out widespread attacks against detainees through severe beatings, using sticks and batons causing dozens of injuries and then deliberately leaving them without treatment.
These measures affected the basic necessities of life, such as food, water, treatment, and electricity was cut off from the detainees’ sections, the amount of w
ater and the hours it was available to them were reduced, and unprecedented restrictions were placed on sick detainees, denied them treatment and stopped transferring detainees to prison clinics and hospitals, closed the canteen so that the prisoners will not be able to buy food from it, seized the food supplies remaining with the detainees (such as canned goods), and reduced meals to two meals a day.
Source: Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA