Yearly, April 17 marks Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, a day devoted to the 1000’s of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Campaigners use the day to name for the human rights of such prisoners to be upheld and for many who have been detained with out cost to be launched.
On Monday, Israel launched 150 Palestinian prisoners detained through the struggle within the Gaza Strip. These prisoners, together with two Palestine Purple Crescent Society staff, mentioned they suffered abuse throughout their 50 days in Israeli jail, based on a report by the Reuters information company.
Right here’s extra about Palestinian Prisoner’s Day and the scenario of the prisoners in Israel.
What’s Palestinian Prisoner’s Day?
The Palestinian Nationwide Council selected April 17 as Palestinian Prisoner’s Day in 1974 as a result of it was the date that Mahmoud Bakr Hijazi was launched within the first prisoner trade between Israel and Palestine in 1971.
Hijazi, who had been serving a 30-year jail sentence on costs of attempting to explode the Nehusha Water Institute in central Israel in 1965, was launched by Israel in trade for a 59-year-old Israeli guard named Shmuel Rozenvasser.
What number of Palestinians are in Israeli prisons and the way are they handled?
Within the occupied Palestinian territories, one in each 5 Palestinians has been arrested and charged in some unspecified time in the future. This price is twice as excessive for Palestinian males as it’s for girls – two in each 5 males have been arrested and charged.
There are 19 prisons in Israel and one contained in the occupied West Financial institution that maintain Palestinian prisoners. Israel stopped permitting unbiased humanitarian organisations to go to Israeli prisons in October, so it’s laborious to know the numbers and circumstances of individuals being held there.
As of Tuesday, about 9,500 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Financial institution had been in Israeli captivity, based on estimates from Addameer Prisoner Assist and Human Rights Affiliation, a rights group primarily based within the West Financial institution metropolis of Ramallah that helps Palestinian prisoners. The organisation works with human rights teams and households of prisoners to assemble details about the scenario of the prisoners.
Palestinian prisoners who’ve been launched have reported being crushed and humiliated earlier than and after the beginning of the struggle on Gaza on October 7.
Prisoners launched into Gaza on Monday have complained of ill-treatment in Israeli prisons, based on the Reuters report. A lot of these launched mentioned they’d been crushed whereas in custody and had not been supplied with medical remedy.
“I went into jail with two legs, and I returned with one leg,” Sufian Abu Salah informed Reuters by telephone from a hospital in Gaza, including that he had no medical historical past of continual illnesses.
“I had inflammations in my leg, and so they [the Israelis] refused to take me to hospital. Per week later, the inflammations unfold and have become gangrene. They took me to hospital the place I had the surgical procedure,” mentioned Abu Salah, including that he had additionally been crushed by his Israeli captors.
Permission for members of the family of prisoners to go to them has been suspended because the outbreak of COVID-19 in Gaza and since December 2020 within the West Financial institution, based on HaMoked, a human rights NGO aiding Palestinians subjected to human rights violations underneath the Israeli occupation. HaMoked added that minors being held in prisons had been allowed a 10-minute telephone name to their households as soon as each two weeks throughout 2020.
What number of Palestinian prisoners are being held with out cost?
About 3,660 Palestinians being held in Israel are underneath administrative detention, based on Addameer. An administrative detainee is somebody held in jail with out cost or trial.
Neither the executive detainees, who embrace girls and kids, nor their legal professionals are allowed to see the “secret proof” that Israeli forces say type the idea for his or her arrests. These individuals have been arrested by the navy for renewable intervals of time, that means the arrest length is indefinite and will final for a few years. The executive detainees embrace 41 kids and 12 girls, based on Addameer.
Why are Palestinian kids held in Israeli prisons?
In keeping with Addameer, 80 girls and 200 kids are presently being held in Israeli prisons.
In 2016, Israel launched a brand new legislation permitting kids between the ages of 12 and 14 to be held criminally accountable, that means they are often tried in court docket as adults and be given jail sentences. Beforehand, solely these 14 or older might be sentenced to jail. Jail sentences can not start till the kid reaches the age of 14, nevertheless [PDF].
This new legislation, which was handed on August 2, 2016, by the Israeli Knesset, allows Israeli authorities “to imprison a minor convicted of great crimes comparable to homicide, tried homicide or manslaughter even when she or he is underneath the age of 14”, based on a Knesset assertion on the time the legislation was launched.
This transformation was made after Ahmed Manasra was arrested in 2015 in occupied East Jerusalem on the age of 13. He was charged with tried homicide and sentenced to 12 years in jail after the brand new legislation had come into impact and, crucially, after his 14th birthday. Later, his sentence was commuted to 9 years on enchantment.
What kind of trials do Palestinians obtain?
Controversially, Palestinian prisoners are tried and sentenced in navy courts moderately than civil courts.
Worldwide legislation permits Israel to make use of navy courts within the territory that it occupies.
A twin authorized system exists in Palestine, underneath which Israeli settlers residing within the West Financial institution and East Jerusalem are topic to Israeli civil legislation whereas Palestinians are topic to Israeli navy legislation in navy courts run by Israeli troopers and officers.
How lengthy have some Palestinians been in Israeli captivity?
Some Palestinian prisoners have been held in Israeli prisons for greater than three many years.
These are individuals who had been arrested earlier than the Oslo Accords had been signed in 1993 between then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzakh Rabin, who was assassinated by an ultra-nationalist Israeli in 1995 who opposed the negotiations, and Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Group. These pre-Oslo prisoners are referred to as “deans of prisoners” by Palestinians, based on the web site of Samidoun, a global community of organisers and activists advocating for Palestinian prisoners.
Al Jazeera couldn’t independently confirm the present variety of pre-Oslo prisoners in Israeli prisons.
On April 7, the distinguished Palestinian prisoner, activist and novelist Walid Daqqa died at Israel’s Shamir Medical Middle. Daqqa had been arrested in 1968 for killing an Israeli soldier and remained in jail for 38 years earlier than his loss of life. He had been identified with most cancers in 2021. Regardless of stress from rights teams to launch Daqqa on medical grounds, Israel refused to free him.
Walid Daqqa,🇵🇸 prisoner battling most cancers,has died in an Israeli Hosp. Regardless of worldwide & Palestinian requires his launch because of extreme medical neglect in jail, he remained detained till his loss of life. Daqqa leaves behind a legacy as a 🇵🇸 hero, survived by his spouse & daughter pic.twitter.com/liBBnFBVtM
— Lema (@Lemapal) April 7, 2024
Outstanding Palestinian chief Marwan Barghouti – who was the co-founder of the Palestinian Nationwide Liberation Motion, also called Fatah, the social gathering that governs the West Financial institution – has been in jail for 22 years. In February, Israel’s far-right Nationwide Safety Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, introduced that Barghouti had been positioned in solitary confinement in February.