Ref: 110/2022

Date: 01 September 2022

Time: 12:06 GMT

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns the Israeli occupation authorities’ ongoing use of judiciary and prison service to suppress Palestinians that has led in many times and for varying periods the Palestinian prisoners to go on a hunger strike as they had nothing left but their living cells to defend their rights.

PCHR emphasizes that Israeli judiciary and prison service cooperate in the interest of the Israeli security services, aiming to turn Palestinians’ lives into hell inside and outside the Israeli jails.  The Israeli judiciary provides a legal coverup for the arrest of Palestinians in jails for long years in complete absence of justice guarantees. Meanwhile, the Israeli Prison Service plays another role by turning prisoners’ lives into hell inside the Israeli jails, and this is supported by the Israeli judiciary’s decisions

PCHR calls on the international community to exert pressure on Israel and take an immediate action to end this state of justice denial for the Palestinians and compel the Israeli occupation authorities to respect the international human rights law and humanitarian law. Also, PCHR urges the international community to act promptly to end the suffering of thousands of prisoners in the Israeli jails and hold the Israeli officials accountable for their crimes against them.

According to PCHR’s follow up, the Palestinian prisoners decided to go on an open hunger strike in stages, as 1000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails will start their hunger strike on 01 September 2022, protesting the Israeli authorities’ recent arbitrary measures against them and latter’s threats to return to the reprisals they imposed last year when 6 prisoners managed to flee from Gilboa Prison.

The case of administrative detainee, Khalil ‘Awawdah, who has recently ended his hunger strike that continued for 6 months in a row, shed the light on the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF)’s arbitrary use of administrative detention against Palestinians. 

Al-‘Awawdah ended his hunger strike after it was agreed to end his administrative detention in next October. Al-‘Awawdah was on an open hunger strike for 6 months in protest of his administrative detention. His health condition deteriorated, so he was referred to Shamir Medical Center (Assaf Harofeh) in Israel, where he was close to death. However, the Israeli Supreme Court refused to release him, leaving him struggling his death.

Al-‘Awadah’s cause sheds light on the 730 administrative detainees who are placed in detention without charges or trial upon a military order based on the Emergency Regulations enacted by the British Mandate.  The administrative detention comes according to confidential information that is not revealed in court, depriving the detainee or his lawyer of defending his right.  In many cases, A detainee’s administrative detention period is extended more than once.

Revealing the Israeli Judiciary’s role in passing the Israeli security services’ demands, on Tuesday, the Israeli court in Beersheba sentenced Mohammed Halabi, the head of World Vision’s Gaza office, to 12 years in prison following the longest trial in the history of the Israeli occupation and being subjected to 172 hearings since his arrest at Erez crossing in 2016.   Over that period, the Israeli prosecution could not proof the charges against al-Halabi, and the latter did not admit any of them.  He was also acquitted by his organization’s administration, which considered what he has been through unjust and unfair.  The whole trial process emphasizes that the trial is political par excellence and targets in the first place the local civil society organizations and international organizations operating in the occupied territory, aiming to defame them and dry up their financial support resources.

It should be noted that the Israeli occupation authorities place 4,550 Palestinian prisoners, including 175 children and 32 women, distributed in 23 prisons and detention facilities in Israel under inhuman and cruel conditions and that lack the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners and Detainees in Detention. Among the prisoners, there are 600 ill prisoners; some of them suffer chronic and serious diseases, while there are still 730 Palestinians placed under administrative detention without trial.

PCHR condemns these measures that fall under the reprisals and collective punishment policy that are prohibited by the international law, including article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons and the 1955 United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.  Thus, PCHR calls on the international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties, to comply with their legal and moral obligations and compel the Israeli occupation to end the suffering of thousands of prisoners in the Israeli jails, including tens who have served more than a quarter-century in prison, others who have spent more than 30 years and hundreds of prisoners with serious diseases.

PCHR also calls upon the international community to exert pressure on the Israeli occupation to respond to the prisoners’ human and fair demands.  PCHR also urges the international human rights organizations to follow up the Palestinian prisoners’ cases and promote international advocacy to compel Israel to stop its arbitrary practices against prisoners and work on releasing them.