Asia Pacific Report
A researcher says the Israeli prison system aims to subjugate the Palestinian people as rallies across the West Bank marked Prisoners’ Day today while yet another prisoner was reported dead.
“When you have the statistics that one in every five Palestinians has been arrested and you understand that 50 percent of our population are children under 18 — that means that roughly one in every two male adults has been arrested, subjugated and criminalised by Israeli authorities,” researcher and former detainee Al-Aboudi told Al Jazeera.
He is the director of the Bisan Center for Research and Development, based in Ramallah, occupied West Bank.
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The goal, said Al-Aboudi, who himself was detained in 2019, is to break Palestinian resilience.
“It’s only in Israeli jails that you will find doctors, professors, academics, physicists — the creme de la creme of Palestinian civil society is being targeted, incarcerated because Israel doesn’t want any kind of Palestinian agency, any Palestinian collective agency, any kind of Palestinian leadership,” he said.
Palestinians mark Prisoners’ Day on April 17 each year, reports Al Jazeera.
Human rights organisations warn that Palestinian detainees are subject to some of the worst conditions in Israeli prisons.
Detainees tell of torture, starvation
They are not allowed visits from family, lawyers or doctors, and former detainees tell of torture, abuse and starvation by Israeli prison authorities.
Musab Hassan Adili, a 20-year-old Palestinian prisoner from the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, was reported to have died on Wednesday night in Israel’s Soroka Hospital, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.
Palestine marches for prisoners’ freedom. Video: Al Jazeera
Adili had been detained in March last year and sentenced to 13 months in Israeli prison. He was supposed to be released in a couple of days, his family said.
His death brings the number of Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli prisons to 64 since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel in 2023.
‘Shameless double standard’
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has condemned what it calls the “clear and shameless double standard” of those demanding the release of Israeli captives in Gaza but staying silent while thousands of Palestinians languish in Israel’s jails, including women and children.
In a statement marking Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, PIJ said the “international community is tarnished by its silence regarding the suffering of tens of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, which has continued for decades”.
Of the nearly 10,000 Palestinians that support groups say are held in Israeli prisons, 3498 are held without charge or trial under what’s known as “administrative detention”.
PIJ said that 400 children and almost 30 women are among those held, while some 2000 people from Gaza have been arrested by Israeli forces since October 7, 2023, and that the prisoners who have died in Israeli jails suffer from medical negligence and torture.
According to PIJ, the October 7 attacks on Israel were launched “primarily to impose a genuine prisoner exchange deal that would free prisoners from the occupation’s prisons and alleviate the suffering of our people”.
“Their liberation has become an unwavering goal in the battle for dignity and freedom,” it said.
