Release of detainees and arrests continues… Israeli approach to pressure the prisoners’ file
Against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Gaza, the West Bank is also witnessing a wave of tension and field confrontations between Palestinians and the Israeli army. Israeli authorities conduct daily raids on villages and towns, accompanied by confrontations, arrests, gunfire, and the demolition of prisoners’ homes.
The Palestinian Prisoners Club announced on Tuesday, in a statement, that the number of prisoners in the West Bank has risen since October 7th to more than 3,290, mostly from the Hebron governorate in the southern West Bank. The statement added that among the detainees are 125 women, including those arrested from the lands of 1948. As for children, their number reached 145, and 41 journalists have been arrested, with 29 of them still under arrest.
Administrative detention is the detention without charges or trial, primarily based on secret files held by Israeli intelligence agencies. The detainee and their lawyer cannot access these files, and it can be renewed several times indefinitely, according to the Palestinian Information Center.
Israel has employed this form of punishment since 1967 as collective punishment against Palestinians, which is prohibited by international law and violates Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, copied from the British Mandate since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is the only country that implements it.
According to statistics from the Palestinian Prisoners Club, 2,409 Palestinians were arrested under administrative detention orders in 2022, the highest in over 10 years, leading around 75 prisoners to embark on a hunger strike in protest against several arbitrary measures, most of which were strikes against administrative detention.
According to the statistics, the number of prisoners in Israeli prisons reached about 7,000 prisoners by the end of last October, and the number of administrative detainees without charges was 2,070 cases, including 105 from Gaza.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission, after the “Storm Al-Aqsa” battle, administrative detention crimes escalated significantly. Israel issued about 1,034 administrative detention orders during October, including 904 new orders and 130 renewal orders. The arrest campaigns focused on the Hebron governorate and its towns, where there were 500 Palestinian arrests, followed by over 400 arrest cases in Jerusalem, according to the Israeli “HaMoked” center.
In this context, Heba Morayef, the regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, says: “Israel expanded its use of administrative detention during October, since the outbreak of the ‘Storm Al-Aqsa,’ to record its highest level in 20 years.”
She adds, “Detainees face ill-treatment, torture, and extremely harsh conditions inside Israeli prisons, in addition to deliberate humiliation.”
