Palestinian body says dozens from Gaza have died in Israeli prisons
We bring you more from the news conference in Ramallah.
Qaddoura Fares, head of the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, made these points:
- We have received multiple prisoners who were released and had to be transferred to hospital immediately.
- Our statement today is not directed at the international community, which has failed us dozens of times. It is directed at us as the Palestinian people – it is time for us to rise up against this oppression.
Groups representing Palestinian prisoners speak to the media
Palestinian groups share testimonies of sexual assault, rape of prisoners
Abdullah al-Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, has shared these updates at a news conference in Ramallah today:
- There are testimonies and indicators that Palestinian men and female prisoners have been sexually assaulted. The statement issued by the UN yesterday pointed out for the first time that female prisoners are being violated in a grave manner, and serious crimes are being committed against them.
- There are at least two female prisoners from Gaza who were raped. Many others threatened with rape, and have suffered sexual assault and strip-searches.
- This is in addition to testimonies we received surrounding male prisoners who have been exposed to severe sexual assault including extreme beatings on genitals and attempts of rape as well as humiliating strip searches.
Al-Zaghari called for an independent international investigation into the developments, “one that will hold the occupation accountable and prevent it from continuing to carry out these crimes”. Palestinian prisoner groups also stress that these crimes are happening in parallel and within the context of the horrific crimes being committed as part of the aggression against people in Gaza.
At least eight prisoners have died as a result of systematic torture policies, al-Zaghari added.
Life under occupation in East Jerusalem
Munir Nuseibah, an academic and human rights lawyer in occupied East Jerusalem, has described the difficulties of life under occupation. “The Israeli occupation has been continuously, since 1967 until today, displacing Palestinians from their homes, building settlements and Jewish-only colonies in the occupied Palestinian territory, controlling their movement, where they can go and what they can do,” he told Al Jazeera.
The control of the population, Nuseibah said, extends to measures such as imprisonment and torture, among others. “These policies amount to apartheid; this is what a number of human rights organisations – Palestinian and international, as well as Israeli – have found after they examined the way that the Israeli legal system works,” Nuseibah added.
“Here in East Jerusalem, after the annexation and the building the wall, which the ICJ in 2004 declared as illegal, Jerusalem is isolated from the rest of Palestine. The Palestinian population is unable to move into Jerusalem, to work in Jerusalem and move freely.”
