Palestinians in their homeland and their diaspora commemorate Palestinian Prisoner's Day on April 17 every year. The Day was adopted by the Palestinian National Council in 1974 as a national day for prisoners' freedom and for the advancement of their just cause.
Nearly one-fifth of the Palestinian people have entered Israeli prisons since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Approximately 800,000 arrests have been made against Palestinians since 1967 which means that more than 20% of the Palestinian people have entered Israeli prisons for different periods and through different methods.
During the Al-Aqsa Intifada (uprising), which broke out in the year 2000, the number of arrests reached more than forty thousand arrests. More than 6,000 detainees are still in Israeli prisons, distributed among more than 27 prisons.
Torture:
Statistics indicate that more than 80% of Palestinian prisoners and detainees were subjected to torture during interrogation by Israeli interrogation soldiers, and there are several forms of torture against Palestinian detainees, For example, Shabh,(1), preventing sleep, removing clothes during the night, beatings, and even attempts at rape, in addition to psychological torture.
According to Addameer association(2), the most common methods of torture used by Shin Bet and interrogators include the following:
• Torture by positioning: Detainees are forced into exhausting positions, often involving handcuffing their hands behind their backs, shackling their feet, and forcing them to bend forward. They are left in these positions for extended periods during the interrogation process.
• Beatings: Detainees are most often beaten either by hand or with an object, and sometimes they lose consciousness.
• Solitary confinement: Detainees are placed in isolation or solitary confinement for prolonged periods.
• Sleep deprivation: Detainees are prevented from resting or sleeping, and are subjected to long interrogation and investigation sessions.
Sexual torture: Palestinian men, women and children are subjected to rape, physical harassment, and threats of sexual assault. Verbal sexual harassment is a particularly common practice, making comments about the detainees or their family members.
Threats to target family members: Detainees face threats to use violence against their family members in order to pressure them to provide information. There are cases where family members of detainees were detained and interrogated in a nearby room so that the detainee could hear their voices being tortured.
Zwanda (Force feeding): Many torture mechanisms require the complicity of other participants within the occupying state system, including medical care workers. Doctors also collude by force-feeding detainees.
Zwanda is another form of torture used in Israel, but it is less common. Force-feeding requires the detainee to be restrained and immobilized so that a thin tube can be inserted from his nasal cavity into his stomach, fluid is then pumped through it to nourish the body, and medical practitioners must insert the tube, which may mistakenly go through the mouth or windpipe instead of the esophagus, and then it must be withdrawn and replaced. Not only does this cause excruciating pain, but it can also cause serious medical complications that can lead to death.
Several Palestinian detainees died in the 1970s and 1980s due to force-feeding, prompting the Israeli Supreme Court to issue an order prohibiting this practice. However, the Knesset passed a law in 2012 that restored the legal status of the practice of force-feeding in an attempt to break the hunger strikes of Palestinian detainees.
Among the martyrs who were martyred using the force-feeding method (Zawanda), were Ali Al-Jaafari, Rasem Halawa, and Ishaq Maragha.
Administrative detention:
It is the detention issued by some party against a person without a specific charge or indictment, based on secret intelligence files or due to the absence or lack of evidence against the accused person.
The Israeli occupation practiced it against Palestinians against whom certain violations were not proven, so that if the intelligence officer finds that you pose a threat to the security of the region, he can transfer you to administrative detention without giving reasons.
Hunger strike:
One of the forms of struggle that the prisoner movement resorted to in order to achieve the basic rights of individuals or groups is hunger strikes or the so-called “empty stomach” battles, which had the most prominent place.
A hunger strike is a prisoner’s abstention from eating all types of food except water and little salt to express protesting, solidarity, demand, or political goals. Since 1969, prisoners have gone on several hunger strikes, some of which have achieved significant achievements, including:
· The 1969 strike in Ramla and Kfar Yona prisons, in which the prisoners demanded improving their living conditions, such as increasing the amount of food, having stationery, and refusing to call the jailer with the word “Yes, sir.”
· Nafha prison strike in 1980.
· 1992 strike
· And the 2004 strike.
· The 2012 strike, which was very successful.
Since 2012, hunger strikes began to take on an individual nature. They were initiated by Khader Adnan, who went on a hunger strike for 66 days to protest against his administrative detention. Several prisoners later followed in his footsteps, such as Samer Al-Issawi, Thaer Halahla, Bilal Diab, Hanaa Shalabi, Muhammad Allan, and Muhammad Al-Qiq.
Individual strikes prompted the Israeli Knesset to enact the Force-Feeding Law “Law to Prevent the Harms of Hunger Strikes” (2015), which allows doctors to force-feed the striking prisoner.
Statistics:
· (4400) Prisoners are held in (23) prisons and detention and investigation centres.
· (32) Female prisoners, most of whom are in “Damoun” prison.
· (490) Administrative detainees.
· (548) The number of prisoners who were sentenced to life imprisonment.
· (160) children and minors, distributed among (Ofer, Megiddo, and Damoun) prisons.
· (600) Sick prisoners.
· (227) Martyrs of the captive movement.
Since late 2011 and until the end of last year, administrative detainees carried out more than 400 individual strikes, in addition to a collective strike in 2014 that lasted for 62 days.
The occupation has issued more than 8,700 administrative detention orders against Palestinians since 2015
The numbers are from the Prisoner's Club Association.
(1)Shabh: A method of torture where detainees are tied and held in purposefully painful positions for prolonged hours (10-20 hours per day) and it is done in different positions that are designed to inflict maximum excruciating pain.
(2)Addameer association: The Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association is non-governmental, civil institution that works to support Palestinian political prisoners being held in Israeli and Palestinian prisons. The organization achieves this through documenting cases, running campaigns, and monitoring human rights violations..
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