“4,700 cases of detention, including 550 children, 118 women, and a girls, during the year 2020,” the Institute for Palestine Studies reported.

The year 2020 is the worst on the health side for the prisoners, as their lives were exposed to a severe danger as a result of Israel disregard for their safety and facilitating the arrival of the Coronavirus to prisons.” the institute told Safa in a report, on Wednesday.

It was indicated that 140 prisoners had been injured by the end of the year and it was expected that the number is going to increase due to the failure to implement protection and prevention means by the prison administration.

 

In addition, many of the prisoners suffered from cancer and heart attacks.

“Jerusalem received the largest share of arrests during the year 2020, with 200) arrests, and it constituted about 42% of the total arrests that took place all over the Palestinian territories,” the director of the Institute for Palestine Studies, Riad Ashqar, said.

Hebron came in the second level with 700 arrests, while Israel arrested 88 citizens from the Gaza Strip.

The detainees children amounted to 550, among them 52 are under the age of 14, the youngest of whom is Majid Abu Saad (7) from Jayyus, east of Qalqilya.

Arrested women, during the year 2020, reached 118, including 11 minors, in addition to elderly women, activists, journalists, university students, and cleats in Al-Aqsa Mosque.

9 persons of deputies from the Palestinian Legislative Council, and 145 of the patients and those with special needs who suffer from psychological and physical disabilities and epilepsy were arrested during 2020.

Moreover, many elderly people, 1200 ex-detainees, and 7 of academics and lecturers in universities have been arrested in the past year.

The arrests also affected a number of Islamic and national leaders, including the head of the Supreme Islamic commession in Jerusalem and the preacher of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Ikrimah Sabri (81), the Deputy Director General of Islamic Endowments, Sheikh Najeh Bekirat, and the Governor of Jerusalem, Adnan Ghaith.

In 2020, the list of martyrs of the Palestinian Captive Movement rose to 226 martyrs, after 4 as a result of deliberate medical negligence, and their bodies are still being held, and the occupation refuses to hand them over to their families for burial.

Ashqar confirmed that the Israeli courts issued 1100 administrative decisions between new and renewal, compared to 1022 administrative decisions during the year 2019, which constitutes an 8% increase in the issuance of administrative orders.

The report monitored 72 cases of summoning and arresting journalists, including 26 cases of detention of journalists and media professionals, some of whom were investigated for hours or days and released, others were transferred to investigation and prisons, some of them were issued with administrative detention decisions, and other journalists were tried by actual imprisonment.

The Israeli courts issued 7 new life sentences against Palestinian prisoners.

It is necessary to continue activities of solidarity with the prisoners to ensure that they remain alive at all times, and pressuring the World Health Organization to intervene to ensure that prisoners are protected from the threat of the Coronavirus pandemic and to provide them with the anti-virus vaccine.

Election of the State of Palestine as a member of the Executive Office of the International Criminal Court should be invested to file a lawsuit against Israel and demanding that its leaders to be treated as war criminals for practicing a policy of physical and psychological torture against prisoners, including children and women, and continuing mobilization of the international public opinion to support the prisoners and stand with their grievances.

 

Source : Safa