The Euro-Mediterranean Monitor calls on the international community to put pressure on the occupation to end the forced disappearance of thousands of Palestinians

The Observatory explained in a statement today that it had received information about the occupation forces arresting hundreds of Palestinians during the past days from the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City, including dozens of women who were taken to the Yarmouk Stadium and subjected to torture and abuse. Males were also forced to strip naked, and were even forced to line up in a humiliating manner. Minor children as young as 10 years and elderly people over the age of 70 were subject to the same practice in front of the women who were detained in a nearby area inside the stadium square. Hundreds of other residents of Jabalia and its camp in the northern Gaza Strip were arrested as well as the residents of the eastern neighborhoods of Gaza City and were all subject to the same inhumane Israeli policies and methodology.  .

The Euro-Mediterranean Monitor confirmed that the information it obtained indicates that the occupation forces, during raids on homes and shelter centers, tend to blow up the doors and throw bombs through them, then storm the locations, shoot, execute and liquidate a number of those inside them, and then take the rest out of the homes and force the males to strip naked, while searching and abusing the women. .

The Observatory indicated that the occupation continues to arrest dozens of females from the Gaza Strip, including elderly women, one of whom is over 80 years old including mothers with their infants, and minor girls, all of whom are subject to harsh conditions of detention and treatment. The Observatory indicated that it received testimonies of female detainees being threatened with rape.

The Euro-Mediterranean Monitor pointed out that the occupation takes the majority of the males it arrests to sites inside the areas into which its forces penetrate, where they are subjected to interrogation while naked, handcuffed and blindfolded, and even subjected to torture. Later, some of them are released, others are killed, and the rest, in hundreds, are transferred to detention camps outside the Gaza Strip, where they are subjected to inhumane detention conditions and are further subjected to systematic torture and starvation.

The Observatory reported that there is no accurate count of the number of detainees from Gaza who are subject to the policy of enforced disappearance pursued by the occupation. The Euro-Mediterranean Monitor further reported the difficulty of receiving information in the Strip due to the dispersal of the population and the almost permanent interruption of communications and the Internet. However, preliminary estimates indicate that more than 3,000 arrests have been recorded, including at least 200 women and girls, in addition to doctors, nurses, journalists, teachers, engineers, and workers in humanitarian organizations.

The Euro-Mediterranean Monitor explained that the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance affirms that such disappearance is a crime that rises to the level of crimes against humanity, if practiced on a large scale or in a systematic manner, which is what the Israeli occupation forces are currently doing in the areas they are penetrating in the Gaza Strip.The Israeli occupation forces have arrested thousands, and continues to detain at least 3,000 people whose fate remains unknown and no information is available about them.

The Observatory called on the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations Group on Arbitrary Detention to put pressure on the Israeli occupation authorities to reveal the fate of female detainees abducted from the Gaza Strip, release them, and investigate the grave violations they were subjected to.

NR