Al-Khalili : Palestinian female prisoners suffer from tragic conditions inside Israeli jails

OCCUPIED AL-QUDS, Apr.16, (ST)- Palestinian Minister of Women’s Affairs, Mona Al-Khalili, asserted that the Israeli occupation’s violations of the rights of prisoners in general and female prisoners in particular fall within the framework of war crimes, demanding an international investigation into these violations and holding the occupation accountable for its crimes.

Wafa News Agency quoted Al-Khalili as saying in a statement today on the occasion of Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, which falls on April 17 of each year:” This year’s Prisoner’s Day comes in the midst of the brutal aggression and genocidal crimes committed by the occupation in the Gaza Strip, the unprecedented escalation practiced by the occupation forces and settler gangs, and the brutal arrest campaigns in the West Bank… These crimes are not new, as the occupation has committed all kinds of crimes against prisoners for decades and it has become a permanent approach and behavior, and the difference today is its intensity, not its ugliness.“

She added: “Based on the information and  testimonies given by some of the released female prisoners, the extent of the grave violations of human rights laws and the Geneva Conventions becomes clear, as the female prisoners suffer from tragic conditions inside jails, especially the women who were arrested in the Gaza Strip, where they are exposed to the worst types of abuse and are isolated from the rest female prisoners, and no one knows anything about their fate, whether they are inside jails or in unknown concentration camps, as a result of the occupation preventing visits by the Red Cross and institutions concerned with prisoners’ affairs, which constitutes the crime of forced disappearance that must be stopped.

Al-Khalili called on the international community and human rights institutions to put pressure on the occupation authorities to immediately release all male and female prisoners, open an international investigation into the occupation’s crimes against them, hold it accountable for them, and allow the Red Cross to visit them and determine their conditions and the violations they have been exposed to.

Basma Qaddour