Palestinian Detainees Continue Boycott of Israeli Military Courts
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held under Israel’s so-called administrative detention keep boycotting the regime’s military court hearings.
Sunday was day 107 of the protest action by some 450 Palestinians in Israeli jails.
The boycott targets hearings for the renewal of administrative detention orders as well as appeal hearings and later sessions at Israel’s ‘supreme court.’ The move is the protraction of longstanding efforts to end the unjust detention practiced against the Palestinians.
The detainees say the courts are a “barbaric, racist tool that has consumed hundreds of years from the lives of our people under the banner of administrative detention, through nominal and fictitious courts – the results of which are predetermined by the military commander of the region.”
Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners are held under the administrative detention, in which Israel keeps the detainees without charge for up to six months, a period which can be extended an infinite number of times.
The detention takes place on orders from a military commander and on the basis of what the regime terms ‘secret’ evidence. Some prisoners have been held under such conditions for up to 11 years.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS), Israel issued 1,595 administrative detention orders against the Palestinians in the occupied territories in 2021 in an attempt to stifle Palestinian political activism.
The detainees are being held in various Israeli prisons, mostly in the notorious prisons of Negev and Ofer. The prisoners include women and minors.
Palestinian prisoners are held for lengthy periods without being charged, tried, or convicted which is in sheer violation of human rights. Rights groups describe Israel’s use of the detention as a “bankrupt tactic” and have long called on Israel to end its use.
The prisoners have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express their outrage at the detention. Administrative inmates in Israeli jails say going on hunger strike is one of their few options to make their voice heard and force Tel Aviv to end the policy.
The Israeli Prison Service (IPS) keeps Palestinian prisoners under deplorable conditions lacking proper hygienic standards in Israeli jails. They have also been subjected to systematic torture, harassment and repression all through the years of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.
More than 7,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in some 17 Israeli jails, with dozens of them serving multiple life sentences.
According to the Palestine Detainees Studies Center, around 60% of the Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails suffer from chronic diseases, a number of whom died in detention or after being released due to the severity of their cases.