Palestinian Prisoner's Day
On Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates salutes the thousands of Palestinian detainees who have been and are still held arbitrarily and illegally in the Israeli detention dungeons. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterates the centrality of the Palestinian detainees’ cause and reaffirms that their freedom is a fundamental part of the freedom of the Palestinian people.
Over the past five decades, Israel, the occupying power, has detained over 800,000 Palestinians, including children and women. Currently, Israel illegally detains 4,800, including 29 females and 170 children;
Moreover, 967 Palestinians are currently detained under the Israeli illegal policy of administrative detention. The highest number of administrative detainees in the past 11 years;
Successive Israeli occupation governments have implemented discriminatory policies against Palestinian detainees. The current racist Israeli occupation government intensified these abhorrent policies including, inter alia, by approving a draft law authorizing the execution of Palestinian detainees, approving a discriminatory legislation deporting Palestinian detainees from their land, and introducing a draft law depriving detainees of medical treatment.
The Israeli occupation detention system is a main part of its collection of colonial tools to intimidate and persecute the Palestinian people, including women and children. It is utilized to serve different objectives, primarily to directly and indirectly force the Palestinian people to leave their lands to expedite the process of forcible transfer, mass displacement, land confiscation and annexation. The Israeli judicial system is part of the colonial regime that legitimizes discrimination, torture and persecution of the Palestinian people.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls on the international community, including the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, to uphold their legal responsibilities towards Palestinian detainees, including ending the discriminatory system that condemns thousands of them to arbitrary detention without fair trial or any legal basis for the deprivation of liberty.