Israeli Prisons Are Killing Machines

Palestinian political prisoners: they must all be released

The agreement for the temporary ceasefire established on Sunday January 19 includes the release of Israeli hostages and that of several hundred Palestinian political prisoners, in several phases.

The first, lasting 6 weeks, provides for the gradual release of 33 Israelis and 1,737 Palestinians, including 1,000 from Gaza. This allowed the release, this Sunday 19, of 3 Israeli hostages and that of 90 Palestinian prisoners – 69 women and 21 children – from the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem. The freed women are mostly students, but also professors, lawyers, journalists, rescue workers, activists. Among them, Khalida Jarrar, feminist, MP, imprisoned for the 5th time, arrested and in administrative detention in December 2023 and placed in solitary confinement for 6 months. Several of them had already been released during the November 2023 agreement and re-arrested since.

Remember that more than 12,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israel since October 7, 2023 in Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) in anticipation of these exchanges.

As of January 7, Israel held 10,400 prisoners in its prisons, including 3,476 in administrative detention (without trial or any charges being communicated), 320 children and 88 women.

These figures do not take into account the thousands of arrested Gazans still detained in Israeli military camps. The number of those who disappeared or died is not known.

The circumstances of the arrests and the conditions of detention are inhuman and degrading, even criminal. Upon their release, they all testify to having seen or suffered acts of violence, torture, sexual assault, rape, humiliation, as well as a lack of hygiene, proper food and appropriate care. Prisoners are placed in solitary confinement for periods which can last several months. Many detainees caught scabies.

Fifty-six prisoners have died in Israeli prisons since October 7, 2023. Remember that Israel does not return the bodies of detainees before the scheduled end of their detention. Likewise, he holds the bodies of people he murders during his raids in occupied Palestinian territory.

The videos of the first releases illustrate what the Israeli state does to prisoners and their testimonies are edifying.

The imprisonment of men, women and children is systemic, carried out in the most total arbitrariness. The policy of incarceration of the Palestinian people, from arrest to release, violates international human rights law and the humanitarian law of war. It is a tool of repression, dehumanization, harassment which keeps an entire people in permanent insecurity.

It is a tool of Israeli occupation, colonization and apartheid.

All these women, children and men who are still detained must be released.

In the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Israeli state continues its arrests and its abuses in Israeli prisons. This policy must be ended!

Since the release of the 90 prisoners, at least as many have already been arrested, including 64 during a night raid in the village of Azzun in the West Bank.

States must take the necessary measures to force Israel to stop violating the law. They have the means of pressure.

France and the States of the European Union must in particular suspend the EU-Israel association agreement which provides for such a measure in the event of non-respect of human rights. Who can claim that the Israeli state respects human rights?

The AFPS National Office, January 21, 2025