RAMALLAH, Wednesday, September 8, 2021 (WAFA) – The Palestine Prisoner’s Society today cautioned against the outbreak of an open confrontation between Palestinians in Israeli imprisonment and the Israeli Prison Service.

PPS said in a press release that all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons warned the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) that the punitive measures currently imposed on prisoners risk an open confrontation with IPS.

It pointed that IPS has imposed additional punitive measures on all prisoners following the escape of six prisoners from the highly fortified Gilboa Prison through a tunnel.

As part of these measures, IPS conducted violent searches in Gilboa Prison, deprived prisoners from accessing canteens and forcefully moved all prisoners from Section 3 of Gilboa to Shatta Prison after a prisoner threw hot water into a warden’s face. It has also forcefully transferred 34 prisoners from Section 2 of Gilboa to the Naqab and Ofer detention facilities.

IPS has threatened to disperse Islamic Jihad-affiliated prisoners, currently in Section 22 of Ofer, among various prisons, an action which was vehemently opposed by the prisoners.

Meanwhile, the Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Commission warned that punitive measures imposed by IPS have thrown Gilboa Prison into s a state of turmoil.

Israel’s widely condemned practice of administrative detention that allows the detention of Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable intervals ranging between three and six months based on undisclosed evidence that even a detainee’s lawyer is barred from viewing.

The US State Department has said in past reports on human rights conditions for Palestinians that administrative detainees are not given the “opportunity to refute allegations or address the evidentiary material presented against them in court.”

Amnesty International has described Israel’s use of administrative detention as a “bankrupt tactic” and has long called on Israel to bring its use to an end.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes as a way to protest their illegal administrative detention and to demand an end to this policy, which violates international law.

K.F.