RAMALLAH, August 11, 2025 (WAFA) – The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said today that the Israeli authorities have imposed severe and heightened restrictions on legal teams monitoring the conditions of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons, both during field visits and court sessions.

In a joint statement issued Monday, the two organizations said that, in addition to the restrictions imposed on lawyers since the start of the genocide, the prison administration had informed several lawyers that they were prohibited from conveying any family greetings or messages to detainees, and threatened to take punitive measures against any lawyer attempting to deliver such messages during visits or court sessions.

They emphasized that these measures are part of Israel’s efforts to fully isolate detainees from the outside world and their families, as the International Committee of the Red Cross continues to be prevented from visiting them, and their relatives have been barred from seeing them since the beginning of the genocide.

The statement added that, at the beginning of the war, Israel banned lawyers from visiting detainees, and after persistent efforts by specialized institutions, visits were resumed but with continued major obstacles. These included the deliberate declaration of a state of emergency by the prison administration upon the lawyer’s arrival to cancel the visit after a long journey, a practice repeated many times. Other obstacles included long delays in responding to visit requests, which could extend for two weeks or more, and sometimes several months, particularly in the case of detainees serving life sentences.

It was also reported that detainees have faced assaults and threats before or after meeting with their lawyers, along with the recent ban on a group of lawyers from visiting them for several consecutive months.

The statement further pointed to Israel’s continued crime of enforced disappearance against a large number of detainees from Gaza, by preventing legal teams from reaching them. Human rights institutions’ attempts in recent months, following certain amendments to regulations concerning Gaza detainees, have enabled visits to dozens of Gaza detainees, but only under extremely tight security measures.

T.R.