RAMALLAH, April 29, 2026 (WAFA) - The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) condemned on Wednesday the decision of occupation courts to renew the arbitrary detention of Hossam Abu Safiya, in a step that entrenches a policy of unlawful detention against hundreds of Palestinians from the occupied Gaza Strip who have been arbitrarily detained since the beginning of the genocide.

The PPS affirmed that the continued detention of Abu Safiya, who has been held since December 2024, constitutes a grave crime under international law and falls at the core of the crime of genocide, in light of the systematic and unprecedented targeting of medical personnel and health facilities as part of an organized policy aimed at erasure, destruction, and undermining the means of survival.

The PPS explained that at least 1,251 Palestinians abducted from the Gaza Strip are classified by the occupation as “unlawful combatants,” within a framework that legalizes arbitrary detention without charges, trial or legal guarantees. This constitutes a blatant violation of all peremptory norms of international law, similar to the thousands of administrative detainees in the occupied West Bank.

The PPS stressed that the crimes committed against detainees from Gaza represent the most severe and dangerous level, based on hundreds of documented testimonies that have revealed a systematic torture regime and widespread crimes, including physical and psychological torture, starvation, humiliation, and sexual assaults, including rape. This reflects one of the most organized and brutal patterns of violence and embodies a central facet of the ongoing genocide.

It noted that over 100 Palestinian political prisoners have been killed since the start of the genocide inside occupation prisons as a result of torture, starvation, and sexual assaults. The identities of 89 of them have been announced, including 52 from the Gaza Strip, among them three doctors: Adnan Al-Bursh, Iyad Al-Rantisi, and Ziad Al-Dalou—highlighting the scale of the systematic targeting of medical personnel.

The PPS renewed its urgent call to all human rights and international bodies to take immediate and effective action, exert real pressure on the occupation to release Abu Safiya, stop the crime of targeting him, hold those responsible accountable, and ensure international protection for Palestinian prisoners, as they are subjected to a systematic genocide carried out within the prison system through an institutionalized and ongoing structure of torture.

K.F.