RAMALLAH, July 13, 2015 (WAFA) – Israeli
authorities Monday issued administrative detention orders against 15
Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails, according to the Palestinian
Prisoner’s Club (PPC).
PPC said that all 15 prisoners have had their
administrative detention sentence renewed for the second and third times, some
of whom have been placed sporadically without charge or trial for years.
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.
On Sunday, Israel released Palestinian
political prisoner Khader Adnan, who spent over 55 days on a hunger strike to
protest his illegal detention without charge or indictment, after reaching a
deal with him to end his strike in return for his release.
To be noted, two Palestinian prisoners in
Israeli jails are currently on a hunger strike for over 23 days now, in protest
of their illegal detention without charge or trial. They were identified as
Palestinian lawyer Muhammad Allan from Nablus, and Uday Isteiti from the Jenin
refugee camp.
Prisoner support and Human Rights Association,
Addameer, reported that, starting from July 1st, more than 60
administrative detainees held in Ofer, Naqab and Megiddo prisons have boycott
the Israeli Occupation’s military courts in protest of the administrative
detention policy and the false trials they are subjected to.
In a story published in June 2015, Addameer
reported that, the Israeli Knesset is expected to present the force-feeding
bill for voting in its second and third readings so that the law can be
instated despite opposition from international organizations.
The bill is being passed under the pretext that
it protects the lives of hunger strikers, despite force-feeding being widely
considered a form of torture by the international community, including the
World Medical Association, said the association.
The text of the Malta Declaration states:
“Forcible feeding is never ethically acceptable. Even if intended to benefit,
feeding accompanied by threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints
is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment. Equally unacceptable is the
forced feeding of some detainees in order to intimidate or coerce other hunger
strikers to stop fasting.
According to an OCHA report issued in May 2015,
the monthly average of those held under administrative detention increased
significantly to 327 in 2014, compared to 132 in 2013 and 245 in 2012.
According to the International Middle East
Media Center, “There are currently
around 500 detainees serving administrative detention in several Israeli jails,
18 of whom are members of the Palestinian Legislative Council.”
“Under administrative detention, defendant
faces no clear criminal charge nor does he/she appear before the court of law
for trial. This kind of detention has been widely used by the Israeli
authorities against Palestinian prisoners,” said the Ministry of Information.
The ministry added that, “Although under
international law, it is allowed under certain circumstances. However, because
of the serious injury to due-process rights inherent in this measure and the
obvious danger of its abuse, international law has placed rigid restrictions on
its application a matter that Israel ignores and violates.”
According to international law, administrative
detention can be used only in the most exceptional cases, as the last means
available to preventing danger that cannot be thwarted by less harmful means.
Yet Israel uses this form of collective punishment systematically.
Meanwhile,
Israeli military courts have renewed the detention orders of around 40
prisoners, for different periods of time, under the pretext of completing
investigations and judicial proceedings.
T.R.
