RAMALLAH, April 14, 2018 (WAFA) – Issa Qaraqe, head of the prisoners’ commission, urged on Saturday wide spread support for the boycott of Palestinians held by Israel in administrative detention of the Israeli courts.

The detainees decided two months ago to boycott all Israeli courts for their failure to grant them fair trials, saying the courts in more than 90 percent of the cases rule in favor of the military government and uphold the administrative detention.

Qaraqe said during a visit to two Palestinians released from Israeli jails after spending over 12 years in custody for resisting the occupation that 500 Palestinians held in jail without charge or trial, some of them have been in that situation for years, need support from international legal organizations to expose the illegal nature of administrative detention.

“The non-recognition by the occupation of the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the occupied territories and continuing to pass arbitrary rules of repressive nature that will have impact on all aspects of daily life of the Palestinians protected by international law is contrary to the legal scope of its (Israel) authority as occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention,” he said.

“Administrative detention, which is an arbitrary detention without fair trial, falls within the understanding of grave breaches and defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as war crimes,” he said.

Administrative detention is a punitive measure Israel has inherited from the 1948 British Mandate Emergency Laws and which it still applies primarily against Palestinians in obvious and clear violation of international law.

M.K.