JERUSALEM \u2013 Palestinian prisoners\u2019 rights groups accused Israel on Sunday of continuing to conceal the fate and whereabouts of thousands of Palestinians detained from the Gaza Strip, saying the practice amounted to widespread enforced disappearance and had left families without information about their relatives.<\/p>\n
The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoner Society and Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association issued a joint statement marking the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on August 30.<\/p>\n
The organisations said Israeli authorities had withheld detainees\u2019 names, places of detention and health information while preventing contact with families, lawyers and human rights organisations.<\/p>\n
They described the practice as a systematic form of enforced disappearance that created conditions in which torture, mistreatment and medical abuse could occur without effective oversight.<\/p>\n
The groups said restrictions on access to Palestinian detainees had extended to lawyers, the International Committee of the Red Cross and human rights organisations, further limiting independent information about people held in Israeli custody.<\/p>\n
Thousands unaccounted for<\/p>\n
No precise overall figure is available for Palestinians detained from Gaza, the groups said, citing the difficulty of documenting cases and determining the fate of detainees and missing people.<\/p>\n
They said they had tracked the cases of thousands of people detained from Gaza over the past three years, while Israeli authorities had frequently responded to inquiries by saying the information was unavailable.<\/p>\n
The organisations accused Israel of subjecting Gaza detainees to torture, mistreatment and denial of medical care, and said dozens had died in prisons and detention camps.<\/p>\n
At least 53 detainees from Gaza whose identities are known have died in Israeli custody since October 2023, the statement said, out of 99 Palestinian detainees known to have died during the same period.<\/p>\n
The groups also accused Israel of withholding the bodies of Palestinians from Gaza, including detainees who died in prisons and detention facilities.<\/p>\n
They called on the United Nations and the international community to act to establish the fate of Palestinian detainees, launch independent investigations into allegations of enforced disappearance, torture and deaths in custody, and press Israel to return bodies being withheld.<\/p>\n
The accusations add to mounting concern among Palestinian prisoner organisations over the treatment and legal status of Palestinians detained during the Gaza war.<\/p>\n
The groups say the absence of reliable information about detainees has created a parallel crisis for families, many of whom have been unable to establish whether relatives are alive, where they are being held or what condition they are in.<\/p>\n
The lack of access has also made it difficult for lawyers and humanitarian organisations to monitor detention conditions or independently investigate allegations of abuse.<\/p>\n
Ben-Gvir\u2019s tougher prison policy<\/p>\n
The dispute comes against a broader backdrop of increasingly severe prison policies under National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has pushed for tougher conditions for Palestinian prisoners since entering government in late 2022.<\/p>\n
Palestinian and Israeli rights organisations have documented allegations involving restrictions on food and medical care, prolonged isolation and torture.<\/p>\n
Ben-Gvir has openly defended a tougher approach towards Palestinian prisoners and has repeatedly rejected calls for improved detention conditions.<\/p>\n
In a video released on Sunday, he told female Palestinian prisoners that \u201cThe good conditions that used to exist in the prisons are over.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Palestinian Prisoner Society said his conduct reflected an effort \u201cto normalise scenes of humiliation and torture and turn them into a political achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n
The organisation said more than 100 Palestinian prisoners and detainees had died since the start of the Gaza war, while the fate of many others remained difficult to establish.<\/p>\n
Around 9,500 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, including 94 women and more than 350 children, according to Palestinian prisoners\u2019 rights groups.<\/p>\n
The groups say the scale of detention, combined with restrictions on independent access, has made transparency over Israel\u2019s prison system an increasingly urgent international issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JERUSALEM \u2013 Palestinian prisoners\u2019 rights groups accused Israel on Sunday of continuing to conceal the fate and whereabouts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-601205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}