Ramallah – Ma’an – Minister of Women’s Affairs, Mona Al-Khalili, confirmed that Palestinian female prisoners in Israeli prisons are exposed to serious and complex violations, especially after October 7, and that the occupation authorities have intensified their repressive measures, torture, humiliation, and shameful practices against Palestinian female prisoners from the Gaza Strip.
The Minister confirmed that, based on the information and live testimonies given by some of the released female prisoners, the extent of the grave violations of human rights laws and the Geneva Conventions is clear. She stressed that these violations of the rights of prisoners in general and female prisoners in particular fall within the framework of war crimes practiced by the occupation against prisoners.
Minister Al-Khalili extended her greetings and appreciation to the Palestinian prisoners, both male and female, on the occasion of Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, and called on the international community and human rights institu
tions to pressure the occupation authorities to immediately release Prisoners, male and female, opening an international investigation into all violations, holding the occupation accountable for its crimes against our male and female prisoners, and allowing the Red Cross to visit male and female prisoners and examine their conditions and the violations they are subjected to.
Al-Khalili indicated that this year’s Prisoner’s Day comes in the midst of the brutal aggression and genocidal crimes committed against Our people in the Gaza Strip, and the unprecedented escalation carried out by the occupation forces and terrorist settler militias in the West Bank. She added that the Israeli occupation authorities have intensified their violations of the investigation of Palestinian male and female prisoners, especially since the seventh of last October.
Al-Khalili explained that the female prisoners are suffering from tragic conditions inside the occupation prisons. Especially women who were arrested in the Gaza Stri
p and whose fate was unknown inside unknown detention centers or camps that are not subject to any supervision or visits from the Red Cross, in addition to the crime of forced disappearance of female prisoners in unknown places of detention. Al-Khalili added: ‘The testimonies and live testimonies we receive are shocking, disturbing and horrifying about the abuse, harassment, blackmail, insults and practices that degrade the humanity of female prisoners, all of which contradict and violate the rules and principles of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions.’
The Minister explained that female prisoners’ testimonies showed that they were threatened with death, which made Palestinian women live in fear and psychological anxiety. The state of fear and intimidation deepens given that most of the arrests and raids take place after 3 am, and are carried out in brutal and humiliating ways to human dignity and the dignity of women, including, for example, publishing their photos on social media site
s. This pattern did not exist before October 7th.
According to all the testimonies collected from the competent institutions, female prisoners are subjected to repeated beatings. There are female prisoners who spoke about being beaten and subjected to abuse in all kinds and ways, in addition to insults with the aim of insulting and humiliating, in addition to the sexual blackmail of some minor female prisoners from within the occupied interior. It was pointed out in this episode that The Israeli occupation isolates female prisoners in Gaza from female prisoners in the West Bank, as they are unable to mingle together, and that some female prisoners in the Gaza Strip were forced to leave their children in the street when they were arrested. As a result of the isolation and the prevention of visits by lawyers, neither families nor institutions concerned with prisoners and human rights are able to know the conditions of their detention and what they are exposed to.
Al-Khalili stressed that the violations are no
t limited only to the Palestinian female prisoners themselves, but also to their families and to the wives and mothers of prisoners who are deprived of their rights to visit and to check on the conditions of their children. She also stressed that the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, in cooperation with various official, civil and international human rights institutions, is following up on the issue of Palestinian female prisoners and the complex violations they are subjected to.
The Minister pointed out that the crimes we are witnessing today are not new, as the occupation has committed all kinds of crimes against male and female prisoners over many decades, until it has become a permanent approach and behavior, including abuse, beatings and strip searches. She explained that the difference today is the intensity of these crimes, not their ugliness.
It is noteworthy, according to the statistics of the Commission for Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs, that the number of female prisoners in the occupation deten
tion centers, by the end of March, amounted to about (272). This statistic includes women who were arrested from the occupied territories in 1948, and cases of arrest among the ranks of Gazan women who were arrested in the West Bank, and as There are (28) female prisoners who are among (80) female prisoners sitting in Israeli occupation prisons, in addition to the female detainees in the Gaza Strip who were forcibly disappeared.
The number of arrests among children reached more than (500) children, and administrative detention orders were issued against prisoners in general after October 7, amounting to more than (4852) orders, including new orders and renewal orders, including orders against children and women.
Source: Maan News Agency
