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When will the time finally come when the world realizes that there has been no real practical change in Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians in the West Bank? Though Israel endeavours to withhold the truth of its policies from the international stage, the prisoner issue remains one of the most critical to the Palestinian population. When one considers that the number of prisoners detained in the Israeli jails is almost 11,000 persons, it is safe to say that there is no family in Palestine that is not affected by this problem.

Not one of the agreements signed with Israel since Oslo speaks about the prisoner issue. Whenever Israel has released prisoners, it has been a unilateral decision, never due to any formal agreement.

On the International Day of Prisoners, it is important to reflect on the fact that the number of jailed Palestinians increases every day. There has been little or no change in the situation, despite the work done by dozens of local and international organizations working on human rights monitoring within Israeli jails.

This startlingly large number of Palestinian prisoners, and the horrible conditions they are submitted to within Israel jails, make this one of the most hotly debated issues on both a local and international level, regarding the future of Palestine.

In all of Palestine and Israel, there are 21 jails, divided into two different types: civil ones managed by the police, and those managed by the military. In these jails we can find people accused and tried in Israeli civil and military courts, but also people that are waiting for a judgment that may never arrive, as is the case with people detained under the system of administrative detention, which allows Israel to imprison people without any formal accusations, usually for more that six months.

In Israeli jails, there are almost 700 children, 130 women and 400 prisoners detained under administrative detention. More than 100 persons have been detained for over 20 years, and many of them near 30 years of detention.

It is also important to point out that though Israel considerably increases its prisoner population, this does not adversely affect Israel’s economic situation in a significant manner. The reason is that the cost of life inside the jails is laid in large part upon the families of the prisoners and the Palestinian Authority. In addition, the practice of roll call every day, sometimes more than three times a day, is another way to humiliate and stress the prisoners. 

That Israel does not alter its policy regarding prisoners, reveals that the Israeli government has no intention of committing to real change regarding its occupation of Palestine. The Palestinians are conscious that Israel’s current policy of detaining people, often without any formal accusations, and the constantly increasing number arrests, is a clear message to the Palestinians that Israel has no intention of ending its policy of occupation or the continuous humiliation of the civil Palestinian population.

Further, if we look at the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, we can see that Israel’s politics is always based on a “two sided” strategy, in which Israel does something that can be publicized to the world as a step forward, yet only as a way to distract attention from the reality on the ground. And the reality in this case was that there was no real intention by Israel to release prisoners taken from Gaza; so we can say that while they have left Gaza, they are still there, exactly as they are still inside every family in the Gaza Strip that is waiting since 2005 for one or more relatives to be released.

The problem of prisoners in not only related to the political situation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also to Israel’s respect for human rights and codes of international law, such as the Geneva Conventions and related protocols regarding conduct between hostile forces in an international conflict.

Israel is violating the Fourth Geneva Convention at the moment, as most of those jails are situated inside Israeli territory and not in the West Bank. Article 49 states that an occupying country is required to have the prisons on occupied land in order to permit their family to visit them. This violation of international law affects, first of all, the families of the prisoners, who can only visit their relatives in rare cases, and only through a difficult process of application to the Israeli authorities or through the International Red Cross. Despite this, the number of visits that prisoners are able to receive in jail is low and absolutely insufficient according to international standards.

Israel’s strategy with the Palestinian prisoners, in an attempt to circumvent international humanitarian law, begins by not recognizing the Palestinians as “combatants,” a definition that is clear in the UN conventions and resolutions. The conflict between Israel and Palestine, is, under international law, an international conflict, and the struggle of the Palestinians one of self determination against a foreign occupation. This means that all the Palestinians taken by Israel are, according to the rule of international law, considered “war prisoners.” This means that Palestinian prisoners are under the protection of international law, beginning with the Geneva Conventions.

The human rights organizations in Israel, as well as in Palestine and all over the world, agree that the conditions for many prisoners inside Israeli prisons is at the limit of torture. Many of them suffer health problems without the possibility of receiving adequate healthcare or to be visited by a doctor for specific medial treatments. In addition, there is an insufficient number of prison cells compared to the growing prisoner population, which means that prisoners must share the same space, sometimes with more than 20 to a cell. Moreover, the prisoners are subjected daily to violence at the hands of soldiers and police, and humiliation is a common factor of the relationship between the guards and the prisoners.

The imprisonment of children and pregnant women by itself is a clear symptom of the total refusal by Israel to improve the human rights situation, indicates that Israel continues in their policy of dehumanizing the Palestinian people.

At some point in the future, Israel will have to face the effects of their policies, first of all when it will begin a process of normalization with the future State of Palestine. But, the main problem at the moment is the growing resentment of Palestinian families with relatives in prison and of the prisoners which will impact future relations with the Israeli government.

On 25 March, Shishad Mohamad Shihad, a 15-years-old male, was released after 14 months in prison. Shihad was detained in three different prisons, accused of throwing stones at a checkpoint. He was beaten for more than two hours before being forced to sign a confession. During his detention, he saw his parents only six times, and for less than one hour each time. During the period he spent in prison, he was frequently beaten and he kept inadequately nourished.

When we asked him regarding his hopes for the future, he answered, “I hope not to see soldiers any more in my daily life, like going to school and coming back home. And I hope that nobody has to live the same experience I lived during those 14 past months."

The hope of Shihad is the same hope of thousands of people in Palestine. On this day, we must remember that we cannot betray those hopes, and that “Never Again” must be a call to action against all human rights abuses, everywhere!