عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Arab World

Palestinians Warn of Consequences of Prisoners' Abuse

Palestinian detainees during family visit (Prison Service)
Palestinian detainees during family visit (Prison Service)
TT
TT

Palestinians Warn of Consequences of Prisoners' Abuse

Palestinian detainees during family visit (Prison Service)
Palestinian detainees during family visit (Prison Service)

Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders have warned the Israeli government of the consequences of the "reckless decisions" of the extremist Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, against Palestinian prisoners.

Recently, Ben-Gvir directed the Israeli Prison Service to reduce family visitation for Palestinian detainees imprisoned in Israeli jails from once a month to once every two months.

The head of the Palestinian Prisoners' Club, Qaddoura Fares, confirmed that targeting prisoners will have severe consequences in the face of the occupation and on all fronts.

Fares said in press statements that the factions, forces, and institutions would be united inside and outside the Israeli detention centers to support the prisoners.

He added that the decision of the extremist Ben Gvir comes within the framework of racist retaliatory behavior, aiming to harm the prisoners and their families and violate their basic rights.

Fares stressed that the coming period will prove that Ben-Gvir poses a threat to regional security and stability and the security of Israel itself.

-Family Visits

The vice president of the Prisoner's Club, Abdullah al-Zaghari, warned of the new decision, saying it harms the system and deprives thousands of family members of prisoners of visits for security pretexts.

He revealed that the prisoner movement is expected to announce several steps to confront this decision, and it is ready to resume its ongoing battle against the policies and procedures of the Israeli government.

He cautioned that if implemented, Ben-Gvir's measures would lead to an open confrontation with the prisoners, especially since this decision comes a week after the minister deprived them of their TV privileges.

Ben Gvir, facing a decline in popularity and widely referred to as a failed minister, reduced the family visits without coordinating with relevant security services, the Prison Service, the General Intelligence Service (Shin Bet), or the army.

Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that the Commissioner General of the Prisons Authority, Katy Perry, opposed the decision and warned Ben-Gvir of its severe consequences.

-Sensitive issue

Speaking to the paper, sources within the Israeli military and the intelligence services warned that the security implications of the move had not been considered and that the decision was "irresponsible."

They emphasized that changing the circumstances of Palestinian prisoners is a huge event and could push them to a breaking point.

Ben-Gvir responded to this situation with a retaliatory decision against Perry, preventing her from traveling to Belgium to participate in an international conference, claiming her trip would be very expensive.

Notably, about 5,000 Palestinian prisoners are in Israeli prisons, and 2,200 are under administrative detention without trial or charges.

Since March 9, 2022, Israeli forces have been carrying out daily arrests.

Ben-Gvir belongs to a right-wing movement in Israel that claims that Palestinian prisoners enjoy good accommodation conditions.

Since forming the right-wing government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir has been making decisions regarding the prisoners despite receiving strong opposition from his associates.

He recently canceled the administrative discharge or early release of sick and elderly prisoners nearing the end of their sentence. It is a method used by the Prison Service to reduce prison overcrowding.

-Israeli forces kill a Palestinian

Israeli forces on Friday killed a Palestinian in the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The ministry said Abdul Rahim Fayez Ghannam, 36, was "shot by live occupation (Israeli) fire in the head" in the village of Al-Aqaba in the northern West Bank, reported Agence France Presse (AFP).

The Israeli army said in a statement a firefight broke out, and a hit was identified on one of the gunmen.

Witnesses said that the dead man did not participate in the clashes and was in a nearby field when he was shot.

The army troops also "used shoulder-fired missiles and grenades" in the violence and subsequently found improvised explosive devices and other weapons in the building.

After Israeli forces withdrew, Palestinian residents inspected bullet marks and a hole left in the wall of a house.

-A new wave of violence

The West Bank has witnessed a wave of violence over the past eighteen months, with a series of attacks launched by Palestinians in Israeli cities.

Jewish settlers attacked Palestinian towns and villages, and the Israeli army intensified raids.

Thousands of Palestinians have been arrested and hundreds killed since last year in clashes with Israeli forces, including civilians who did not participate in the conflicts.

Most Viewed

 
 
Arab World

Israelis are Wary of Returning to the North Because they Don't Trust the Ceasefire with Hezbollah

A general view of the border line between Israel and Lebanon following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, as seen from its Israeli side, November 28, 2024. REUTERS/ Shir Torem
A general view of the border line between Israel and Lebanon following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, as seen from its Israeli side, November 28, 2024. REUTERS/ Shir Torem
TT
TT

Israelis are Wary of Returning to the North Because they Don't Trust the Ceasefire with Hezbollah

A general view of the border line between Israel and Lebanon following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, as seen from its Israeli side, November 28, 2024. REUTERS/ Shir Torem
A general view of the border line between Israel and Lebanon following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed group Hezbollah, as seen from its Israeli side, November 28, 2024. REUTERS/ Shir Torem

Dean Sweetland casts his gaze over a forlorn street in the Israeli community of Kibbutz Malkiya. Perched on a hill overlooking the border with Lebanon, the town stands mostly empty after being abandoned a year ago.
The daycare is closed. The homes are unkempt. Parts of the landscape are ashen from fires sparked by fallen Hezbollah rockets. Even after a tenuous Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire designed to let Israelis return to the north, the mood here is far from celebratory.
“The ceasefire is rubbish,” said Sweetland, a gardener and member of the kibbutz’s civilian security squad. “Do you expect me to ring around my friends and say, ‘All the families should come home?’ No."
Across the border, Lebanese civilians have jammed roads in a rush to return to homes in the country's south, but most residents of northern Israel have met the ceasefire with suspicion and apprehension.
“Hezbollah could still come back to the border, and who will protect us when they do?” Sweetland asked.
Israel’s government seeks to bring the northern reaches of the country back to life, particularly the line of communities directly abutting Lebanon that have played a major role in staking out Israel’s border.
But the fear of Hezbollah, a lack of trust in United Nations peacekeeping forces charged with upholding the ceasefire, deep anger at the government and some Israelis' desire to keep rebuilding their lives elsewhere are keeping many from returning immediately.
When the truce took effect, about 45,000 Israelis had evacuated from the north. They fled their homes after Hezbollah began firing across the border on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with its ally Hamas in Gaza. That triggered more than a year of cross-border exchanges, with Lebanese villages in the south and Israeli communities facing the border taking the brunt of the pain.
During the truce's initial 60-day phase, Hezbollah is supposed to remove its armed presence from a broad band of southern Lebanon where the military says the militant group had been digging in for years by gathering weapons and setting up rocket launch sites and other infrastructure. Under the ceasefire, a UN peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL and a beefed-up Lebanese army presence are supposed to ensure Hezbollah doesn’t return.
Many residents of northern Israel are skeptical that the peace will hold.
Sarah Gould, who evacuated Kibbutz Malkiya at the start of the war with her three kids, said Hezbollah fired on the community up to and just past the minute when the ceasefire took effect early Wednesday.
“So for the government to tell me that Hezbollah is neutralized," she said, "it’s a perfect lie.”
Residents fear for their safety in the far north in Gaza, where Israel is pushing forward with a war that has killed over 44,000 Palestinians, Israel’s goal is the eradication of Hamas. But in Lebanon, Israel’s aims were limited to pushing Hezbollah away from the border so northern residents could return home.
Israeli critics say the government should have kept fighting to outright cripple Hezbollah or to clear out the border area, which is home to hundreds of thousands of Lebanese.
“I won’t even begin to consider going home until I know there’s a dead zone for kilometers across the border,” the 46-year-old Gould said.
Some wary Israelis trickled back home Thursday and Friday to areas farther from the border. But communities like Kibbutz Manara, set on a tiny slice of land between Lebanon and Syria, remained ghost towns.
Orna Weinberg, 58, who was born and raised in Manara, said it was too early to tell whether the ceasefire would protect the community.
Perched above all the other border villages, Manara was uniquely vulnerable to Hezbollah fire throughout the war. Three-quarters of its structures were damaged.
In the kibbutz’s communal kitchen and dining hall, ceiling beams have collapsed. The uprooted floorboards are covered with ash from fires that also claimed much of the kibbutz’s cropland.
Rocket fragments abound. The torso of a mannequin, a decoy dressed in army green, lies on the ground.
Weinberg tried to stay in Manara during the war, but after anti-tank shrapnel damaged her home, soldiers told her to leave. On Thursday, she walked along her street, which looks out directly over a UNIFIL position separating the kibbutz from a line of Lebanese villages that have been decimated by Israeli bombardment and demolitions.
Weinberg said UNIFIL hadn’t prevented Hezbollah’s build-up in the past, “so why would they be able to now?”
“A ceasefire here just gives Hezbollah a chance to rebuild their power and come back to places that they were driven out of,” she said.
The truce seemed fragile.
Associated Press reporters heard sporadic bursts of gunfire, likely Israeli troops firing at Lebanese attempting to enter the towns. Israel’s military says it is temporarily preventing Lebanese civilians from returning home to a line of towns closest to the border, until the Lebanese military can deploy there in force.
Even in less battered communities, no one returns home. Though the atmosphere along the border was tense, Malkiya showed signs of peace. With Hezbollah’s rockets stopped, some residents returned briefly to the kibbutz to peer around cautiously.
At a vista overlooking the border, where the hulking wreckage of Lebanese villages could be made out, a group of around 30 soldiers gathered. Just days ago, they would have made easy targets for Hezbollah fire.
Malkiya has sustained less damage than Manara. Still, residents said they would not return immediately. During a year of displacement, many have restarted their lives elsewhere, and the idea of going back to a front-line town on the border is daunting.
In Lebanon, where Israeli bombardment and ground assaults drove some 1.2 million people from their homes, some of the displaced crowded into schools-turned-shelters or slept in the streets.
In Israel, the government paid for hotels for evacuees and helped accommodate children in new schools. Gould predicted residents would return to the kibbutz only when government subsidies for their lodging dried up — “not because they want to, but because they feel like they can’t afford an alternative.”
“It’s not just a security issue,” Gould said. “We’ve spent more than a year rebuilding our lives wherever we landed. It’s a question of having to gather that up and move back somewhere else, somewhere that’s technically our old house but not a home. Nothing feels the same.”
It’s unclear if schools in the border communities will have enough students to reopen, Gould said, and her children are already enrolled elsewhere. She’s enjoyed living farther from the border, away from an open war zone.
There’s also a deep feeling that the communities were abandoned by the government, Sweetland said.
Sweetland is one of roughly 25 civilian security volunteers who stayed throughout the war, braving continual rocket fire to keep the kibbutz afloat. They repaired damaged homes, put out blazes and helped replace the kibbutz generator when it was taken out by Hezbollah fire. They were on their own, with no firefighters or police willing to risk coming, he said.
“We didn’t have any help for months and months and months, and we pleaded, ‘Please help us.’”
Sweetland said he will keep watching over the hushed pathways of the once-vibrant community in hopes his neighbors will soon feel safe enough to return. But he predicted it would take months.
Weinberg hopes to move back to Manara as soon as possible. On Thursday, she spotted a former neighbor who was about to leave after checking the damage to her home.
Weinberg grasped her hand through the car window, asking how she was. The woman grimaced and began to cry. Their hands parted as the car slowly rolled out through the gates and drove away.