The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) has warned that the renewal of an order banning family visits to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons is aimed at continuing torture and starvation against prisoners and deepening their isolation from the outside world.
In a statement on Friday, the PPS said Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s announcement renewing the visit ban was not surprising, but rather an extension of a systematic policy aimed at entrenching the complete isolation of prisoners.
The society said the decision turns prisons into closed spaces where torture, starvation, slow killing and concealment from the world take place away from oversight and accountability, providing cover for the continuation of the most serious violations against Palestinian prisoners.
It noted that the renewal of the ban came shortly after an Israeli Supreme Court ruling that deemed the continued prevention of International Committee of the Red Cross visits to prisoners illegal.
The PPS said the ruling has not changed the reality facing prisoners, as Israeli authorities have continued to deny the Red Cross access while renewing the order banning family visits.
The society said this once again confirms that Israeli institutions operate under a unified policy aimed at creating the conditions necessary for crimes against prisoners to continue and for their isolation from the outside world to persist, preventing real oversight of their conditions.
It said the renewed order represents a new link in a broader system of retaliatory and punitive policies that Israel has escalated since the start of the genocide, with the aim of fully isolating prisoners and giving prison authorities a free hand to commit further crimes and violations.
Since then, the PPS said, prisons have become an integrated system producing systematic torture, starvation, humiliation, deliberate medical neglect, sexual violence, enforced disappearance and slow killing, making them one of the most prominent arenas of violations against Palestinian prisoners.
prisoners.
It called for urgent international intervention to force Israel to end the policy of isolation, immediately resume visits, guarantee protection for prisoners and hold those responsible for violations against them accountable before international justice mechanisms.
According to the Asra Media Office, there are 9,400 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including 94 women, 350 children, 3,244 administrative detainees and 1,320 detainees held under Israel’s so-called “unlawful combatant” law. The number of arrests since the start of the war on Gaza has exceeded 24,600.
Source:Websites
