Palestinian Inmates Prepare for Major Clash With Israeli Authorities, Prisoner Support Groups Warn
Tensions are rising between the Israel Prison Service (IPS) and Palestinian prisoners and could be headed for a major confrontation, Palestinian human rights and prisoner support groups said on Wednesday. On Sunday, IPS guards raided Palestinian female prisoners’ cells at Damon Prison near Haifa. According to the Palestinian Prisoners Club, the guards used physical violence and police dogs against the female prisoners. The prisoners responded by setting fire to their cells. On Tuesday, 120 Palestinian prisoners in Ktzi’ot Prison, in the Negev Desert, returned their meals to protest the raid at Damon Prison.
The New Arab news website quoted Ayah Shreiteh, spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoners Club, as saying, “Israeli forces shot pepper spray, used police dogs during the search, and then placed the representative of all female prisoners in solitary confinement.” The Israeli authorities later transferred the representative of Palestinian female prisoners, Yasmin Shaaban, to the Jalamah interrogation center, near Jenin, according to reports from Palestinian prisoners’ support groups.
Shreiteh added that in Ktzi’ot Prison, the IPS put 68 of the protesting prisoners into solitary confinement.
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Milena Ansari from the Addameer Prisoner Support Association stated that the crackdown on prisoners is linked to the policies of the new Israeli government. The new national security minister, far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, has pledged to continue lobbying for the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorist murders, and on after a visit to new cells in Nafha Prison, also in the Negev Desert, said he would make sure the incarceration conditions of Palestinians there would not be “better conditions than the existing ones.”
On a recent prison visit by Addameer, Ansari said, a Palestinian detainee held in administrative detention claimed that all inmates at Megiddo Prison, about 10 miles south of Nazareth, had been informed by IPS officials of new measures to come, such as reducing visit times and courtyard time, forbidding movement between rooms, and forcing prisoners to hang an Israeli flag in each room. Such measures would likely lead to a significant confrontation between Palestinian prisoners and the IPS, according to Ansari.
The situation was not addressed during the recent visit to Israel and the West Bank of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who met with Israeli and Palestinian officials and called for calm.
The leadership body of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails announced that they would counter the new measures taken by the Israeli government with “insurrection and disobedience.” They have also threatened to begin a massive hunger strike during Ramadan in March.
