General Report on the situations of the Palestenian and Arab Isolated Detainees in the Israeli Prisons

General Report on the situations of the Palestenian and Arab Isolated Detainees in the Israeli Prisons

According to the latest statistics, since year 1967 and uptil now, the Israeli forces have arrested about (750,000) citizens inculding (12000) females and thousands of children from varying ages.

Since the beginning of the Aksa upheaval on September 28th, 2000, 69000 people were arrested, including more than 800 female citizens and 7800 children. And there are 197 detainees who died after being arrested or inside prison because of medical neglect or torture, murder, or use of extreme power and fire against unarmed detainees, including 74 detainees who became martyrs since the Aksa upheaval, 10 among them died during year 2007.Obeida Alkodsi Alduweik (25 years old), who passed away in one of the Israeli hospitals after transporting him to the hospital in his last breath , is the last detainee to die in prison because of medical neglect. The martyr had been arrested after being shot on June 26th, 2009 and was sent after that to one of the Israeli hospitals and was accused by the Israeli authorities of trying to stab an Israeli soldier, and all the attempts and requests to visit and to make sure that he’s fine have been refused.

The former Israeli Minister of Health, "Danny Naveh" had given his instructions to all hospitals not to receive any prisoner on hunger strike in Israeli hospitals, even if it led to his death, during the strike of the prisoners’ open-ended hunger in August 2004.
The Israeli soldiers do not hide their brutal way of dealing with the wounded prisoners and martyrs like the martyr "Ali Joulani", who appeared live on media while being mistreated and abused by the security personnel after his completion of a commando operation against the Israeli Ministry of Defense in August 2001, the martyr, "Sufian Alarda" from Jenin who was abducted while wounded out of the ambulance in September 2001, the martyr, "Falah Masharka" from Tulkarem arrested while injured and was tortured inside the hospital and died in September 2004, the martyr, "Sheikh Salah Al-Eid" from Rafah was arrested while injured and was pronounced dead at the hospital in December 2004, and the martyrs "Salim Abu Hija" (29 years old) and "Mahmoud Abu Hasan" (28 years old), both from the town of Yamoun west of Jenin, where they were wounded and Israeli forces prevented ambulances from reaching them nor did they give them treatment and were left bleeding while abusing them with the aim of their death till they were martyred in November 2006, and many examples can be listed in this place.

Current Prisoners
Currently, 8200 Palestinian and Arab prisoners are distributed in twenty prisons and detention camps in Israeli prisons. But this number is subject to change every hour because of the indiscriminate and arbitrary apprehension of the occupation including (326) children, and (51) female detainees among them three from Gaza.
There are approximately (5326 prisoners), a rate of (65%) of the total prisoners serving actual sentences of varying lengths, including (780 prisoners) who were sentenced to life imprisonment for once or several times. And there are (2151) detainees, at a rate of (26.2%) detainees awaiting trial, while the total number of administrative detainees is (398) prisoners which is (4.9%), and (10) detainees were arrested in accordance with the law of unlawful combatant, while the rest are in the detention and interrogation centers.
Whereas the number of married couples had reached approximately (2782) detainees and make up (34%), meanwhile the number of single prisoners is (5418 prisoners) and makes up (66%).
Most of the Palestinian prisoners are from the West Bank, while the number of prisoners of Gaza Strip is (800 prisoners), and Jerusalem and the areas of the 48 there are (500 prisoners).
There are (325) prisoners detained since before the 1993 Oslo Agreement and are called "veteran prisoners of war". They all spent more than 15 years. And there are (107) prisoners who have been held for more than twenty years, these have been called the "deans of prisoners" and the list of names includes (12 prisoners) who spent more than a quarter of a century in the prisons of the occupation, and extends up to 32 years as case of the dean of prisoners, "Nael Barghouti" who has been detained since the fourth of April 1978. The prisoners’ relatives and the defenders of human rights and conscience in the world expect that Israel will release, in the upcoming Swap Deal of Palestinian prisoners, led by Dean of prisoners Barghouti, who succeeded in this post, Dean of Palestinians editors “Said Al Ataba”, who was released a year ago long after the arrest of 31 years. Hopes are held for the release of Fakhri Barghouti who was arrested in 1978, and Akram Mansour arrested after him by a year. In addition to Fouad Alrazim Al-Makdisi, detained since 1981, Ibrahim Jaber Al-Khalili, Osman Muslih, and Hassan Salamah, detainees after one year. As well as Wassim Alkial Alghizzawi,Karim, Maher, and Sami Younis from the 1948 areas who have been arrested since 1983,knowing that the prisoner Sami Younis, had reached the age of eighty years in Israeli prisons. Whereas the prisoner Mohamed Abdel Hadi al-Hassani Ghazawi "49 years", detained since 1986 and sentenced to 30 years and who is now in a solitary jail in Hadarim, completed 23 consecutive years of arrest, has spent nearly 16 years in solitary confinement and Ramla prison hospital.
The detainee Raed Al-Saadi (43 years), from Jenin, has joined, in late August the list of "deans of prisoners," a term given to prisoners who have spent twenty years and over in Israeli jails.
There are three prisoners from the camp of Jabalya in the Gaza Strip early who entered the twenty-second birthday in prison and on an ongoing basis, last August. And they are: Hassan Mahmoud Abdul Rahim Nofal (37 years) who was arrested on 9.8.2009, and Thaer Mohammad Jamil Al-Kurd (38 years), detained since 8 -8-1988, and Jihad Jamil Mahmoud Obobgen (39 years) who’s been detained on 10.8.2009.

Arab Prisoners

The Arab prisoners, after the closure of the file of the living Lebanese detainees by freeing the Dean of prisoners, Samir Kuntar, and the prisoners of Hezbollah's Mohammed Srour, Maher Kurani, Hussein Suleiman and Khodr Zeidan in the process of exchange between Israel and Hezbollah in July, 2008, as well as the liberated prisoner Nassim Nisr. The presence of Arab prisoners are limited to 22 Jordanian prisoners who are out of any exchange agreement with the Jordanian government, 9 prisoners from the occupied Syrian Golan and a Saudi detainee, Abdul Rahman Alattiyi who’s been detained since March 2005, and dozens of detainees from various Arab nationalities, especially the Sudanese detained after passing the Egyptian Rafah crossing point for different reasons.
By the end of late August, the two Arab detainees,Assim Alwala and Sidki Almakt, entered their twenty-fifth year continuously inside the prisons of the Israeli occupation. Whereas the detainee Bushur Maqt Suleiman Ahmed (44 years), considered the dean of Arab prisoners and a member of the group, had entered his twenty-fifth year on the 12th of last August, and is serving a sentence of (27 years), suffering from several diseases, the most serious is the heart, and besides these there are four other prisoners from the occupied Syrian Golan.
There are dozens of Arab detainees in Israeli jails, including (73) Egyptian man for various reasons, including (27) detainees accused by Israel of involvement in the resistance
In addition to living prisoners, Israel has detained dozens of bodies of the martyrs which are kept in what is known as the cemetery of numbers, or in morgues.
Israel ignores all the international conventions and exercises its continuous repression and brutality against detainees in their detention, which they have been languishing in for years. The latest act of brutality, beatings, isolation and repression is the one practiced against prisoners by the authorities of the “Nakab” detention.
Whereas the policy of deliberate medical neglect is another method of torture till death like the case of the detainee Tayseet Talab Shawawra (33 years), from Bethlehem, sentenced administratively for the fifth time in a row and who is suffering from a severe flu with serious complications. Because the management of the Negev detention did not give him proper treatment in the prison infirmary, his health that hadn’t been given adequate attention to date, worsened.

Repeated Violations Against Prisoners:

The medical negligence against the prisoners who were not treated as patients, taking into account their state of health, where the prison administration drags its feet in providing the required and adequate treatment as required by disease or surgical patients to prisoners except after a fellow of the prisoner patient forms some sort of protest and the lack of specialists and emergency doctors and the total disregard for people with special needs, is no secret even to the International Red Cross. Not to mention the transfer of prisoners to receive treatment in hospitals while handcuffed and legs chained in the trucks and not in the ambulance.
As for female prisoners, they do not receive a personal care where there are no women's or specialist physician or doctor to follow those who are mothers during their labor that occurs as they are enrolled, especially since a large number of them have been detained while pregnant.
Recently, the detainees have said that the prison administration proceeded to the violation of their religious rituals in the past month of Ramadan and to prevent prisoners from performing those religious rituals. Also, prison cooks put the dirt in the prisoners’ food. In addition to being deprived of family visits. As well as temperature and high humidity and lack of ventilation and odor and the spread of insects and not allowing them to purchase their hobbies and a water shortage and overcrowding in the rooms and depriving prisoners of cold water in sections of solitary confinement and pools of sewage near the prison.

Administrative detainees:

Nineteen thousand administrative decisions were issued against Palestinian detainees since the start of the Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, between the new administrative detention and the renewal of administrative detention, and 2007 was the highest, where it has netted (3101) administrative decision, followed by the year 2006, which has issued (2850 ) resolution.
Those decisions affected children, women, youths and elders, and selected intellectuals and students, political leaders and trade unions and in the last three years it affected long deputies in the Palestinian Legislative Council, and ministers in the previous Palestinian governments. So far, the occupation authorities are still holding in its prisons and detention camps (535) administrative detainees, including male and female minors and women,which makes up (5.6%) of the total sum of people arrested and they are(9600 prisoners), and the majority of administrative detainees languishing in the Negev detention facility, which reopened in Al-Aqsa Intifada, and it evidences cruel and inhuman circumstances.
The period of administrative detention stretches from months to years and in many cases, not only did the occupation forces arrest the detainee an administrative detention for once, but also resorted to a policy of renewal of the duration of detention, which formed a phenomenon during Al-Aqsa Intifada, where every month dozens of detainees’ administrative detention is renewed, and they used the renewal policy as a sword of power on the necks of detainees, some of the detainees have renewed several times while some of them spent many years in administrative detention of up to more than seven years just like the case of the detainee Khalid Al Kaabi (38 years), from Balata refugee camp in Nablus, for whom the Israeli authorities have renewed the administrative detention for the tenth time in a row.

Female Captives:

Since 1967, more than ten thousand Palestinian women were arrested including mothers, wives and underage girls and sisters of prisoners, of whom more than (800) citizen were abducted since the start of the Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, 4 prisoners have delivered their new born behind bars in harsh conditions, three of them have been liberated while the detainee Fatma Zak and her new born Joseph are still detained.
The freed prisoner Fatima Barnawi, who was arrested in late 1967, is the first Palestinian female, while the freed prisoner Sonia Shepherd, who spent the longest period is considered the dean of the female prisoners, "where she spent (12 years) in the prisons of occupation. But, the detainee Ahlam al-Tamimi is the top rule, for she was sentenced (16 for life) and is still in the Israeli jails.

Isolated Prisoners:

Occupation authorities have used the policy of using solitary confinement of prisoners against male and female prisoners to try to kill the spirit of resistance and challenge in the prisoner and leave him or her as an easy prey for psychiatric diseases which the prisoner might suffer from due to loneliness for long periods. It reached for years, as in the case of the prisoner Ahmad Shukri who’s been isolated for more than 18 years, and captive Aweidah Kalab, isolated since more than 13 years. Isolation is also used to humiliate the prisoner and destroy his morale in an orderly, programmed way and cause him psychological, moral and physiological harm to him and his family that is deprived of seeing him/her and constantly worried about him/her and his/her life. And therefore comes under the isolation policy of oppression and inhuman mounting practiced against our prisoners to destroy them and make them not as important and powerless, and the imposition of the admission policy of the fait accompli on them, as there is no prisoner who got isolated and stayed together in terms of health physically or psychologically.

The policy of isolation is not tied to a specific time era, but has pursued and been practiced along the households in the Israeli prisons as an organized approach, and increased in intensity with the eruption of the first Palestinian intifada in 1987, and became more bloody during the Intifada with the increase in the number of prisoners whom Israel views as a threat to the security and were nominated as the "ticking bombs". The prison administration wasn’t satisfied with the places and isolation cells that were already in prison, but proceeded to the opening of a special isolation section in more severe conditions, and followed a policy of collective isolation established by the prison authorities specifically for this purpose in Beer Sabae, Hadarim, Shatta and Ramle and Elon, but there are still dozens of prisoners who’ve been isolated incommunicado for years, despite numerous appeals to stop such political tyranny.
The isolation is one of the most severe types of torture employed by the Israeli prison authorities against the Palestinian prisoners and the Arabs, and its divisions packets are for slow death physically and psychologically, and the least to say about solitary cells is that they are graves, where the prisoner is detained solely for long periods of time over the years in the rooms known as Xs, small and tightly closed metal door, a thick, dark, poorly ventilated room and the sun does not know its way into it and with a narrow area, and suffers from a significant lack of hygiene, so the smell of mold comes out of beds, and communication mechanisms of television, radio, newspapers are non-existent, even the watch that would help them know the time is forbidden. In isolation, the prisoner is also prevented from speaking loudly and thus from the singing and the anthem, and is not allowed to meet his family during the period of isolation, and in the very rare cases in which the parents’ visit is permitted, those visits would be mixed with harassment, provocation and insult. And if the prisoner is sick, he will not receive an adequate health care and it might be non-existent sometimes. Even if they move the prisoner to the so-called clinic, his hands and feet would be shackled, which would cause him health complications and psychological problems.

The isolated prisoner stands before an imagery Court every six months if unilateral separation (ie, one person in the cell) or every year if it’s double insulation (ie, two in the cell), and this court obeys the orders of the Israeli intelligence, and lack the bare images and elements of justice, and in it they extend the isolation of the prisoner in the form of a farce agreed upon in advance.
In order to apply isolation through this court, the occupation authorities spreads claims that the prisoner is a dangerous detainee who carried out military operations against the occupation army, and Israel describes it as bloody and is therefore a major threat to prison staff and prison management hence he must be isolated. And this isolation is used as a punishment for some prisoners as a revenge for their distinctive guerrilla operations which resulted in the death of Israelis, or punished for the work done by the prisoner within the prison such as the response to the attacks against the prisoners and warders and such excuses , that a prisoner poses a danger to the prisoners because of his leadership and erudition and depth of experience and its impact on the rest of the prisoners, so he should be isolated because to the prison administration, he is considered an incitement and a danger to the safety and security of the prison, and the argument advanced by the prison administration to isolate prisoners who are owners of a stance, leadership, and deep experience. This aims at reducing their impact on the rest of the prisoners, and to create a constant state of confusion in the ranks of the prisoners to pass their policy of oppression and weaken the captive.
The detainee is isolated for extremely trivial reasons such as an argument between the prisoner and the warden during the inspection or the number of rooms or while out of the boom, during family visits, adjusting the materials that the management considers illegal or not allowed to buy, and this is designed to break the psychology, and make them a body without a soul, and create diseases for those isolated captives so that they’d become unable to move because of arthritis and because of poor eyesight when they get out of these cells. Since, when a human is not able to see except for a short distance that does not exceed two meters for five or seven years, it is certain that his vision will weaken.
Female captives haven’t been out of harm's way concerning the policy of solitary confinement, where the prison administration still isoltes the female prisoner Amina Mona since 9 months in the Ramle prison and she’s spending a life time sentence, and she is living through dreadful circumstances in isolation due to the continues screams of nearby civilian female prisoners and the section that she is isolated in is full of insects and cockroaches from the sewer, because of the dirtiness of the department and the administration’s deliberate neglect concerning the neatness of the units, so as to increase the isolated prisoners’ suffering. Mona suffers and Mona suffers from fatigue and exhaustion as a result of isolation and ill-treatment, and she threatened by an open-ended hunger strike, if her living conditions were not improved and if the administration insisted on treating her this way.
As for the punitive measures used by prison authorities against isolated prisoners to increase their suffering and make them feel that they are living in a prison within the prison, they include: prevention of the visit as the most isolated prisoners are barred from visiting their families, leading to increased psychological distress for both the prisoner and his family, and the prisoner suffers from a lack of basic needs and the inability to commence those needs through the family, an example of that suffering is the prisoner Jamal Abu Al-Hija who’s barred from visiting his imprisoned wife, former cancer patient whose life is threatened. Moreover, he’s been prevented from visiting his young son and two daughters. In addition to that he’s been prevented from visiting his three children, who are detained in Israeli jails, or even meet with them in any prison.
The prison’s administration also gives orders to close the kiosk for a long period that exceeds more than one year, which made the isolated prisoners take procedures to rationalize their spending in all possible ways, while the excuse prison’s administration was that this money belongs to terrorist organizations, and the deprivation lasted for many months including forbidding the allocations of the Ministry of the Detainees.
Another face of the prisoners’ suffering is the presence of Arab and Jews criminal prisoners where the noisy sounds of shouts and insults add the prisoners’ sufferings, apart from the presence of prisoners with psychiatric illness, where screaming, beating, pumping on doors and insults fill the prisons.
In such harsh atmosphere, the isolated prisoner suffers from anxiety and high psychological pressure in addition to several psychological and physical diseases. Such as the detainee Abed Al Naser Al Halisi who was sentenced life imprisonment, and who suffers from a very hard psychological complex after he spent more 8 years in a solitary jail. And the detainee Owaida Kallab from Ghaza who is also sentenced to life imprisonment, and who spent more than 20 years in prison including several years in the solitary cells. Owaida also suffers from a critical psychological complex and refuses to have any visit.
The isolated prisoners suffer and face dangerous medical negligence accompanied by the spread of many diseases.
One of those isolated prisoners is the detainee Hassan Salemeh form Khan Younes who is sentenced to 48 years imprisonment ad who is injured since the day he was arrested , and the detainee Mouhammad Jaber Abdo from Rammalla who suffers from kidney infections and urology, and the detainee Jihad Yaghmour who is sentenced to life imprisonment and suffers from pneumonia.
Another example of the Israeli brutality is the detainee Motaz Hijazi who has been isolated since 7 years and who was beaten until he fainted and was taken to hospital and was put in the intensive care section. And Ahmad Shokri from Rammalla who was beaten several times.
There are tens of violations against the isolated detainees includes the lack of food and medical care. The detainees are also deprived from continuing their studies, and many other punitive procedures.
In addition, the night-time raids and inspection campaigns are held to create a state of panic and fear, as well as the insults and the terrible mistreatment which is applied savagely inside the prisoners’ jails, just like what happened in March 2009 in the solitary section in Askalan. And recently the prison’s authorities in Ayloun violated some isolated prisoners’ jails ( Jamal Abo Al Hija, Mahmoud Issa, Mouhammad Jamal Al Natsha, and Ibrahim Hamed), and attacked them through a provoking inspection procedure for consecutive 6 hours daily which deprived the detainees from sleeping.
The detainees are subjected to repression, beatings, and all means of torture in the solitary sections, as what happened with the detainee Mootaz Hijazi who was isolated since 7 years and who was subjected to severe torturing treatment.

The solitary prison in Aylon is considered one of the worst sections where 15 Palestinian detainees are imprisoned : Jamal Abo Al Hija, Mahmoud Al Issa, Ahmad Al Moughrabi, Ibrahim Hamed, Jamal Al Awawda, Hisham Alsharbati, Awad Altaamori, Majdi Al Naasaan, Anwar Al Asa, Afif Awada, Yousef Zayd, Saaid Saleh, and Yousef Mouhammad Zayd.

Required
delay the policy of the martyrs retention, and return all the bodies of the martyrs from the cemetry of numbers to their families even if they were decayed and the number is (300 bodies) some of them retained since the Aksa Upheaval in September 2000 and some others were retained since dozens of years.
Announce an aproval to allow Palestenian and Arab doctors to monitor the procedures taken in the morgues in case any detainee passed away or martyred inside the prisons, and to handle the bodies at once. And the same issue procedure should be applied in the cases of war.

All those violations of human rights occur in the Israeli prisons during an Arab and international silence which urge us all to raise our call for investigating taking emmediate acts against those violations and mistreatment to the detainees because the policy of torturiong the children, women, and patients, inaddition to the policy of isolation and murdering is a crime against humanity.
We also invite all the defenders of human rights, democracy, freedom, and justice to arrage an international solidarity congress to support the Arab and Palestenian missings and detainees in the Israeli prisons and save them from the Israeli graves.

September 2009
Khiam Rehabilitation Center
for Victims of Torture