Day 5: Palestinian inmates continue mass disobedience against Israel’s abusive measures

Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli jails press ahead for the fifth consecutive day with their collective disobedience against the occupying regime’s prison administration and the implementation of abusive measures by far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to harass them.

Palestine's official Wafa news agency said on Saturday that the fifth day came after the Supreme Emergency Committee for Palestinian Prisoners Affairs announced in a statement on February 14 the beginning of civil disobedience in response to an ongoing repression campaign initiated by Ben-Gvir and the Israeli prison authorities.

“Civil disobedience actions by the prisoners include the closing of the different prison sections, stopping aspects of daily life, the wearing of a mandatory brown jail uniform, and refusing to undergo the so-called daily security check-up,” the news agency said.

The committee said the civil disobedience measures would escalate to an open-ended hunger strike beginning on the first day of the upcoming fasting month of Ramadan.

“This strike, bearing the banner of freedom or martyrdom, is a strike that will be undergone by every capable prisoner regardless of what faction they belong to,” the committee said in the statement. "The amount of aggression we have been facing since the start of the year requires all of our people to support us with all means possible.”

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Ben-Gvir introduced his repression campaign against Palestinian prisoners on January 8, which included controlling the amount of water and reducing the hours of using the bathrooms designated for showering, among other abusive measures.

The extremist minister also ordered the Israel Prison Service (IPS) to start moving Palestinian political inmates and transferring them between the occupying regime’s prisons, most of which lack sufficient health equipment.

Under Ben-Gvir’s instruction, approximately 140 Palestinian prisoners were transferred to Nafha prison, which is notorious for terrible living conditions and referred to by inmates as "inhumane.”

Calls for collective disobedience

Following the announcement, residents of Shuafat refugee camp also called for civil disobedience in a statement on Sunday, saying the strike entails closing streets and shops, not going to schools and confronting the occupier, not going out to work and businesses, and standing firm against the occupation policies.                    

The statement added that the occupation practices a policy of escalation in the city of al-Quds and tries to break the resolve of its people and humiliate them through checkpoints and roads, stressing that "these practices will be confronted with all force."

There are reportedly more than 7,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Hundreds of the inmates have been apparently incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention.

Human rights organizations say Israel violates all the rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention. They say administrative detention violates their right to due process since the evidence is withheld from prisoners while they are held for lengthy periods without being charged, tried, or convicted.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express outrage at their detention. Israeli jail authorities keep Palestinian prisoners under deplorable conditions without proper hygienic standards. Palestinian inmates have also been subject to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.

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