Beginning of the year, Israel's minister for 'strategic affairs' had called for the treatment Palestinian prisoners are suffering in Israeli jails to be even worsened. As raids inside the prisons are increasing, inmates are injured or even dying, Stop the Wall joins the Palestinian Higher Committee for Prisoners Affairs for regular protests in support of the over 5000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
On Tuesday, Palestinian political parties and organizations held yet another protest in response to the criminal and systematic deteriorization of the conditions for Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons. Erdan had laid out the plan, including the rationing of water supply, the prohibition for prisoners to cook their food and restrictions of family visits.
The results of this inhumane policy include, among others, a raid on Ofar Prison that left over 100 Palestinian inmates injured. On January 22, Israeli special forces entered the prison and fired rubber bullets, tear gas and sound bombs and used police dogs and truncheons against inmates. Three wards were completely burned.
On February 6, Fares Baroud succumbed in Israeli prisons to medical neglect. Fares was imprisoned in 1991. Since then he had been denied family visits and pssed years in isolation detention. He had already lost his vision and suffered a life of medical neglect. The day of his death, he was transferred from prison to the hospital only hours before he was declared dead.
While prisoners are struggling against this abuse of their rights from the inside of the jails, Palestinian organizations have started mobilization outside to develop a campaign to stop this further crime of Israel.
Arbitrary imprisonment, torture and ill treatment as well as collective punishment are routine in Israel's prison regime. This further harshening of conditions is part of Israel's desperate attempt to strangle Palestinians into submission.
