The Independent Commission for Human Rights called on the international society to commit to its legal and ethical responsibilities and force the Israeli authorities to provide the Palestinian prisoners with the needed protection, and to respect the rights guaranteed to them according to the international conventions.

The commission, in a press release given in Palestinian Prisoner Day, called on the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross to send a medical delegation to the prisons to look closely at the health conditions there, to provide the needed medicine for the patient prisoners, and to supervise the conduct of comprehensive tests.

It held the Israeli occupation authorities responsible for the Palestinian prisoners' lives in the prisons as they keep violating the Palestinians' rights guaranteed to them according to the humanitarian international law, the Convention of Geneva, the international law principles, and the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.

The Commission stated that there 4500 men, 41 women, and 140 children in the Israeli prisons under very difficult conditions of detention which worsened due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The number of prisoners infected with COVID19 reached 367 last March, according to the Commission.

It also referred to the continuation of the suffering of the patient prisoners, whose number reached 700, as a result of deliberate medical negligence.

"Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, the Israeli occupation forces arrested 5035 Palestinian citizens in a time the administration of the Israeli prisons did not take any new procedures to face the virus and to keep the prisoners safe and health," the Commission said.

It added, "despite the provision of the coronavirus vaccine for the prisoners during January, the Israeli authorities did not decrease the number of prisoners inside the departments."

The Commission stated that the number of prisoners from the beginning of 2021 until March reached 1309, and the number of children arrested reached 230.

Source : Safa