ALBAWABA - On the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, a number of Palestinian organizations, including the Zamir Institution for Prisoners' Protection, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Palestinian Prisoners Society, have released a joint statement denouncing the Israeli judiciary.
According to the statement, hundreds of Palestinian inmates from Gaza have been subjected to torture and enforced disappearances, crimes that the Israeli legal system is allegedly complicit in. The groups contend that this is a flagrant breach of judicial integrity since these acts are carried out in accordance with the "Unlawful Combatants Law," which was enacted by the Israeli Knesset in 2002.
The organizations have petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court many times in an effort to get answers on the names and locations of these detainees. Nonetheless, the statement claims that the court has persisted in its long-standing pattern of supporting decisions that support crimes against Palestinians.
The statement also made clear that a major component of what they refer to as an 11-month genocide in Gaza is the enforced disappearances, which affect all demographic groups there, including women, children, and the elderly. During this time, there have been targeted assaults on healthcare personnel in addition to widespread detentions.
The Palestinian groups have called on the international human rights community to act decisively in order to put a stop to the ongoing genocide and to the so-called global failure to address it. They urged that Israel be held responsible and that the military attacks on Gaza and the mistreatment of detainees in Israeli prisons end immediately.
The statement also emphasized the uncertainty surrounding the precise count of women and children incarcerated in Israel, including the number of individuals who may have perished as a result of torture. Although the number of those held since the beginning of the battle as "unlawful combatants" is now 1,584, claims from Israeli media imply that the number may go as high as 4,500.
