Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held without trial or charge in Israeli jails entered day 185 of their boycott of Israeli courts on Monday to demand an end to the policy of administrative detention.
In early January, the administrative detainees announced a complete boycott of all judicial procedures related to their administrative detention.
The administrative detainees are being held in different Israeli prisons, mostly in Negev and Ofer jails.
Last April, Amnesty International said that the boycott of Israel’s military courts by hundreds of Palestinian administrative detainees “underscores the need to end this cruel and unjust practice which helps maintain Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians.”
“Nearly all the 490 Palestinian administrative detainees currently being held by Israel began a collective boycott on 1 January 2022, by refusing to participate in military court procedures that lack due process and are used merely to rubber stamp arbitrary detention,” Amnesty said on its website.
“Their act of disobedience highlights the long-standing complicity of military courts in the use of administrative detention against Palestinians, where individuals are held for months without charge or trial, often on the whims of military officials or the minister of defense and based only on secret information provided by the Israeli security agency,” the rights group added.
“Palestinian human rights defenders, journalists, academics and others have suffered from this cruel and inhuman practice and have been protesting it for decades including through hunger strikes. This boycott is a renewed collective call saying enough is enough,” Saleh Higazi, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, stated.
In a related context, Palestinian prisoner Ra’ed Rayan, a 27-year-old from Beit Duqqu in the northwest of Jerusalem, has entered day 89 of the hunger strike he staged in protest at an Israeli decision extending his administrative detention.
Rayan, who is being held in Ofer jail, was kidnaped from his home in Beit Duqqu village on December 3, 2021, and soon later an Israeli military court ordered his detention administratively for six months.
He suffers from multiple health problems as a result of his prolonged hunger strike.
Source: The Palestinian Information Center