Prisoners’ center: 20 Palestinians in solitary confinement in Israeli jails

RAMALLAH,  The prisoners’ center for studies said there are more than 20 Palestinian prisoners including a woman in solitary confinement inside Israeli jails living in harsh incarceration conditions threatening their lives.

Ra’fat Hamdouna, the center’s director, described the solitary cells in Israeli jails as sunless and airless graves, infested with large numbers of insects and saturated with high humidity, affirming that these conditions have hazardous impacts on the physical and psychological health of prisoners.

Hamdouna appealed to international human rights organizations to save the lives of prisoners locked up in isolation cells under false pretenses and get them transferred from the darkness of solitary confinement to collative rooms shared by other Palestinian detainees.

In another context, the higher national committee for the support of prisoners said that female prisoner Lina Jarbouni from the village of Arraba located in the 1948 occupied lands entered her ninth year in Israeli jails.

Riyadh Al-Ashqar, the information director of the committee, added that Jarbouni has been in prison since April 2002 and is serving a 17-year imprisonment sentence, noting that she is one of four female prisoners from the Palestinian lands occupied in 1948.

For his part, Said Al-Jarbouni, the brother of the prisoner, expressed hope that his sister could be released in any future swap deal, urging the captors of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit to not to yield to Israel’s demands for excluding the prisoners of 1948 occupied lands from the deal.

In a separate incident, Palestinian lawmakers Abdelrahman Zeidan and Fathi Al-Qaraawi paid a solidarity visit to the house of deported prisoner Ahmed Sabah in the town of Dinaba, east of Tulkarem.

The lawmakers met with the family and children of the prisoners and examined the tragic living condition in which they are living especially after Israel destroyed their home during armed clashes with their son Murad Basha.

They affirmed that this family has been living in a tent pitched on the rubble of their demolished home for over two years and called on the competent authorities to rebuild this house without any factional considerations.

For his part, deportee Ahmed Sabah continued to hold his sit-in for the third day in the tent he erected near Beit Hanoun (Erez) in protest at the Israeli decision to exile him to Gaza away from his family.

The official authorities in Gaza and human rights organizations considered the deportation decision issued against ex-detainee Sabah as part of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.

The Israeli occupation authority deported prisoner Sabah to Gaza on Wednesday after he spent nine years in prison.