Palestinian prisoners hold strike to protest Israeli abuses

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December 26, 2021

Israeli prison authorities have taken punitive measures against Hamas prisoners, including depriving them of visits and confiscating all electronic devices from their cells, according to the Palestinian Prisoner Society.

There are around 4,550 Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails, including 170 minors, 32 female detainees and at least 500 held without charge or trial. (Getty Images)

Hamas detainees in Israeli prisons have staged an open-ended hunger strike to protest Israeli abuses.

A statement by the Palestinian resistance group on Sunday, however, did not provide details about the number of detainees participating in the strike.

Palestinian prisoners have complained of Israeli abuses against female detainees in Israel.

Last week, a Hamas detainee stabbed an Israeli guard in the Nafha Prison in southern Israel in protest over abuses against Palestinian female prisoners.

According to the Palestinian Prisoner Society, Israeli prison authorities have taken punitive measures against Hamas prisoners, including depriving them of visits and confiscating all electronic devices from their cells.

According to the NGO, there are around 4,550 Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails, including 170 minors, 32 female detainees and at least 500 held without charge or trial.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has announced his country intends to double the amount of settlers living in the occupied Golan Heights with a multimillion-dollar plan meant to further consolidate Israel’s hold on the territory it captured from Syria more than five decades ago.

Speaking at a special Cabinet session being held in the Golan Heights on Sunday, Bennett said the recognition by the Trump administration of Israeli sovereignty over the swath of land, and the Biden administration’s indication that it will not at this point walk that decision back, prompted the new investment in the region.

“This is our moment. This is the moment of the Golan Heights,” Bennett said. “After long and static years in terms of the scope of settlement, our goal today is to double settlement in the Golan Heights.”

Entrenching Israeli control over the territory would complicate any future attempt to forge peace with Syria, which claims the Golan Heights.

Bennett said the war in Syria made the idea of Israeli control of the territory more acceptable to its international allies, saying the alternative would be much worse.

Israel occupied the Golan Heights in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed the territory, promoting settlement and agriculture there as well as creating a thriving local tourism industry.

The US was the first country to recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan, which the rest of the international community regards as Israeli-occupied.

Israel has long argued that the strategically important area has, for all practical purposes, been fully integrated into Israel since it was captured from Syria and that control of the strategic plateau is needed as protection from Iran and its allies in Syria.

Tens of thousands of Israelis live in the Golan Heights, which is also home to a number of formerly Syrian Druze villages, some of which oppose Israeli control.

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Palestinian prisoners hold strike to protest Israeli abuses

JhonMike

Israeli prison authorities have taken punitive measures against Hamas prisoners, including depriving them of visits and confiscating all electronic devices from their cells, according to the Palestinian Prisoner Society.

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