Palestinian Prisoner’s Day; Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates salutes the thousands

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On the Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates salutes the thousands of Palestinian detainees who have been and are still held arbitrarily and illegally in the Israeli detention dungeons;

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterates the centrality of the Palestinian detainees’ cause and reaffirms that their freedom is a fundamental part of the freedom of the Palestinian people;

Over the past five decades, Israel, the occupying power, has detained over 800,000 Palestinians, including children and women. Currently, Israel illegally detains 4,800, including 29 females and 170 children;

Moreover, 967 Palestinians are currently detained under the Israeli illegal policy of administrative detention. The highest number of administrative detainees in the past 11 years;

Successive Israeli occupation governments have implemented discriminatory policies against Palestinian detainees. The current racist Israeli occupation government intensified these abhorrent policies;

Approving a draft law authorizing the execution of Palestinian detainees, approving a discriminatory legislation deporting Palestinian detainees from their land, and introducing a draft law depriving detainees of medical treatment are only samples of such discriminatory policies;

The Israeli occupation detention system is a main part of its collection of colonial tools to intimidate and persecute the Palestinian people to serve different objectives including enabling forcible transfer, mass displacement, land confiscation and annexation;

The Israeli judicial system is part of the colonial regime that legitimizes discrimination, torture and persecution of the Palestinian people;

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs calls on the international community, including HCPS to the GCIV, to uphold their legal responsibilities towards Palestinian detainees by ending arbitrary detention without fair trial or any legal basis for the deprivation of liberty.