Thousands of Palestinians Wednesday took to streets across the Israeli-occupied West Bank to commemorate Palestinian Prisoners' Day, which is marked on April 17 each year. Several thousand people protested in the West Bank city of Nablus yesterday to mark an annual day in support of Palestinians jailed by Israel. Similar rallies were seen in Ramallah, Jenin and Bethlehem where demonstrators demanded the immediate release of Palestinians languishing in Israeli detention facilities.
Palestinians first began marking Prisoners' Day in 1974 when the Palestinian National Council adopted April 17 as a national and international day for showing solidarity with Palestinian detainees.
According to Palestinian figures, some 6,500 Palestinians continue to languish in Israeli detention facilities. Around 500 were detained under the so-called administrative detention laws. The figures also show that 700 detainees suffer from chronic diseases, which need urgent medical treatment and intensive follow up, while 26 have cancer. Administrative detention allows Israel to detain people without charge or trial for renewable six-month periods.
Israeli forces frequently carry out wide-ranging arrest campaigns across the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem on the pretext of searching for "wanted" Palestinians. Israeli forces rounded up 6,489 Palestinians, including scores of women and children, in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip last year, according to official estimates. Taken away from their children, dozens of Palestinian women are suffering abuse in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian activists. In a recent report released in October, the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said Israeli authorities hold 51 women.
Israeli treatment of Palestinian children in military detention has become a major area of concern for the international community. International human rights groups have heavily criticized Israel's handling of Palestinian teen hero Ahed Tamimi, placing under scrutiny the Israeli military court system that Palestinian youth face on the West Bank.
Earlier this week, hundreds of people demonstrated in Gaza City to show solidarity with fellow Palestinians incarcerated by Israel who for more than a week waged a hunger strike to protest their conditions. Protesters waved Palestinian flags and carried banners bearing slogans in support of hunger-striking detainees and demanding their immediate release. Addressing demonstrators, Mahmoud al-Ras, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Central Committee, called on all Palestinians, wherever they are, to support the hunger-strikers "by all available means, be it legally, through the media, or by popular protest." He also urged international rights organizations to "shoulder their responsibilities vis-à-vis [Palestinian] detainees and end the silence regarding Israel's crimes against them." Along with better living conditions and more family visits, hunger strikers demand the removal of cellphone-signal jammers from inside Israeli detention facilities and the installation of public telephones.