Original article by Aseel Saleh republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

The Israeli occupation authorities have banned the international organization from visiting political detainees held in its prisons since October 7, 2023, which many say reflects Israel’s collective punishment policy.

A press conference was held in front of the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Al-Bireh city, in the central occupied West Bank on Tuesday, February 10.

The event was organized as part of an international campaign to gather one million signatures demanding that the ICRC resume its visits to Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.

A number of press conferences were held in parallel in nine other cities across the world, including Beirut, Gaza, Cairo, Rabat, Tunis, Brussels and Paris in coincidence with the one held in Al-Bireh.

It is worth mentioning that Israel has banned the international organization from visiting the prisoners since October 7, 2023.

The political detainees held by Israel have also been deprived of family visits, and their lawyers have rarely been able to meet them for 28 months, amid continuously deteriorating humanitarian conditions inside the prisons.

The brutal crackdown against the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement pre-dates the genocide in Gaza, but began in January 2023, by Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Read more: The Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement: the struggle behind bars

Israel has misused the presence of the ICRC in the occupied territories to whitewash its crimes, says Qadura Fares

During the conference, former head of the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, Qadura Fares, highlighted the key role that the ICRC has played in safeguarding various humanitarian issues internationally and inside occupied Palestine, including the prisoners’ issue.

“We know that the ICRC operates in accordance with international conventions, and in a way that is consistent with its mission as an international humanitarian organization. We are not asking the ICRC to do anything beyond its capacity, but to exert pressure on Israel through the appropriate international legal channels,” Fares noted.

“Nobody can expect Itamar Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu or Smotrich as racist fascist leaders to reconsider their decisions and permit the visits to the prisoners again on their own,” the prominent Palestinian political leader added.

Fares emphasized that this goal will be reached only with pressure being exerted on the Israeli authorities in order to cancel the arbitrary measures against the prisoners.

He also affirmed that the ICRC is able to exert such pressure, but it opted to work “within the limits of the authorization given to it by the Israeli occupation government.”

Fares further pointed out that Israel is misusing the presence of the ICRC and other international organizations in the occupied territories to whitewash its image, by showing that these international bodies are allowed to operate there, while their jurisdiction is extremely restricted and confined by the unlawful Israeli regulations.

The prisoners’ issue is a concern of people of conscience worldwide

Meanwhile, director of the Center for the Defense of Liberties and Civil Rights (Hurryyat), Helmi Al-Araj, asserted that the fact that the campaign has been launched from many cities around the world, including European cities “provides a conclusive evidence that the segregation of the detainees in ghetto-like prisons led to an uprising by the people of conscience all over the globe to support them.”

“This once again proves that all the peoples who struggle for freedom worldwide consider the issue of the Palestinian prisoners, in particular, and the Palestinian cause, in general, their own cause,” Al-Araj maintained. 

For his part, Palestinian political activist, freedom fighter, and former prisoner in Israeli jails, Omar Assaf, indicated that Lebanese and Syrian nationals have also been held in Israeli prisons, while the majority of the prisoners detained by Israel are Palestinians.

Original article by Aseel Saleh republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.