The Palestinian Prisoners Club warned on Friday that renewing the ban on family visits for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails aims to perpetuate torture and starvation against the prisoners and reinforce their isolation from the outside world.
In a statement, the Club explained that the announcement by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of the renewal of the ban was not surprising, but rather an extension of a systematic policy aimed at entrenching the complete isolation of prisoners.
The Club indicated that the decision transforms prisons into closed spaces where torture, starvation, slow killing, and enforced disappearance are committed, far from oversight and accountability, thus providing cover for the continuation of the most serious violations against Palestinian prisoners. It noted that the renewal of the ban came shortly after the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the continued denial of access to prisoners by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was illegal.
The Club emphasized that the court’s decision has had no impact on the prisoners’ situation, as the occupation authorities have continued to deny the ICRC access to visits, coinciding with the renewal of the ban on family visits. The Prisoners’ Club asserted that this reaffirms the occupation authorities’ adherence to a single policy aimed at creating an environment conducive to the continuation of crimes against prisoners and their perpetuation of isolation from the outside world, thus preventing effective monitoring of their conditions.
It explained that renewing this order represents another link in a broad chain of retaliatory and punitive policies escalated by the occupation since the beginning of the genocide, with the goal of completely isolating prisoners and giving prison authorities free rein to commit further crimes and violations.
It added that prisons have since transformed into a comprehensive system for producing systematic torture, starvation, humiliation, deliberate medical neglect, sexual violence, enforced disappearance, and slow killing, becoming one of the most prominent arenas for committing violations against Palestinian prisoners.
In the same context, the Prisoners’ Club recently held a series of meetings with staff from the International Committee of the Red Cross in the West Bank, during which they discussed the repercussions of obstructing the Committee’s role since the beginning of the genocide, in addition to the observations made by relevant institutions regarding the decline in its ability to fulfill its humanitarian mandate.
