Prisoners and martyrs

The Palestinians commemorate the Palestinian Prisoner’s Day. Since 1974, the Palestinian National Council , the supreme authority of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has approved the seventeenth of April as a national day of loyalty to the prisoners and their sacrifices, as a day of their victory, support and support for their right to freedom, and to honor them and stand by them and their families.

On the other hand, since 2015, the occupying state has adopted a policy of detaining the bodies of martyrs as a systematic official policy, and since that time, the number of imprisoned martyrs whose bodies are withheld has been constantly increasing. The popular campaign to recover the bodies of the martyrs held in the refrigerators of the occupation and the graves of numbers follows the general situation of these captive martyrs, which is represented by ambiguity and inhumanity. And depriving them of the most basic human rights with a decent burial.

The fact that the universities of the occupying country host these refrigerators in their laboratories to preserve the bodies of the martyrs is a dangerous fact that must be exposed at all levels, including a violation of humanitarian laws and academic ethics and an explicit violation of the basic function of higher education institutions, especially universities, to be centers for the production of knowledge in the first place, while universities are employed Israeli to strengthen the colonial colonial system.

Returning to the living prisoners, it is unacceptable to suffice with celebrating and welcoming these patient heroes upon their release. The prisoners need to be highlighted much more than any other national file or issue. We have often called for arranging national priorities. We agree on the need for national unity and ending division, and there are dues. Democracy and the need for elections and various reforms, and this is all possible internally if the political will is available, but we have to put the prisoners’ file at the top of the pyramid, as this is the humanitarian file. About 5,000 prisoners are still in the Israeli occupation prisons, including more than 160 imprisoned children, and about 30 women. A female prisoner and 1,000 administrative detainees, and I do not forget the martyred prisoners whose bodies are kept in refrigerators, whose number exceeds 120.

The file of the prisoners is one of the most important Palestinian issues in the International Criminal Court, and instead of the international community institutions pressuring the occupying state to release the prisoners, and instead of holding Israel accountable for its crimes, the prisoners and their families face an international financial attack after the PLO and the Palestinian Authority received various criticisms for their support which it provides as salaries to prisoners and their families, in the belief of the international community that the prisoners' salaries are tantamount to feeding and inciting 'violence'.

Prisoners suffer various forms of medical neglect and systematic torture that affects their physical, psychological and mental health. Hence, the Prisoners Affairs Authority, the Prisoners’ Club, the Presidency, the PLO, the Council of Ministers, and all official institutions are required to put the prisoners’ file on top of priorities. The truth about the jailer and exposing the crimes committed by Israel against our brave prisoners, violating the Geneva Charter and what was stipulated in terms of health and medical care in Article (91) of the necessity for each detainee to have an appropriate clinic, supervised by a qualified doctor, in which the detainees receive the medical care they need, as well as a system Appropriate food, sanitary isolation, hospitals, and care that is not less than the care provided to the general population. It is preferable that the treatment of detainees be based on medical personnel of their nationality, except for child prisoners. Israel violates all these rights!

The leadership, and all of us, have a responsibility to follow up on the affairs of the prisoners, the details of their daily struggles, shed light on their human stories, and send messages and requests to representatives of the Red Cross, international humanitarian agencies, and the United Nations to demand the release of political prisoners who suffer forms of torture and Israeli crimes against them.

Dr.. Dalal Erekat: Professor of Diplomacy and Strategic Planning, Faculty of Graduate Studies, Arab American University