Israeli occupation forces have taken into custody, since the beginning of December, some 115 Palestinians from occupied Jerusalem, including 30 minors, a Palestinian official revealed.According to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency, Chairman of Prisoners’ Relatives Committee in Jerusalem, Amjad Abu Asab, said that 79 of the detainees were arrested during home raids in occupied Jerusalem, while 36 citizens were ambushed or while passing through military checkpoints.
Mr. Asab pointed out that most of the cases were concentrated in the town of Ras al-Amud, in Silwan neighborhood, as the number of detainees reached to 23. 20were taken from al-Thawri neighborhood, also in Silwan, and the rest from different neighborhoods and villages in Jerusalem.
Lawyer with the Dameer Association, Mohamed Mahmoud, said that the judge of Israel’s Magistrate Court extended the detention of minors Ahmed Abu Sbeh and Riad Abu Ta’a until next Wednesday, while he decided to release Ammar E’oissat and Mohammed Abdo, on a bail amounting to 500 NIS.
He added that the judge also decided to release Qasim Hamdiya, who was detained since last month on a bail of worth NIS 1,000.
Related: Child House Arrests Rise in Jerusalem Clampdown
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Al Ray additionally reports that the Commission of Detainees affairs revealed, Tuesday, the names of 35 detainees who have been in Israeli-imposed solitary confinement for years, after having launched an open-ended hunger strike for 9 days, now, in protest of Israeli arbitrary policy against them.
The commission considers the solitary confinement policy a collective punishment policy against Palestinian detainees which is practiced under the sight of Israeli intelligence services.
Palestinian detainees describe this extreme form of solitary confinement to be a slow death in which detainees spend long years isolated from the world, as if in a grave.
Nahar al-Saadi, sentenced to 4 terms of life imprisonment, is the first detainee who has launched a hunger strike in 20 days, after serving a year and a half in solitary confinement.
The commission said that 35 Palestinian detainees sentenced to solitary confinement — some of them for more than two years — live under miserable circumstances. They are distributed throughout Megiddo, Ayalon , Rimonim, Eshel and Nafha prisons.
It was additionally made clear by the commission that no security needs stand behind this policy, as Israel has claimed, with the main motive being to humiliate and seek revenge on the prisoners.
It was also noted that Palestinian detainees are isolated in sections where Israeli criminals are also detained, affecting the psychology of isolated prisoners and imposing a threat to their lives.
More than one hundred Palestinian prisoners in Nafha, Eshel, Negev and Ramon prisons now continue their open hunger strike for the 7th day in a row, in solidarity with the prisoner Nihad al-Saadi.
Prisons sources expect more to become involved in the hunger strike.
Israeli Prison Service (IPS) has imposed several sanctions on the strikers such as fines, barring them from family visits and financial allocations.
There are serious implications for the health status of Mr. al-Saadi, as a result of his month long strike.
Director of Ahrar Center for Prisoners and Human Rights, Foaad Khafsh, said that the prisoners’ demands are fair and legitimate and has called on human rights institutions for their extended support.
Nihad began his open-ended hunger strike one month ago, in demand of an end to his solitary confinement in Ayalon prison, and for the allowance of personal visits by his mother.
He is from Jenin, and was sentenced four life sentences plus 20 years, and has spent 11 of them in the Israeli prison system.
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