Tel Aviv, August 1 (RHC)-- Far-right Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has made an amendment to a law that allowed the administrative release of Palestinians from overcrowded prisons run by the occupying regime.
The racist minister issued the amendment to the Israeli legislation on Sunday in a bid to trample on Palestinian inmates’ rights, reports said. According to the latest figures released by Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Israel is currently holding around 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners in its detention facilities.
The figure also includes 1,132 Palestinians being kept under Tel Aviv’s inhumane administrative detention policy, which allows incarcerating inmates without trial or charge. Some Palestinian detainees were released each year due to a lack of space in Israeli prisons, but Ben-Gvir’s recent changes to the law effectively cancel the measure.
Since joining Israel’s most right-wing cabinet led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late last year, Ben-Gvir has pledged to make the situation of Palestinians in the regime’s jails more miserable than it already is. He has imposed a range of restrictions on Palestinian prisoners by reducing their shower time and removing television sets from some sections.
Ben-Gvir has also deprived the prisoners of fresh breads and doubled the number of raids and searches against them, with the Israeli forces using stun grenades and sniffer dogs. The minister has further drafted a law to prevent medical treatment and surgical operations for the prisoners, demanding capital punishment for the Palestinians involved in the armed resistance.
Adalah rights group denounced Ben-Gvir’s actions as “unfair,” saying they would worsen overcrowding in Israeli jails. Long accused of inflaming Israeli-Palestinian tensions, Ben-Gvir has made three provocative visits to the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in al-Quds in recent months, sparking furious condemnations from Muslim nations. In the past, he was convicted of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization.
