Today, Saturday, the Journalists Support Committee (an Arab organization) said that Israel is detaining 17 Palestinian journalists and media workers inside its prisons.
The committee added - in a statement - that 7 of the arrested journalists have been sentenced to actual sentences, while 5 journalists are still being held administratively (without charge), and the other five are awaiting the issuance of their verdict.
The committee warned against procrastinating in issuing verdicts against journalists who have been detained for several years without any charges.
It also denounced the policy of arresting captured journalists and postponing their trial, while keeping them in detention without reason in the investigation cellars.
The committee said that "the occupation authorities are blatantly violating international law and human rights when they arrest Palestinian journalists with high sentences, arrest them for several years, or sentence them to administrative detention and renew the period of administrative detention several times in a row."
The committee expressed the danger of repeating the policy of extending detention against journalists, considering it a grave violation of human rights principles.
"The occupation practices organized state terrorism against the Palestinian media in a miserable Israeli attempt to silence the Palestinian media and undermine the steadfastness of the Palestinian people," she added.
She added that "the occupation authorities delayed on Friday (yesterday) the verdict on the prisoner journalist Yazan Jaafar Abu Salah, from the town of Arraba in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank," noting that this happens for the 22nd consecutive time, after his arrest on January 19. 2020, as he entered his third year in prison and is still detained.
She pointed out that the occupation court also postponed the trial of the prisoner, journalist Youssef Fawadila (31 years), who was arrested on December 29, 2020, from Ramallah, for the fourth time.
Until the end of December 2021, the number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in the occupation prisons reached about 4,600, including about 500 administrative prisoners, 34 female prisoners and 160 minors, according to institutions concerned with prisoners' affairs.