Gaza -
The Israeli occupation authorities allowed a limited number of families of prisoners in the Gaza Strip to visit their relatives in prisons, after nearly two years of freezing the visit program.
And 37 family members of Gaza prisoners who meet Israeli criteria were able to visit 21 of their sons who are in Israeli prisons, according to the data of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is supervising the organization of the visit programme.
Muntaha Odeh was not one of those lucky ones whose eyes were clogged with seeing their children, albeit a few glances from behind wires and insulating glass;
The Israeli decision maintains the sanctions imposed on prisoners of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Islamic Jihad since 2017, and bans them from visiting.
Muntaha is the wife of the prisoner Wael Odeh, who has been detained in the occupation prisons since August 2015, and is serving a 12-year prison sentence on charges of belonging to Hamas.
Families of 37 Palestinian prisoners from the Gaza Strip are waiting on a bus belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross at the Erez crossing in the northern Gaza Strip, today, Tuesday, in preparation for the visit of their imprisoned sons in Israeli prisons, nearly two years after the visits stopped.
đź“· Majdi Fathi pic.twitter.com/aq7GsYDe6m
— Palestine Pictures (@PalestinianPic) March 29, 2022
years of deprivation
Muntaha - in her talk to Al Jazeera Net - does not hide the amount of pain caused by the "Israeli racist decision" to deprive the families of prisoners of visiting their children in prisons.
This mother, who has been raising and caring for her six children alone since her husband's arrest, said that the psychological impact of being prevented from visiting is more difficult and harsh on the children of prisoners, especially children who grow up knowing their parents only through pictures that are often old, and do not reflect the effects caused by the suffering Prison in their faces.
Muntaha visited her husband Wael in the Israeli Raymond prison, accompanied by their youngest child, Cinderella. She was a baby in her first year, and today she is a 6-year-old student, taking her first steps towards school in the first grade of primary school.
Muntaha believes that preventing the visit is a siege imposed by the occupation authorities on the prisoners, so that they become as if they are in a prison inside the prison, and says that the tragedies of this procedure, which she described as "arbitrary and racist", increase on occasions, whether private or public, in which the prisoner urgently needs to see his family, family and loved ones. .
On such days, with the blessed month of Ramadan approaching, “memories flare up and feelings of sadness dominate, not only on the prisoner, but on those outside who are linked to him by memories and life,” according to Muntaha’s expression, nicknamed Umm Ali.
Umm Ali is active in the "Prisoners' Families Committee" on behalf of Hamas, and says that the committee has repeatedly submitted petitions to the International Committee of the Red Cross and human rights organizations, calling on them to pressure the occupying power to retract its sanctions and allow all the families of the prisoners to visit, but to no avail.
After a hiatus of several years,
the families of the prisoners of the Gaza Strip - with the exception of the prisoners of Hamas and Jihad - go to visit their children in the occupation prisons through the Beit Hanoun checkpoint in the northern Gaza Strip # Palestine # Good morning pic.twitter.com/wAk77Xrobn
- Prisoners' Media (@AsraMidiia) March 29, 2022
pressure
Israel uses these sanctions as one of the means of putting pressure on Hamas in the file of the four Israeli prisoners who are being held by the movement in Gaza, and insists on not releasing them except through a prisoner exchange deal similar to the "Wafa Al-Ahrar" deal known as the "Shalit deal", according to which about 1,000 prisoners are freed in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
About 5,000 Palestinian prisoners are held in the occupation’s prisons, including about 220 prisoners from Gaza, most of whom were arrested before the signing of the Oslo Agreement between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel in 1993, and they are serving high sentences.
The decision to resume the visit program was not an Israeli gesture, but was taken by the “Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights” (a non-governmental organization based in Gaza) by its success in refuting the allegations of the so-called “Prison Service” and the Israeli Ministry of Security, that the ban was caused by the Corona pandemic, and that the prisoners and their families were not vaccinated. against the virus.
The coordinator of the "Legal Aid Unit" at Al-Mizan Center for Human Rights, lawyer Mervat Al-Nahal, described these allegations as false, and told - Al Jazeera Net - "We succeeded in refuting these allegations before the Israeli Supreme Court, with documents that included statistics on the movement of the crossings, and testimonies that the families of the prisoners had received the required vaccinations against Corona Virus".
After about 3 months of deliberations, the court decided to resume the visit program for the families of the prisoners from Gaza, and included the exception of the prisoners of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whom the decision described as “classified terrorists,” which Mervat considered an illegal procedure and falls within the context of collective punishments in violation of international laws.
watched
Families of prisoners in the Gaza Strip - with the exception of prisoners of Hamas and Jihad - go to visit their children in the occupation prisons through the Beit Hanoun checkpoint in the northern Gaza Strip, after a hiatus of several years
đź“ą Anas Sharif pic.twitter.com/IMNvug1ZIT
- Palestine Online (@pl24online) March 29, 2022
The text of the Israeli court’s decision stated: “After examination with the concerned authorities in the state, it is allowed to visit the 220 detainees from the Gaza Strip, with the exception of 70 detainees classified as belonging to terrorist organizations, Hamas and Jihad, according to the decision issued by the Minister of Internal Security, which was appealed.” In it before the Israeli Supreme Court, the court’s decision came to reject the petition, uphold the minister’s decision, and continue to prevent the visit.”
Al-Nahhal stressed that this court decision does not absolve her of being a tool for providing legal protection, used by the Israeli political levels to justify and pass unjust and illegal decisions.
Veto on Hamas prisoners
At the beginning of this week, the International Committee of the Red Cross informed representatives of organizations concerned with prisoners of the Israeli decision to exempt Hamas and Islamic Jihad prisoners.
Official data of the "Wa'ed Association of Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners", which is supervised by Hamas in Gaza, indicate that more than 300 prisoners belong to the movement in Gaza, the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem, in addition to prisoners belonging to other national and Islamic factions, whom the occupation authorities deprive them of their right to visit.
During their supervision of the travel of the first batch of prisoners’ families to visit, the Director of the Information Department of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Youssef Al-Yazji, said that Israel allowed the resumption of the visit program according to the standards that prevailed before the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, and the mission of the committee - as a neutral mediator - is to facilitate the visit program only.
Under international humanitarian law - and Yazigi's hadith - "the detaining authorities have a duty to allow family visits at identical intervals, a right guaranteed in the Fourth Geneva Convention and can only be restricted for security reasons that are considered on a case-by-case basis, temporarily and not permanently."