Head of Lawyers: The Red Cross Loses Its Value If It Fails in Its Duties Towards Prisoners

SadaNews - Palestinian Bar Association President Fadi Abbas stated in a press statement issued this morning that the Red Cross is required today, in light of the continued prevention by the occupying authorities of Red Cross visits and visits by the families of prisoners to prisons, to take all necessary and essential measures to compel the detention authority to allow this international organization to carry out its activities and fulfill its mandated duties regarding visiting prisoners inside the occupation's prisons, facilitating the visits of prisoners' families and also contributing significantly to monitoring the living and health conditions of prisoners inside the prisons, including providing necessary medical treatment for health cases that represent a significant number of the total prisoners inside the occupation's prisons.

He added: "The International Committee of the Red Cross gradually loses its moral value and its central role as an international body tasked with essential missions if it continues to fail and/or be unable to execute the responsibilities assigned to it under the relevant Geneva Conventions in the context of visiting Palestinian prisoners inside the occupation's prisons, considering that the issue of Palestinian prisoners represents the essence and core of detention and imprisonment issues on the international stage, and there is no meaning or value in any international institutional work if it cannot fulfill its role in the context of the situation concerning Palestinian prisoners."

The head of the Bar Association emphasized that the international community and the contracting international parties, under the provisions of Articles 2 and 29 of the Third Geneva Convention and Articles 10 and 124 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, as well as Article 81 of the Additional Protocol I, have practically tasked the International Committee of the Red Cross with carrying out these duties regarding prisoners under occupation. Therefore, it is their responsibility to protect this mandate for the Red Cross to perform its duties in the context of applying international humanitarian law concerning all matters related to Palestinian prisoners, considering Israel as an occupying power.

He added that this humanitarian and legal commitment that is supposed to be upheld by the Red Cross and the role assigned to it to provide protection and assistance, including visits, necessitates taking all measures to confront the violations faced by Palestinian prisoners inside Israeli prisons as they constitute severe violations of international humanitarian law. He stressed that the negligence and delay by international actors in this regard makes them complicit in all that prisoners are subjected to inside the occupation's prisons, emphasizing that internationalizing this file is a collective moral and legal responsibility across all active parties as it represents a central issue in the context of the Palestinian people's case.