More than 23,000 Arrests in the West Bank Since the War on Gaza

SadaNews - The Israeli occupation army has arrested more than 23,000 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank, in addition to thousands of detainees from Gaza, since the beginning of the war on the sector in October 2023, according to what was announced by the Palestinian Prisoners Club today, Friday, which emphasized that the prisoners’ movement is experiencing a phase that is "the bloodiest and most brutal" since 1967.

This was stated in a statement issued by the Palestinian Prisoners Club on the occasion of the 78th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, which falls on May 15 of each year.

The "Prisoners Club" reported that Israeli authorities "have arrested nearly 23,000 citizens from the West Bank since the beginning of the genocide, including women, children, the injured, and freed prisoners, while this figure does not include the thousands of arrests from Gaza, amidst the continued implementation of enforced disappearance against hundreds of detainees from the sector".

It added that "the crime of arrest has constituted and still constitutes one of the fundamental pillars of the Israeli colonial project, as a systematic tool aimed at targeting the Palestinian presence and breaking the societal and national structure of the Palestinian people".

The club stated that the war on Gaza has imposed "unprecedented transformations" on the reality of Palestinian prisoners, adding that Israeli prisons have turned into "organized spaces for torture, starvation, humiliation, and systematic deprivation of treatment".

It noted that the prisoners' movement is living "the most bloody phase in its history since 1967", amid the escalation of "slow killings, torture, sexual assaults, starvation, and medical deprivation".

It indicated that 89 Palestinian prisoners have been martyred whose identities have been announced since the beginning of the war on Gaza, including prisoners who died as a result of direct torture, starvation, or deliberate medical crimes, according to the statement.

Thus, the number of Palestinian prisoners who have died inside Israeli prisons since 1967 rises to 326, according to the statement, which also mentioned the continued enforced disappearance of dozens of detainees from Gaza.

The "Prisoners Club" confirmed that Israel has arrested, over decades, more than one million Palestinians, noting that the policy of mass arrest has been one of the tools of "colonial control" since before the Palestinian Nakba in 1948.

The club stated that the Palestinian prisoners' movement "has succeeded, despite repression and isolation, in transforming prisons into arenas of resistance, organization, and national awareness".

According to the statement, Israel continues to detain more than 9,400 Palestinians in its prisons, including 86 female prisoners and 3,376 administrative detainees, in addition to 1,283 detainees classified by the occupation authorities as "illegal combatants".