IRAN’S Foreign Ministry spokesman has strongly condemned Israeli forces’ brutal aggression against Palestinian women at Damon Prison in the Palestinian occupied territories.
‘Beating female Palestinian inmates in #ZionistRegime’s Damon Prison is abhorrent,’ Nasser Kan’ani tweeted late on Tuesday.
Kan’ani continued: ‘Do self-proclaimed rights defenders in Europe & US believe #HumanRights and women’s rights apply to Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s horrifying jails?’
Earlier in the day, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) said in a statement that officers from the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) had violently assaulted and beaten female Palestinian detainees inside Damon Prison.
The NGO further noted that Israeli prison authorities imposed several repressive measures against the female prisoners, including confiscation of their electronic devices and personal items.
A state of tension prevailed in Damon Prison after Israeli officers assaulted the prisoners’ representative Yasmine Shaaban and placed her in solitary confinement, the PPS added.
The report also prompted the Gaza-based Hamas resistance movement to denounce the vicious assault on Palestinian inmates, warning that the Israeli regime’s increasing violations against Palestinian inmates will not go unpunished.
The movement said the Palestinian nation will not leave the prisoners alone in their battle and called on young Palestinians to confront Israeli crimes through all available means.
More than 7,000 Palestinian prisoners are currently held in some 17 Israeli jails, with dozens of them serving multiple life sentences.
Over 500 detainees, including women and minors, are being held under the so-called ‘administrative detention’ in various Israeli prisons, with some of whom being held in that condition for up to 11 years without any charges brought against them.
The detention takes place on orders from a military commander and on the basis of what the Israeli regime calls ‘secret’ evidence.
Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express their outrage at the detentions and harsh conditions in Israeli jails.
Senior Palestinian officials say Israel must be held accountable for its persecution of Palestinian people, including its mass and arbitrary detentions.
Palestinian inmates have also been subjected to systematic torture, harassment and repression all through the years of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.
Israeli jail authorities also keep Palestinian prisoners under deplorable conditions, lacking proper hygienic standards.
Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot said yesterday on Sky TV, (see page 2): ‘We are saying that Israel’s occupation has got to end, that the Palestinian people have to achieve their freedom, that a new Palestinian generation is born without occupation and colonisation and apartheid, a system of segregation and sheer racism that comes our way from this government and all the governments before it.
‘Why do you think Israel is so adamantly opposing our request to go to the ICC or the ICJ, that’s the International Court of Justice, the highest international judicial court, if they have nothing to hide? Why are they opposing it?
‘Why are they using their friends, the US and the UK to block us from using these venues?’
It is high time that the TUC acted decisively to support the Palestinian people.
The TUC must organise a complete boycott of Israel and organise nationally and internationally for a massive aid programme for the Palestinian people and insist that Palestinians must have their state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Victory to the Palestinian revolution. Forward to the Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and with all Palestinians having the right to return.
