Hebron – Together – At the invitation of Al-Quds Open University, Hebron Branch, the Palestinian Prisoner Club, the Student Union Council, and the Student Youth Movement at the university, and in cooperation with the Prisoners’ Affairs Authority and the Political and National Guidance Authority, a workshop was organized today entitled ‘The reality of male and female prisoners inside the occupation prisons and the mechanisms for activating the prisoners’ file.’ Internationally” in the hall of Al-Quds Open University in the city of Hebron.
The discussion was moderated by Dr. Abdul Qader Al-Darwish, who began with his words expressing the steadfastness of male and female prisoners in light of the frenzied attack against which our brave prisoners are subjected.
The workshop was attended by the head of the National Library, Minister Issa Qaraqe, representatives of the national forces, cadres of liberated prisoners, representatives of national institutions, the National Coordination Committee emanating from the P
olitical and National Guidance Authority, cadres of the Political Guidance Authority, faculty staff at the university, heads and members of the governorate’s municipal councils, male and female university students, and a number of prisoners’ families.
In a welcoming speech on behalf of Al-Quds Open University, delivered by Dr. Muhammad Al-Haroub, Director of the University, he welcomed all attendees, and extended his greetings to all our brave prisoners in the occupation prisons, expressing his pride that Al-Quds University is a university of prisoners and freedom fighters who paid a great price with their lives and their freedom so that we can all live in dignity.
He explained that Al-Quds Open University provided support to the prisoners in order to complete their university education, indicating that this created an academic revolution inside the prisons and formed part of the challenge to the procedures of the Prison Service, and gave hope, life and a future to all prisoners.
He said: “The university d
egree is a certificate of freedom and on the path to liberation from the prisons of the occupation. It is a cultural, intellectual and educational movement.”
He stressed that this workshop on the conditions of our brave prisoners and our brave female prisoners comes at a time when war crimes are being carried out against them, including abuse and executions, which led to the death of more than eighteen prisoners in less than seven months. This is evidence that the scale of the disaster inside the prisons requires international action to punish Israel for its crimes. Right to the prisoners.
In a speech by Brigadier General Ismail Ghannam, the Political Commissioner for the Hebron Governorate, he spoke about the role of Al-Quds Open University in providing and supporting male and female prisoners, and said: ‘We at Al-Quds Open University stand today before a distinguished staff who spent many years in the occupation prisons and had a major role in building detention life inside.’ The occupation prisons and th
ey fought all the battles of the hunger strike for the sake of a strong prison life to confront the prison administration, which believed that it would make the prisoners with dilapidated bodies and empty minds, but because of their struggle, they turned the prisons into universities and a cultural revolution that had the most prominent role in the continuation of the struggle and national work over many years.’
Ghannam recalled the events of the Negev Desert Prison in 1988, when two prisoners, Al-Samoudi and Al-Shawa, were executed for a heinous crime. How the prisoners confronted the prison administration with bare chests and were able to repel all the measures that were being implemented against them. What is happening now inside the prisons of brutal crimes calls for all of us to be united to confront the crimes. The occupation and revealing the extent of the crimes committed against it.
In a speech by Minister Issa Qaraqe, head of the National Library, he stressed that the issue of prisoners is the iss
ue of an occupied homeland and the story of a people resisting in order to defeat the occupation and take away their legitimate right to live in freedom and peace. The prisoners in the Palestinian collective consciousness are not just people absent due to oppression, but rather they are heroes who struggled and sacrificed for Achieving peace in the country of peace. During the course of their struggle against the occupation, the occupation forces arrested about a million Palestinians, of all levels, classes and groups, male and female, children and men, young and old, until arrests became a means of collective punishment and daily behavior with the aim of controlling the Palestinian people and spreading terror and fear. In the souls of the Palestinians and wreaking havoc on Palestinian society.
Qaraqe said, ‘We are facing an occupying state that blatantly violates international law in its treatment of detainees, legislates its violations with racist laws in which all components of its political system partic
ipate, and seeks to establish a culture of ‘impunity,’ not only among those working in the security services, but among all Israelis. Which prompts them to persist in their abnormal and racist behavior, their grave violations, and their heinous crimes.
Qaraqe said that defending Palestinian and Arab prisoners in occupation prisons is a defense of human justice, values, the culture of human rights, and the right of peoples to freedom and freedom from colonialism and injustice.
Qaraqe added: “The issue of Palestinian prisoners is one of the largest humanitarian issues in the modern era, which requires international action at all levels to provide protection for them from the oppression and violations they are exposed to that affect international values ??and humanitarian treaties.”
Qaraqe focused on prosecuting and holding the occupying state legally accountable for the crimes it committed against the prisoners and the Palestinian people, and calling on the contracting parties to the Geneva Conventions to ob
lige Israel to implement these agreements on the occupied Palestinian territories and on the prisoners.
He said: ‘We reject all Israeli attacks on detainees that want to place them in the context of terrorism, and that Israel, as an occupying power, is the highest form of terrorism in the Middle East region, and that the continuation of Israeli fascism and racism in the region will constitute a danger to everyone, which requires that all regional and international parties bear their responsibilities towards The rights of prisoners, providing protection for them, exerting pressure at the political and legal levels, and expanding the international boycott against the Israeli occupying state.’
Qaraqe touched on reports issued by United Nations rapporteurs on horrific human rights violations suffered by women and girls in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. And about arbitrary executions against women and girls in Gaza, often with their family members.
With regard to international institutions bearing the name o
f human rights organizations, they are nothing more than a colonial industry that did not provide anything for the Palestinian people, and human rights texts have always been coffins for our prisoners. Therefore, we do not rely on their positions because they have become clear in their governments’ support for the occupying state.
In a speech by Ibrahim Najajra, Director of the Prisoners’ Affairs Authority in the Hebron Governorate, he said that since the beginning of the occupation, male and female prisoners have worked to transform prisons into revolutionary schools, and they have constantly joined forces in formulating struggle programs on the ground starting from the prisons, and that Al-Quds Open University is the university for all Palestinians, pointing out Until the conditions of prisoners inside prisons are catastrophic, according to the testimonies of released prisoners and what lawyers report during their visits to prisons, despite all the obstacles that are placed in front of them to prevent them
from visiting prisons and reporting news about prisoners.
Najajra called for the need to take action at all international levels to deter the occupying state from continuing its crime against prisoners inside prisons, which is being carried out on instructions from the Netanyahu government and the extremist Itamar Ben Gvir.
In a speech by Amjad Al-Najjar, the media spokesman for the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, he stressed that Al-Quds Open University has never been stingy with our prisoners, but rather was the first to open the gate to the future for them. Stressing that the prisoners ignited a scientific and cultural revolution by completing their education and transforming the detention centers into academies for science and education.
Al-Najjar continued his speech about the important title of the workshop about the conditions of prisoners and the necessity of activating the file in international forums, explaining that what is happening in prisons is an assault on human value and justice, which is the
official international community’s mission to preserve, and we must move from the stage of considering that it is the responsibility to protect prisoners. Only detainees are within our jurisdiction, although we consider that to be our duty, but it is also an international and moral responsibility for all countries that drafted and signed the Geneva Convention to take action to deter the occupying state.
Al-Najjar explained that the testimonies collected by the Prisoner’s Club from liberated prisoners or through visits by lawyers about what is happening inside the prisons portend a real catastrophe that may lead to the rise of dozens of martyrs inside the prisons, as the pillars of death have been completed as a result of the application of the so-called Emergency Detention Law or what is called it. The Lockdown Law, ‘lockdown of living life,’ includes abuse, hunger, thirst, and medical neglect, in addition to what is committed against the Gaza Hashem prisoners under the so-called Unlawful Combatant Law, the
forced disappearance of hundreds of detainees, and executions carried out against them.
Al-Najjar called on all Palestinians to rally around the prisoners’ file and to work to expose the crimes of the occupation, conveying the message to the prisoners of the necessity of international intervention to stop the ‘retaliatory attack’ against them.
The occupying state ‘turned the prisons into deadly iron graves, and launched systematic assassinations and executions against the prisoners,’ Al-Najjar said.
The participants recommended, in interventions made by many attendees, the importance of working at all political, legal, media, and public levels to protect the prisoners, establish their legal status, and protect them from the occupation. They called on all official and civil institutions, local, Arab and international, to follow up on the conditions of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons and detention centers and to work to internationalize their cause. They called on all specialists, rese
archers, institutions, human rights associations and solidarity organizations to shed light on the violations against prisoners and the violation of international agreements and covenants against them, and the necessity of joint and responsible action to support their struggles. Until they achieve their freedom and victory.
Source: Maan News Agency