The PLO Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs called today on the international community to break its silence over the Israeli crime of administrative detention, under which Palestinians are imprisoned without charges or trial in violation of all international laws and norms. Administrative detention is the incarceration of Palestinians who have not been convicted of – or even charged with – any action that is considered a crime under Israeli law. The Israeli apartheid regime uses this extreme power extensively, detaining hundreds of Palestinians on a regular basis without any charges or trial. In a press statement, the Commission demanded “real, tangible action in the way to form an international human rights committee that will immediately go to the Israeli occupation prisons, examine the crime [of administrative detention] in all its details and closely observe the suffering of the administrative detainees, who are detained without any charges or trials, and who live at the mercy of the so-called Israeli intelligence officers.’ ‘The immoral and inhumane abuses associated with the use of this policy by the occupying power violates all principles of international law and humanity, and are in real contradiction with the theorists of democracy and those claiming to be democratic in all of the world, especially America and Europe,’ the statement added. According to figures obtained by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, in March 2023, Israel was holding 1,017 people in administrative detention, which is the highest number of administrative detainees since April 2003, when Israel held 1,140 administrative detainees. Of the 1,017 administrative detainees (as of March 2023), 366 had been incarcerated for less than three months, 550 had been incarcerated for three months to a year, 98 for a period of between one and two years and three had been incarcerated for over two years.

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA