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Israeli detention policy amounts to genocide: Academic

Friday, 02 December 2016 11:33 AM [ Last Update: Friday, 02 December 2016 11:36 AM ]

In this file photo, Palestinians demand the release of hunger striker Anas Ibrahim Shadid during a protest in the occupied West Bank.

An Israeli medical source has warned about the worsening health condition of two Palestinians who are on hunger strike for over two months now. The 20-year-old Anas Ibrahim Shadid and Ahmad Abu Farah, 29, are protesting their administrative detention in an Israeli jail. The Palestinian Committee of Prisoners' Affairs stated last week that both prisoners had slipped into coma and lost their ability to speak, drink, and hear.

Anthony James Hall, professor of the University of Lethbridge, told Press TV that the Israeli policy of administrative detention “amounts to modern day contemporary genocide.”

“The situation [of Palestinian prisoners] demonstrates the abuse of the Israeli criminal justice system to transform it into an instrument of warfare,” he said.

“Palestinians in Israeli dungeons are being tortured and these people in prison have no voice,” he added.

Hall also criticized the West for lack of attention to the Palestinian prisoners' sufferings in the Israeli detention centers.

“We don’t hear very much of this voice being given expression in the Western media, which is complicit in these war crimes, which is contributing to the contamination of the psychological environment, which allows this travesty to seem normal and to seem acceptable.”

Hall called for international actions, saying “the genocide of the Palestinian people by the Israelis must be identified for what it is and condemned by people of decency and conscience throughout the international community.”

The academic said under the Israeli policy of administrative detentions, “there are contemporary violations of international law that extend beyond anything acceptable.”

“This arbitrary administrative detention is part of the post 9/11 world,” he said, adding the 9/11 wars have eliminated any semblance of law and so, law becomes just specially in the hands of Israel.”

There are reportedly more than 6,500 Palestinians held at Israeli jails. Hundreds of the inmates have apparently been incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention, which is a policy to keep Palestinians in Israeli jails without trial or charge.

Despite the fact that this kind of imprisonment is contrary to international law, some Palestinian prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to 11 years.

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