LONDON: Palestinian rights groups warned about an Israeli bill that would impose a blanket ban on representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross from entering Israeli prisons and visiting Palestinian detainees.
The Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said the bill was proposed by the Israeli Knesset’s National Security Committee this week.
Israel allowed ICRC workers to visit political detainees and pass information to their families after it occupied the Palestinian territories of Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967. But since the war on Gaza in late 2023, Israel has started to ban ICRC representatives from visiting more than 9,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Last week, Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled that this policy was unlawful for lack of legal basis. Palestinian rights groups said the bill “aims to legitimize and legally entrench grave violations against the Palestinian people within the context of the ongoing genocide, of which Israeli prisons are a primary arena.”
It added that the move also aims to circumvent the High Court of Justice’s ruling, according to the Palestine News Agency.
Israeli lawmakers passed a law in May legalizing the death penalty for Palestinian convicts involved in deadly attacks against Israelis. As of May 2023, there are 9,361 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails. They have lived under harsh conditions since October 2023, leading to the death of at least 97 of them.
