RAMALLAH: The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said on Monday that the Israel Prison Service has turned the use of rubber bullets against Palestinian detainees into a systematic punitive policy in recent months.
The policy has affected dozens of prisoners whose cases have been documented by relevant organizations, though the actual number is likely to be much higher due to severe restrictions on prisoner visits and the isolation imposed by Israeli authorities. These measures prevent access to many prisoners and the documentation of the violations they endure.
The society affirmed that organizations had followed up several cases of prisoners injured by rubber-coated bullets. This had resulted in severe bleeding and some victims had required surgical intervention as a result of their wounds.
One prisoner reported that doctors had told him that he might need to have a limb amputated due to the severity of his injury and its complications.
The majority of injured prisoners still require urgent and specialized medical attention, but face a policy of deliberate denial of treatment, which has become one of the most prominent tools used by Israeli prisons.
The society said that prison administrators had recently expanded their repressive measures against prisoners, including using new types of weapons in tortures and assaults.
Prisoners’ bodies have become an open testing ground for tools of oppression and violence, particularly since the beginning of the ongoing genocide.
The prison system has promoted the introduction of some of these methods through Israeli media outlets, reflecting a policy of escalating the use of brutality and torture against prisoners.
The society affirmed that the level of violence inside Israeli prisons has reached unprecedented levels.
The crimes committed against prisoners now surpass — in their scale and methodology — the traditional description of violations.
They reflect the transformation of prisons into a comprehensive system for producing torture and an arena of extermination, based on the use of multiple methods of physical and psychological abuse, humiliation, starvation, denial of medical treatment, solitary confinement, and systematic assaults.
The PPS emphasized that this is part of a policy aimed at breaking prisoners physically and psychologically, and constituted an extension of the ongoing crimes committed by Israeli authorities against the Palestinian people.
It also warned that the impact of rubber-bullet injuries extends beyond physical harm, leaving many prisoners with long-term psychological trauma resulting from repeated assaults and intimidation. Such actions were taking place within a detention environment characterized by ongoing torture and the absence of even the most basic legal and humanitarian protections.
The PPS reiterated its demand to the international human rights system — particularly the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and relevant international mechanisms — to take immediate action to stop the escalating crimes committed against Palestinian prisoners and to hold the Israeli leaders accountable.
It affirmed that such crimes constituted grave violations of international humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions, and the Convention against Torture, and, in their entirety, amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity that warranted prosecution and accountability.
