WEST BANK (Dispatches) –
Palestinians held in the so-called administrative detention in the Zionist regime’s prisons reached their 24th day of their boycott of the reigme’s military courts in the occupied West Bank on Monday, reported Wafa news agency.
In an escalatory step agreed by Palestinian political parties, all 500 “administrative” detainees in the regime’s prisons began the new year by refusing to show up for their court sessions.
The move comes in protest against the occupying regime’s policy of so-called administrative detention, which gives regime military authorities the powers to detain Palestinians without charge or trial for renewable periods of up to six months.
Under the banner, “Our decision is freedom … no to administrative detention,” administrative detainees said in a statement their move comes as a continuation of longstanding Palestinian efforts “to put an end to the unjust administrative detention practiced against our people by the occupation forces”.
They also noted that the regime’s use of the policy has expanded in recent years to include women, children and elderly people.
Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express their outrage at the detention. They have also been subjected to systematic torture, harassment and repression all through the years of occupation of the Palestinian territories.
“Israeli military courts are an important aspect for the occupation in its system of oppression,” the detainees added, describing the courts as a “barbaric, racist tool that has consumed hundreds of years from the lives of our people under the banner of administrative detention, through nominal and fictitious courts – the results of which are predetermined by the military commander of the region”.
In another development, six Palestinians were injured in clashes with Zionist troops on Monday in the occupied West Bank, according to local residents.
Zionist troops raided the Qalandiya refugee camp north of Al-Quds and searched a number of Palestinian shops there, triggering clashes with Palestinians, during which Zionist troops fired rubber-coated bullets and teargas canisters, the residents said.
In a statement, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said six Palestinians were injured by bullets, while dozens suffered temporary asphyxiation from teargas fired by the troops.
The occupying regime occupied the West Bank, including East Al-Quds, during the 1967 War.
It annexed the East Al-Quds in 1980, in a move never recognized by the international community.