The Palestinian Center for Prisoners Advocacy condemns the campaign of arbitrary arrests carried out by the Israeli occupation forces in the city of Tulkarm in the West Bank, which has targeted around 1,500 citizens from all age groups.
The storming of homes, commercial shops, workplaces, and institutions, and the arrest of this large number of peaceful citizens under false security pretexts constitutes state terrorism practiced by the Israeli occupation authorities, and amounts to acts of kidnapping that reflect behavior increasingly resembling that of criminal gangs and organizations.
These arrests violate the most basic rules of International Humanitarian Law and the charters and treaties of the United Nations, which stipulate respect for human freedom and the right to live in liberty and safety without harassment or persecution by an occupying power.
The center affirms that the occupying state bears legal responsibility for the violations it commits against Palestinian detainees, as the occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and that it is obligated to apply the rules on the treatment of detainees stipulated therein, in addition to international declarations and conventions such as the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (Mandela Rules) of 1955.
The Palestinian Center for Prisoners Advocacy points out that the majority of these detainees are being placed under administrative detention without charge or legal justification, and that the occupation’s continued issuance of such arbitrary administrative detention orders reflects an unprecedented determination to violate the guarantees of fair trial enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1976, which requires that a person be informed of the charges against them and be allowed to examine the evidence — something not being done under the arrests currently carried out by the Israeli occupation forces.
We call on all international institutions to provide urgent legal support and humanitarian protection for the thousands of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons and those held under administrative detention.
Lina Al-Tawil
Director of the Palestinian Center for Prisoners Advocacy
Friday, 12 September 2025
