Lina Al-Tawil, Director of the Palestinian Center for Prisoners’ Advocacy, condemned the ongoing crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails.
Al-Tawil explained, speaking on behalf of the center during a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, that nearly 5,000 Palestinians from Gaza had been arrested in less than two years. Many of them, she said, were subjected to enforced disappearance, denied communication with their families and lawyers, and even denied acknowledgment of their existence. She emphasized that concealing their fate constitutes a war crime committed by the Israeli occupation authorities.
She added that for the sake of 48 detained Israelis, “the entire world stopped, outrage spread across the international community, and immediate action was demanded. But what about the thousands of Palestinians imprisoned without trial or charge, left to rot in prisons for years? Why does the world remain silent about them? Why does it turn its back when innocent people are tortured, neglected, and forgotten? Why does outrage vanish when the faces of the detainees are Palestinian?”
Addressing the council, Al-Tawil said: “Inside the prisons, conditions are brutal—torture, solitary confinement, medical neglect. Take for example Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya, arrested while saving lives and now wasting away without treatment. Or Tahani Abu Samhan, arrested while pregnant and forced to give birth in prison. Her infant, Yahya, has become the youngest prisoner in the world. What conscience can accept a child beginning life behind bars?”
She continued: “When American journalist Charlie Kirk was killed, it was called an attack on press freedom. Yet Palestinian journalists are withering in prisons; some were killed in front of cameras, their press vests offering no protection. Where is the outrage for them?”
Al-Tawil stressed that the Human Rights Council in Geneva must act to secure the release of all Palestinians detained without charge or trial, end the crimes of enforced disappearance, torture, and medical neglect, and allow the International Committee of the Red Cross immediate access to inspect their humanitarian conditions.
She concluded: “History will ask: what did you do when thousands of voices were silenced? The time to act is now. The time to break the silence is now.”
