Over 9,000 Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails: Rights group

By Abdelraouf Arnaout

JERUSALEM (AA) – Some 9,088 Palestinian detainees are held in Israeli jails, an Israeli human rights group said on Wednesday.

The detainees include 3,424 held without trial or charge under Israel’s notorious policy of administrative detention and 865 Palestinians classified as illegal combatants, the Center for the Defense of the Individual (HaMoked) said in a report, citing figures released by the Israeli Prison Service.

The "illegal combatant," an uneulogized category under international law, is defined in Israeli law as ''someone who directly or indirectly participated in hostile acts against Israel.”

The detainees were taken into Israeli custody following a cross-border Hamas attack last October, in which nearly 1,200 people were killed.

HaMoked said the figure does not include Palestinians detained by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.

"Israel's treatment of security prisoners violates their rights to equality, dignity, family life, education, and others, which contradicts international law,'' the rights group said.

More than 34,500 Palestinians have been killed and 77,700 others injured in a brutal Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

Israel has imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

More than six months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which in January issued an interim ruling that ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio in Istanbul