The Palestinian Prisoners' Club has drawn attention to the suffering of an estimated 4,900 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails on the occassion of the Muslim Eid Al-Fitr holiday.
Among the prisoners are 31 women and 160 children.
“On this Eid Al-Fitr, we remember around 4900 prisoners in the occupation jails, who the occupation continues to hold away from their families”, a report from the Palestinian Prisoners' Club said.
“Among them, 23 prisoners continue to be held since before the Oslo accords in 1993,” the report added.
“The number of prisoners who died in [Israeli] jails are 236 since 1967, while the bodies of 12 prisoners who died in prison are still withheld [by Israel].”
“More than 700 Palestinian prisoners suffer from illnesses of different degrees, including 24 who have cancer”, the Palestinian Prisoners' Club pointed out in the report.
“The number of administrative detainees has exceeded 1000,” it added, referring to those Palestinian detainees held by Israel without charge or trial.
Palestinians celebrated the three-day Eid Al-Fitr holiday beginning on Friday, along with most other Muslim nations. Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are usually allowed a family visit for religious festivals.
“It's an incomplete Eid when a family member is in prison, and count the days for the family visit appointment, which is the real Eid for us”, Mays Hanatsheh, the 22-year-old daughter of Palestinian prisoner Waleed Hanatsheh, said to The New Arab.
“We stop practicing many of our yearly family traditions, like going out as a family the day of Eid, or going together to buy things for Eid meal”, Mays explained.
“I have celebrated Eid while my father was in prison several times since my childhood, and as a child, I felt I was like other children on Eid, only when I saw my father on the visit day, and I still feel that way today”, she added.
Waleed Hanatsheh was part of the first wave of 2000 Palestinian prisoners who launched a hunger strike against Israeli repressive measures in jails, in late March.
Among these measures was the reduction of family visit time for Palestinian inmates to half an hour a month. The strike was called off on the first day, after an agreement was reached between the prisoners’ leadership and the Israeli jails authority, who agreed to suspend the protested measures.