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Negotiations across the launch of Israeli ladies and kids held hostage in Gaza have centered on an trade for Palestinian ladies and minors held in Israeli prisons. The scale of that group has grown rapidly in the course of the six weeks of warfare and upheaval because the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel, based on a Palestinian prisoners’ rights group.
The group, Addameer, says that about 200 boys, most of them youngsters, had been in Israeli detention as of this week, together with about 75 ladies and 5 teenage women. Earlier than Oct. 7, about 150 boys and 30 ladies and women had been in Israeli prisons, it mentioned, and since then, many different detentions have occurred, in addition to many releases.
Addameer mentioned that it compiled the figures utilizing information from the Israel Jail Service, which administers the nation’s jails, and knowledge from the households of detained folks.
Early Wednesday, the Israeli authorities and Hamas introduced they’d uphold a four-day cease-fire in Gaza to permit for the discharge of fifty hostages captured throughout Hamas’s assault final month on Israel and 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.
Lots of the most up-to-date arrests of Palestinians got here throughout raids throughout the Israeli-occupied West Financial institution, the place protests and violence have surged, together with assaults on Palestinians by Israeli settlers. Israel has mentioned that the arrests are a part of a counterterror operation in opposition to Hamas within the West Financial institution.
There are additionally about 700 folks lacking from Gaza who’re believed to be in Israeli prisons, however info on their whereabouts is murky, mentioned Tala Nasir, a spokeswoman for Addameer. It was not clear what number of of these folks, if any, had been ladies or minors. The Israeli navy has mentioned that it has apprehended 300 folks in Gaza in the course of the floor invasion that it claimed had been linked to armed Palestinian teams, and that they “had been introduced into Israeli territory for additional interrogations.”
Of the roughly 240 Israeli hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas and different armed teams, 33 are minors, the youngest of whom is 9 months previous, based on the Israeli authorities. Not less than 62 are ladies, based on a company fashioned by the hostages’ households. 4 of the ladies being held hostage are Israeli troopers, based on interviews with their members of the family and knowledge gathered by a discussion board of the hostages’ households.
As of this week, the entire variety of what Addameer calls Palestinian political prisoners in Israel — together with folks from Gaza, the West Financial institution and Israel — was 7,000, up from about 5,000 earlier than Oct. 7, based on Addameer. That features greater than 2,000 folks held in “administrative detention,” that means they’re being held indefinitely with out fees, it mentioned.
Ms. Nasir mentioned that her group defines that class as Palestinians arrested for offenses which might be associated to political exercise and free speech quite than crimes like medicine or violence. She added that Addameer had acquired many stories in current weeks of individuals arrested on fees of incitement for his or her social media posts in Israel and the West Financial institution. Earlier this month, the Knesset handed an modification to a counterterrorism regulation that criminalized the “consumption of terrorist supplies.”
Adalah, the Authorized Middle for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, mentioned that it was monitoring 121 circumstances of arrests and detentions linked to social media posts, some which “merely contained expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian folks in Gaza, and even verses shared from the Quran.”
Rights teams have lengthy warned that Palestinian detainees are held with out due course of and face abuse and even torture. Army Courtroom Watch, a nonprofit authorized group, mentioned final yr that of the 100 Palestinian youngsters detained by Israeli forces that it had interviewed, 74 % reported bodily abuse, and 42 % mentioned they had been put in solitary confinement.
The ladies in Israeli detention embody Ahed Tamimi, 22, a high-profile determine within the West Financial institution who was sentenced to jail in 2018 for slapping an Israeli soldier. Israeli officers accused her of her posting hate speech on-line; her household mentioned the put up was not hers.
Six Palestinian detainees who had been held with out fees have died in Israeli prisons in current weeks, based on Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s information company. Certainly one of them, Omar Daraghmeh, was a senior member of Hamas, the militant group mentioned when his demise was introduced.
Hiba Yazbek, Johnatan Reiss and Talya Minsberg contributed reporting.
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