“There is a crisis.” Disagreements between the occupation army and the Prison Service over the absorption of Gaza detainees

Disagreements arose between the Israeli occupation army and the Prison Service due to the lack of space for Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip due to their increasing numbers.

Occupation Army Radio revealed in a report today, Sunday, that the Army Operations Division called on the Prison Service to bear responsibility for imprisoning members of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements, who were arrested in the Gaza Strip, and transferring them to high-security detention centers.

While the Prison Service rejected the request due to lack of space in its prisons, according to what the radio reported.

As a result of the position of the Prison Service, the occupation army is currently forced to detain detainees in two temporary detention facilities, one in the “Temen Airport” camp in Beersheba (south), and the other in the “Antot” camp northeast of Jerusalem, according to the same source.

Due to the increasing number of detainees from the Gaza Strip, the occupation army will soon open, according to the radio, a third detention facility in Ofer, west of the city of Ramallah, in the center of the occupied West Bank.

The radio explained that due to the scarcity of places in prisons, the occupation army “is now choosing with forceps the number of arrests it carries out” in the occupied West Bank and “arranging those wanted according to the degree of danger,” as it claimed.

For its part, the Prison Service said in response to the Israeli occupation army radio report: “We have made it clear to the army and Shin Bet (the Public Security Service) that we will accept them (the detainees) into our custody, but at the same time, there is already a prison crisis.”

Mass arrests of Palestinians

In this context, the Commission for Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club announced today, Sunday, that the number of detainees has risen to more than 7,340 detainees since last October 7, after recording 12 arrests on the night of Saturday-Sunday.

The two bodies said in a joint statement: “The Israeli occupation forces arrested, from yesterday evening (Saturday) until Sunday morning, at least 12 citizens from the West Bank, including a female student from Nablus, in addition to children and former prisoners.”

Regarding Gaza Strip detainees, the statement said: “The occupation continues to carry out the crime of enforced disappearance against Gaza detainees 149 days after the aggression and genocide.”

On February 20, the Israeli Prison Service announced that it was working to add hundreds of places to imprison Palestinians, including in dining rooms and canteens (places that sell food in prisons) after the cells were overcrowded.

Since the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, the army has escalated its raids and arrest operations in the West Bank, which led to confrontations with the Palestinians, resulting in 419 deaths and about 4,650 wounded, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

In parallel, Israel is waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip that has left tens of thousands of civilians martyred and injured, most of them children and women, in addition to an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe and massive infrastructure destruction, which led to Tel Aviv being brought before the International Court of Justice on charges of “genocide.”