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Ambassador of the State of Palestine to Zimbabwe, Dr. Tamer Almassri, condemns in the strongest terms the accounts of torture, rape, and human rights violations against Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israel’s Sde Teiman Prison in Gaza and other detention centres in the West Bank.
Over 9,500 Palestinians, including hundreds of children and women, are currently imprisoned, around one-third without charge or trial. Another unknown number is arbitrarily being held in detention facilities and ad hoc camps following a wave of arrest and abduction campaigns across Palestinian territory that targeted men, women, and children, particularly since October 2023.
There are reports that hundreds of Palestinian detainees are kept in cage-like enclosures, tied to beds, blindfolded and in diapers, stripped naked, deprived of adequate healthcare, food, water, and sleep, electrocutions including on their genitals, blackmail, cigarette burns, playing of loud music until their ears bled, attacks by dogs, waterboarding, suspension from ceilings and severe sexual and gender-based violence.
Dr. Almassri said torture practices are irredeemably unlawful and constitute international crimes, yet form part of the modus operandi of Israel’s notorious detention and torture system intended to punish Palestinians for resisting occupation and seek to destroy them individually and collectively.
“We implore the UN Member States to intervene and the International Criminal Court to promptly investigate all these consolidated crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, we also condemn the massacre of more than 150 people by Israeli forces at al-Tabin School in central Gaza which is clear evidence that the occupation state is committing these massacres in its efforts to exterminate our people through the policy of cumulative killing and mass massacres that make living consciences tremble.
“The massacres reflect an unprecedented disregard for international law by the occupation state, especially with the absence of a decisive international stance to restrain Israeli aggression and compel it to respect international law and stop its aggression against Gaza resulting in unprecedented killings, deaths, and human catastrophe.
“The international community cannot simply watch as the Israeli occupying force continues to kill women, children, and the elderly without facing any consequences. The international community should no longer tolerate and accept the belligerence of Israel,” Dr. Almassri said.
The Palestinian death toll from the Israeli onslaught since October 2023 has risen to 39,929 reported fatalities, with an additional 92,240 individuals sustaining injuries. The majority of the victims are women and children.