An update from Addameer on the detention campaign by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank:

The number of detainees from Tuesday, September 18 until today is now 114 detainees. These arrests have been carried out in a coordinated fashion by the security services and until now no one has been released.

The detainees are distributed by region as follows:

1 – Qalqilya (24) detainees
2 – Ramallah (9) detainees
3 – Salfit (20) detainees
4 – Jenin (5) detainees
5 – Hebron (8) detainees
6 – Bethlehem (7) detainees
7 – Jericho (4) detainees
8 – Tulkarm (22) detainees
9 – and an additional (15) citizens from different areas

Two people, Ibrahim al-Saba and Baha Faraj, were arrested today in the office of the Palestinian Legislative Council, in addition to the arrest of former prisoner Adel Shawamra of Bethlehem, who was released after serving 13 years in an Israeli prison.

Also announced today that two detainees, researcher Fuad Khuffash from Marda, Nablus, the head of Ahrar Centre for Prisoners, and former prisoner Anis Harb of Sakaka village, Salfit, declared an open hunger strike in protest of the political arrests.

Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association considers the campaign of political arrests launched by the Palestinian Authority security apparatus in the occupied West Bank since Tuesday, September 9, 2012 to be deeply dangerous.

Addameer has documented that the Preventive Security and General Intelligence are waging a campaign of arrests in several provinces in the West Bank and over 60 Palestinians, including released prisoners, writers and journalists, and youth activists, have been imprisoned.

Among the detainees are 35 liberated prisoners who spent long years behind bars in Israeli jails, some of whom participated in the recent prisoner hunger strikes and some who have been released for only a few months. One of the most prominent arrestees is former prisoner, researcher and legal specialist in prisoners affairs’, the director of the Ahrar Centre, Fuad al-Khuffash. Another is journalist Walid Khaled, who was released just two weeks ago from Israeli prisons after more than two years spent in administrative detention, a substantial amount of that in solitary confinement. He was one of the prisoners who participated in the mass 28-day hunger strike and also one of the 19 prisoners subject to the isolation policy of the Israeli Prison Service.

According to the families of some of the detainees, these arrests come following the arrests of former detainees for interrogation by the General Intelligence and Preventive Security almost immediately upon their release from Israeli jails.

The arrests were distributed geographically as follows: 11 detainees from Qalqilya; Tulkarem, 16 detainees; Nablus, 11 detaines; Salfit, 14 detainees; Hebron, 5 detainees; and one detainee from Jenin and Ramallah each.

The Addameer Foundation considers that this arrests come as a culmination of the continuous neglect by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza of achieving any true reconciliation. It is clear that they do not act in the best interests of the Palestinian people and are in fact harmful, especially on the issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, where the claims of the Palestinian Authority to call for the release of prisoners and detainees from the prisons of the occupation are belied when the Palestinian Authority security apparatus arrests them after their release.

Addameer also confirms that these arrests are highly political in nature and threaten the security and peace of the Palestinian population. They do not serve to protect the Palestinian cause, address Israeli crimes against our people, our land and our holy places. Quite the contrary they deepen the internal Palestinian tensions and increase them to the stage where the occupation is the first and last beneficiary. Addameer demands the following from the Palestinian Authority:

First, the immediate release of all detainees due to these arrests which violate the letter and the spirit of the Palestinian Basic Law and the Code of Criminal Procedure, charters and human rights conventions.

Second, Addameer demands of the Palestinian Authority to stop the practice of political arrests and stop denying their responsibility for political arrests.

Third, the need to compel the security services and law enforcement officials to respect the people and their rights, to end the practice of political repression and suppression of speech that undermine our freedoms and collective and individual dignity.

Former prisoner Salah Hammouri launched a tour of Europe on September 13, including several cities and towns in France and elsewhere in Europe. He spent 7 years in Israeli jails. Salah is a Palestinian from Jerusalem who also holds French citizenship; he arried in Paris several days ago at the invitation of human rights organizations and French leftist parties to discuss his own experience inside the prisons of the occupation and the struggle of the prisoners – and the Palestinian people – for freedom. He plans to meet with a number of French groups and municipalities, a number of whom honoured him whhile he was imprisoned.

He spoke at the European Parliament in Strasbourg at the invitation of several Members of European Parliament, speaking about his own experience as well as that of prisoners who have spent over 25 years in Israeli jails, as well as women prisoners and child prisoners. Hammouri pointed out that prisoners represent all sectors of society, from Jerusalem, from Occupied Palestine ’48, from the occupied Golan, Arab prisoners, and discussed the ongoing hunger strikes of Samer al-Barq, Hassan Safadi, and Ayman Sharawna as well as the hunger strike experience of footballer Mahmoud Sarsak, Khader Adnan and others. Hammouri called upon the European Parliament to take up and internationalize the issue of the prisoners, to bring it before their governments and pressure Israel to free Palestinian prisoners, in particular ill prisoners, women prisoners, elderly and child prisoners, as well as prisoners who were detained before Oslo.

RAMALLAH, (PIC)— Hadarim prison administration prevented lawyer for captive Sheikh Ibrahim Hamed, a Palestinian leader and a commander of the Qassam Brigades in the West Bank, from visiting him on Friday, under the pretext of declaring a state of emergency in the prison.

Hamed’s wife told Quds Press, on Saturday that the lawyer informed her that the occupation had prevented him from visiting her husband, noting that “Hadarim prison administration did not reveal the reason of declaring state of emergency in the prison.”

“A recent agreement was reached between the prison administration and the prisoners’ representatives to improve their conditions and to allow my husband to make a phone call to his family, but the prison administration did not adhere to the promises it made”, revealed Hamed’s wife.

An Israeli court had sentenced, about two months ago, Sheikh Ibrahim Hamed to 54 life-terms. He was accused, without his confession, of leading a series of operations against Israeli targets, resulting in killing of dozens of Israelis.

He had been arrested from the city of Ramallah in the West Bank in 2006, and accused of participating in killing 46 Israelis and wounding more than 400 others. The occupation had also arrested his wife then deported her to Jordan with their children.

The Zionist prison administration had held leader Hamed in solitary confinement since his arrest until last May after the prisoners’ mass hunger strike, after which the prison administration agreed to release the isolated captives, including Hamed. He was then transferred to the sections where the rest of prisoners were held.