OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (Palestine Foundation Information Center), Palestinian prisoner advocacy organizations reported that the Israeli occupation regime continues to employ enforced disappearance as a systematic policy against thousands of Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip for a third straight year.
This came in a joint statement released by the organizations on Sunday, marking “the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.”
“Israel’s withholding of information about detainees is not merely an isolated human rights violation. Rather, it operates as an integrated system of enforced disappearance that systematically denies prisoners legal protection, fostering an environment where torture, ill-treatment, medical crimes, and other abuses occur without oversight or accountability,” the organizations explained.
“Enforced disappearance is strictly prohibited under international law and cannot be justified under any circumstances, including during wartime or armed conflicts,” the organizations said.
Since the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip started, the Israeli regime has weaponized legal frameworks, primarily the unlawful combatant law, to entrench enforced disappearances. This policy relies on specialized detention centers and severe restrictions on access for lawyers, human rights organizations, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
According to the organizations, no accurate statistics are available to date on the number of Palestinians from Gaza subjected to enforced disappearance, given the difficulty of documenting cases and verifying the fate of detainees and the missing.
The organizations called on the international community to take concrete, binding action to uncover the fate of the disappeared, grant immediate access to detainees, investigate torture and killing incidents, prosecute perpetrators, and pressure for the return of withheld bodies.
