PLO: Israeli prisons were “formulated by extremist Israelis” to “define the struggle of the Palestinian people as a crime” and “turn the lives of prisoners and their families into hell”
“Director of [the PLO] Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs Qadri Abu Bakr asked French Consul General in Jerusalem, René Troccaz, for France to play a significant and serious role in stopping the occupation’s crimes against our prisoners and their families, and not to accede to the demands of the occupation (i.e., Israeli) government, which is striving to define the struggle of the Palestinian people and its prisoners as a crime.
While receiving Troccaz yesterday [Dec. 15, 2020], Abu Bakr noted that in recent years there has been an unprecedented increase in the scope of the crimes against the [Palestinian] prisoners in the Israeli occupation’s prisons: medical crimes, break-ins [to their cells], assaults, fines, and negating most of the human rights and rights to living, with an entire system that was formulated by extremist Israeli politicians and military officials, in order to turn the lives of the prisoners and their families into hell.
He added: ‘The climax of the Israeli attack today is the prisoners’ salaries. The occupation, with all its branches, is working to harm the Palestinian prisoners’ image by using a stereotype that has no connection to reality and is based on a false claim. This is baseless nonsense. [The PA definition of a prisoner] is anchored in the law regularizing the payment of the salaries of the prisoners and their families.’
Abu Bakr emphasized that the Palestinian prisoners are prisoners of liberation movements to which the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions apply (sic., see note below), and he noted that their struggle is legitimate and guaranteed by all international conventions and laws. He added that the goal of the money that is being given to them and their families is to ensure a minimal standard of living, and that the occupation state’s harming of this money is a despicable crime.”
PA claim that Israel's Anti "Pay-for-Slay" Law breaches Article 81 of the Fourth Geneva Convention - The PA claims that Israel's law to deduct the amount of the PA’s payments to terrorists and their families from taxes Israel collects for the PA (passed on July 2, 2018) breaches Article 81 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (GCIV). This is incorrect, as Article 81 applies only to “internees,” and not to terrorists who are standing trial, convicted, or released from prison, and likewise not to the families of dead terrorists. The only “internees” held by Israel are Palestinian terrorists held in administrative detention in accordance with Article 78 of GCIV, and Israel fulfills all its obligations vis-a-vis these “internees.”