22.5.2022

The Israeli occupation continues to kidnap our Palestinian people outside the occupied Palestinian territories in 1967. We are now faced with the trial of the six tunnel prisoners by invalid illegal courts that do not abide by the minimum standard of international law.

And here, the department confirms the illegality of these trials that the Israeli occupation establish through military courts in which the Palestinian prisoners are tried and transferred outside the occupied Palestinian territories of 1967

The department reassures the right of people in the resistance and struggles against the Israeli occupation and for its land from any occupation on its territories which is the legitimate right of those people to determine their destiny and national independence by Article 1, paragraph 2 of the Charter of the United Nations of 1945.

The sole aim of the Palestinian resistance over the years was and still is gaining the country’s freedom, independence, liberation from the yoke of occupation and its torment and the damage it has caused to our people, its properties, and life resources, and to get rid of the systematic torture that the occupation forces use to maintain control over the Palestinian Land.

International treaties related to War (Geneva & Hague) have emphasized that the members of the resistance and national liberation movements are considered legitimate resistant and should be treated as prisoners of war. In 1907, the Hague convention recognized the legal combatant status for the civil citizens who are engaged in resisting the occupation. And these basic conditions and requirements are considered conditions under the Hague convention and are available to the resistance factions and their members. Therefore, Israel the occupying power must treat them as prisoners of war.

As for the civilians whose national and patriotic motive was what guide them in carrying arms and resisting occupation, the convention sufficed with the first and second conditions to ensure that they are treated as regular forces and that they are considered legitimate combatants.

Article 7 of the definition of aggression recognizes the legitimacy of resistance to occupation and defines it as a popular exercise of a legitimate right of peoples in accordance with the principles and rules of international law.

The Third Geneva Convention dealt with the issue of prisoners of war, including militia members and resistance factions and organizations.

Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War of 1949 states that everyone who is captured is protected under this convention, Article 13 stipulates that they be treated humanely, and under Article 14, prisoners of war have the right to respect for their person and their honor in all circumstances.

Despite the provisions of the Geneva Convention not to bring the prisoners to court and treat them humanely, the Israeli occupation has completely disregarded all these international norms and laws.

Despite what was stated in international laws, specifically in the Third Geneva Convention, the Israeli occupation continued to arrest, torture, and abuse our Palestinian people, transferring their places of detention, endangering their lives and human dignity, and continuing to bring them to trials and put them in prisons outside the occupied territories and imposed a very harsh detention environment against them. To this day, it has left more than 230 martyrs inside the Israeli occupation prisons, with different conditions, all of which the occupation bears its consequences and brutal and oppressive policies.

On this day that marks a new black page from the records of the occupation’s terrorism and its deviation from international laws and norms, we affirm the right of our people to self-determination and their destiny and their liberation from this occupation, and that the Palestinian prisoners are Palestinian constant, and we will not give up on it, and there will be no settlement unless they enjoy their freedom outside the prison walls of this occupation.

And further to all international laws, we call upon the community and international organizations to take a step forward and go towards holding the occupying power accountable for its crimes against our Palestinian people, and on top of these crimes, the ongoing crimes against our Palestinian prisoners from the brutal occupation.