Adalah Welcomes Resumption of Family Visits for Prisoners from Gaza
Yesterday, 16 July 2012, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced that family visits for Gaza prisoners incarcerated in Israeli prisons have resumed, and that 40 persons will be permitted to see their relatives for the first time in five years. The Israeli government has prohibited family visits from Gaza since 2007, as a collective punishment imposed to pressure Hamas after the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. While Shalit was released in October 2011, family visits did not resume. According to the ICRC, a total of 554 men whose families are from the Gaza Strip are still detained in Israel.
Adalah welcomes the decision and is following its implementation closely. The resumption of family visits is a clear accomplishment of the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike.
Adalah has also been working over the last five years to seek to reinstate family visits to prisoners from Gaza. In June 2008, Adalah together with the Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, and the Association for the Palestinian Prisoners petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court demanding the resumption of family visits. The petitioners argued that the sweeping ban imposed on family visits disproportionally affects the prisoners’ rights to family life, equality, personal freedom and minimum living conditions in prison, and further intensified their lack of contact with the outside world, as they are also banned from making telephone calls to family members. In December 2009, the Supreme Court rejected the petition ruling that there was no reason to intervene in the government’s decision to ban on family visits on the grounds of security. The Supreme Court failed to address the petitioners’ argument that the removal of Palestinians from Gaza, occupied territory, and their transfer and incarceration in Israel is illegal as in contravenes the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Adalah and its partners, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Al Mezan, and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), have also brought the issue before the UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors state party compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT). In 2010, the Human Rights Committee called on Israel to resume the family visit program, supported by the ICRC, and to allow prisoners to maintain contact with their families, including by telephone. In June 2012, the CAT asked Israel in its “List of Issues” to “comment on the reports that since June 2007, there has been a blanket ban on family visits to over 700 prisoners from the Gaza Strip.” Adalah, together with its human rights NGO partners, also consistently called upon the EU to urge Israel to resume the visits.
On 12 June 2012, Adalah sent a letter to the Israel Prison Service (IPS) demanding that it fulfill its commitment as promised in the agreement signed with the prisoners following the hunger strike of April-May 2012 and immediately resume family visits to prisoners from Gaza. The IPS responded that many different authorities were involved in the family visits, that the issue was complex, and that it would take more time.
