The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has said in a recent report that the families of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails often face “an arduous journey” when having a chance to visit their detained relatives.
Its report which relied on reliable sources and testimonies from relatives of prisoners explain in details the great suffering of those who try to visit Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
“As Palestinian visitors are unable to reach prisons independently and as Israel takes no part in facilitating prison visits the task of organizing these visits falls entirely to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Every visit to prison involves an entire day of arduous travel and physical and emotional hardship – especially for elderly relatives and children.”
“Israel allows only first-degree relatives to visit their loved ones in prison and even that is subject to the permits it issues and only as part of scheduled visit days on which the ICRC organizes transportation. The ICRC arranges visits from Sunday to Thursday with buses leaving from pickup points in the major cities to one or more prisons depending on the ICRC’s visit program. Until the middle of 2016 relatives who received permits were able to visit imprisoned family members twice a month but because of cuts in the ICRC budget in 2016 it reduced the number of visits to only once a month.”
“Prior to the visit the ICRC submits a list of visitors to the Israeli District Coordination Office (DCO) in the various areas and waits for an answer from the Israeli side. Next the families receive the answers and hear if their requests had approved and they would receive an entry permit rejected or removed from the list over failing to meet the criterion of first-degree relation to the prisoner. The visitors who meet the conditions board a bus in the early morning from the pickup points in the major Palestinian cities accompanied by an ICRC representative. When the bus reaches the checkpoint all of the visitors are required to disembark and undergo a physical and personal effects search which takes a long time and then on the other side of the checkpoint they board an Israeli bus that takes them to the prison” B’Tselem elaborates
After the visit which lasts only 45 minutes the visitors get back on Israeli buses that take them to checkpoints and from there onto ICRC buses. They usually get home in the evening after an exhausting day the group says.
In testimonies relatives of prisoners gave B’Tselem field researchers they described the hard journey to prison the brief visit and the extreme sadness when the visit is rejected.
“From four o’clock in the morning to nine o’clock at night 17 long hours of dragging around from one place to another from one bus to another and one security check to another getting on getting off on and off. Even if I were made out of iron I would collapse. It’s an arduous journey” a mother of Palestinian prisoner told a B’Tselem reporter.
