Israel’s Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan has sought to exclude Palestinian prisoners from an order to increase the living area of inmates ruling that the detainees be rather locked up in underequipped tents.
The proposal comes in response to a court rule handed down by Israel’s High Court in mid-June and which pronounced that overcrowded Israeli prisons are not fit for human habitation.
The court rule was issued following appeals by human rights groups demanding that prisoners be provided four square meters for each one of them. The Court said that overcrowded prison cells must be enlarged or else the Israeli authorities must consider reducing the number of inmates.
In European countries Kenya Senegal and Mauritius the average space is much higher according to a report by Haaretz daily.
According to data by the Prisoners’ and Ex-Prisoners’ Committee nearly 6500 Palestinians among them 57 women and 300 children are locked up in Israeli jails.
