RAMALLAH, Palestine

Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank receive water for only 45 minutes a day, a Palestinian commission said on Sunday.

“The general conditions in Israeli prisons remain difficult and complex. They are deteriorating,” said a statement from the Commission for Prisoners’ Affairs.

The commission stated that water was only available to inmates in the prison “for 45 minutes a day”.

“The power is out from 10 p.m. until noon the next day and the food supply is inadequate both in quantity and quality,” it said.

The commission said several prisoners had been “beaten and ill-treated on several occasions, some of them being attacked while on their way to see their lawyers.”

“All prisoners suffer significant weight loss due to the (Israeli) starvation policy,” it said.

Ibrahim Najajreh, head of the commission’s office in Hebron, said there were at least 1,500 Palestinian prisoners in Ofer prison.

“Every prisoner must make the best use of the available water for drinking and for his washing and bathing needs, as there are no storage facilities,” he told Anadolu.

A joint statement by the Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society estimates that more than 10,100 Palestinians have been arrested by the Israeli army in the West Bank since October 7, 2023.

According to the Health Ministry, at least 635 Palestinians were killed and nearly 5,400 others injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied territories during the same period.

In a groundbreaking opinion on July 19, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala in Istanbul

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