Instead of being at school, Khalil Hamdan, 16, has been in Israeli prisons since last July. His family is growingly concerned for his life in light of the unprecedentedly harsh and deteriorating conditions for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Since October 2023, the number of Palestinian detainees has reached 11,500, according to the Palestinian Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Authority. Among the Palestinian prisoners are 94 women and 270 children under the age of eighteen, including 100 in administrative detention.
The data don’t include detainees in the Gaza Strip, whose numbers are estimated in the thousands, including women and children, against whom Israel practices the crime of forced disappearance in secret prisons.
Severe abuses
On 9 July, an Israeli army force raided Hamdan’s home in the town of Idna, west of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. The soldiers destroyed the contents of the house and arrested Khalil and his father.
His father, Jamal, told us that the soldiers started beating Khalil without any reason, arrested the two of them, and took them to military vehicles. ….more