Geneva: The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor called on the international community to put pressure on the Israeli entity to immediately stop all crimes committed against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, especially arbitrary arrests, illegal detention, and enforced disappearance of hundreds of Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip, and the disclosure of their fate and conditions of detention.
The Euro-Med Monitor said in a statement that it had received information about the exposure of many Palestinian detainees to torture and ill-treatment and that it had also received several testimonies about the occupation soldiers killing dozens of them and carrying out executions outside the scope of the law and the judiciary, especially while they were in the Gaza Strip.
It explained that these executions are an extension of widespread field killings and executions carried out by the occupying forces during their military operations and house raids and shelter centers, adding that the occupation forces also forcibly hide those they detain from the Gaza Strip and do not disclose their numbers, names, conditions or places of detention, which increases the chances of its immunity from accountability and impunity for these crimes related to killing under torture and arbitrary and extrajudicial executions that it commits against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Around 7,000 individuals, including several thousand children and women, are still missing, and their fate remains unknown. It is believed that the majority of them were killed under the rubble of homes destroyed by Israeli airstrikes, in the streets, or disappeared under mysterious circumstances in neighborhoods witnessing incursions by the occupying forces.
The Euro-Med Monitor pointed out that there are no accurate statistics on the number of Palestinian detainees from Gaza yet, given the incidents of arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance committed by the occupation forces inside the Strip and the difficulty of receiving reports in Gaza due to the dispersion of families and the almost permanent interruption of communications and the Internet. However, preliminary estimates indicate that more than three thousand arrests have been recorded, including at least 200 women and children, as there is no official information about the locations of their detention or the conditions and charges against them.
The Euro-Med Monitor called for immediate action to end the arbitrary detention and forced disappearance of hundreds of Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip, pointing out that the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED) obliges states to consider it a crime punishable by law and rises to the level of "crimes against humanity" if practiced on a large scale or in a systematic manner, which is what the Israeli occupation forces are currently doing in the areas they are penetrating in the Gaza Strip, where they have arrested thousands, and continue to detain at least three thousand people whose fate is still unknown.
