Gazans hold sit-in for inmates in Israeli jails

Palestinian protesters have staged a sit-in in the Gaza Strip to shed light on the plight of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons, Press TV reports.

The protest, organized by the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, was held on Monday in front of the office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the besieged territory.

The sit-in took place when the families of the Palestinian prisoners and detainees were holding a weekly meeting in the ICRC office.

The Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine has been spearheading the campaign to garner support for thousands of prisoners in Israeli prisons, mainly the sick ones and those on hunger strike.

“Zionist settlers and soldiers must be captured in order to swap them with our prisoners because it is the only way to secure those who are slowly dying inside Israeli jails. We must not wait for years to release them, we must act now,” said Khalid al-Batsh, a senior official with the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine.

According to Palestinian NGO Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association (Addameer), there were more than 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails as of January 2014.

The prisoners include 155 administrative detainees, 17 women and 154 children. Ten Palestinian prisoners are currently on hunger strike against their administrative detention.

Administrative detention is a sort of imprisonment without trial or charge that allows Israel to incarcerate Palestinians for up to six months. The detention order can be renewed for indefinite periods of time.

Gaza has been blockaded since June 2007, a situation that has caused a decline in the standards of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and unrelenting poverty.

The apartheid regime of Israel denies about 1.7 million people in Gaza their basic rights, such as freedom of movement, jobs that pay proper wages, and adequate healthcare and education.