Prisoners who refused to leave their cells for yard time when Israeli authorities adopted collective punishment practices were punished severely.
A number of acts by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli imprisonment have been conducted in response to recent limitations put on them by authorities, according to prisoner rights organizations, which claim that Israel's actions amount to collective punishment.
The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) monitoring group said in a statement on Thursday that all prisoners have refused to leave their cells for their allotted yard time since Israeli prison authorities reduced the amount of time and the number of prisoners allowed outside at once on February 5, in violation of previous agreements between detainees and the jail administration.
Every day, prisoners get access to the yard, which is also known as the fora, for an average of five to six hours, which is split into morning and evening shifts. However, the length of time has been reduced by more than half.
In a late-week announcement, the inmates' organization declared Friday and Monday to be "days of wrath." Following Friday's prayers in the yard, inmates refused to return to their cells and instead remained outside. According to the PPS, authorities sent special troops to provide backup in the event of an escalation.
Prisoners are also threatening to go on a one-day hunger strike on Monday, according to prison officials.
According to Thaer Shreiteh, a spokeswoman for the PPS, "punitive measures have a negative influence on the lives and spirits of inmates."
"The convicts follow a strict daily plan — they have reading sessions and exercise sessions at certain times, for example. As a result, when the administration reduces fora [yard] time, the purpose is to attack the inmates' everyday lives, Shreiteh said to Al Jazeera.
In his statement, he said that "the prison administration understands that every change in the specifics of a prisoner's day causes anxiety," and that it "increases the burden on convicts who are housed in cells with six or seven other detainees."
Shreiteh claimed prison officials at Hadarim Prison in the country's north threatened prisoners on Sunday with a month-long ban on family visits and canteen access, but that the move was not yet finalized. Hadarim Prison is located in the country's north.
This past week, detainees in multiple Israeli prisons voted to dissolve their representational system – in which prisoners from different political parties are elected to represent the demands of other inmates in negotiations with Israeli prison authorities – and replace it with a more democratic system.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners' Society (PPS), Israeli special forces attacked portions of Ofer Prison near occupied Ramallah on Wednesday, causing inmates to be physically abused and some of them to be placed in solitary confinement. According to Israeli media reports, an escape plot scrawled on a piece of paper was discovered in the prison's holding cell.
According to human rights organizations, detainees at Nafha Prison in the southern Naqab desert were also being chained and dragged out of their cells by force in order to conduct cell searches.
Al Jazeera Channel spoke with Ihtiram Ghazawneh, documentation and research coordinator at the Ramallah-based Addameer prisoners' rights organization, who said that inmates were formally advised by the prison administration the previous week that yard time would be divided into two stages.
According to her, inmates will be released out in batches rather than all at once for an hour and a half in the morning and an hour and a half in the evening, and they will be permitted out in the same parts.
According to Ghazawneh, Israeli officials cited a recent stabbing of a guard at Nafha Prison as the reason for the additional procedures, which apply to all jails throughout the country.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES & Channel eljazeera
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