Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD: Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, who has long been accused of inflaming tensions between Jews and Arabs, has set his sights on one of the longstanding conflict’s most sensitive issues: Palestinian inmates.
Since becoming part of Israel’s new government, which is headed by veteran Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late in 2022, Ben-Gvir has vowed to make sure Palestinian prisoners are not being treated too comfortably.
Last month Ben-Gvir visited Negev desert’s Nafha prison, he informed Israeli media that as a result of new cells that are being he had wanted to make sure that ” murderers of Jews” are not getting better conditions.
Ben-Gvir has also stated that, Palestinian prisoners — “terrorists,” in his world — would no longer receive “fresh pita (bread)… each morning, as if they were in a cafe.”
The minister ordered bakeries shut that had been run at two Israeli jails.
Israel’s prison service refused to reply whether such facilities actually exist or daily pita for prisoners were baked.
Ben-Gvir’s inflammatory statements have provoked strong reactions.
Statements made by Ben-Gvir cross all red lines
In the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, demonstrated placards blasting Ben-Gvir.
In correspondence to Jerusalem-based foreign diplomats, the Palestinian group said that imposing curbs on prisoners’ rights “crossed all red lines” and termed the issue “a detonator.”
Milena Ansari, an advocacy officer at the prisoner support group Addameer, said that since the since the occupation of Palestinian territories following the 1967 Six-Day War some 800,000 Palestinians have been through Israeli prisons.
Ansari added that means every West Bank family has had at least one person who was arrested, detained, or faced a military court system. Thus, the issue hits the Palestinian identity’s core.
