By WAM
Jerusalem : As the world celebrates today the International Women’s Day 2008, the Palestinian Authority has released painful reports about the Palestinian women detained by Israeli forces.
A statistical report prepared by the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs showed that over ten thousand Palestinian women of different ages were detained by Israeli government since 1967. Among them 720 women were detained during the Intifada and 102 of them are still behind bars, the report showed.
Detaining young girls and women is a practise as old as the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and this campaign did not target a particular section of the Palestinian women, but was randomly carried out, terrorising the entire community. Israeli soldiers searched Palestinian homes and arrested the mothers and sisters of those who had participated in Intifada to force Palestinian freedom fighters to abandon their struggle and surrender to Israeli forces.
This form of collective punishment and arrest of innocent women were carried out with an aim of eliciting confessions from them and to force them to reveal the whereabouts of their brothers and sons in Intifada, the report showed.
Many women were threatened by the Israeli forces that they will arrest young children and throw them behind bars.
The report also showed that the conditions of the women detainees in Israeli prisons are worsening, as the prison authorities don’t show any kind of human sympathy to them and to their special needs as women. This organised form of terrorising the Palestinian women is continuing on a daily basis.
The report called upon the world community and the specialised organisations to bring the plight of Palestinian women in general and the detainees in particular to the world attention.