Israel bans ICRC visits to detained Palestinian combatants

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel has banned the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from visiting Palestinian prisoners detained under a law targeting “unlawful combatants”, the country’s defence minister said on Wednesday.

“The opinions presented to me leave no doubt that Red Cross visits to terrorists in prisons would seriously harm the state’s security. The safety of the state and our citizens comes first,” Israel Katz said, according to a statement from his office.

The order prohibits the ICRC from visiting several thousand detainees named in a list attached to it.

In practice, the order will make law of the status quo that has prevailed since the war in Gaza.

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The ICRC says it has not been allowed to visit detainees in jail since then, save for pre-release interviews conducted under Gaza ceasefire and prisoner exchange deals.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), which filed a petition to grant the ICRC access to Israeli prisons, told AFP that some of the combatants are held in military detention centres, and others in regular Israeli jails.

It said that before the ceasefire deal that began on October 10, the Israeli Prison Service “was holding 2,673 prisoners categorised as unlawful combatants”.

It added that hundreds were released under the deal in exchange for hostages held in the Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military accused Hamas of faking its search for the bodies of deceased hostages still in Gaza in order to stall the return process.

Providing drone footage as evidence, it said that Hamas staged a body’s discovery in front of ICRC staff, who have facilitated the transfer of hostages and prisoners.

The ICRC said it was unaware the body had been pre-positioned ahead of its team’s arrival, as its neutral role “does not include unearthing of the bodies of the deceased”.

In its statement, ICRC called the staged discovery “unacceptable”, noting “so much depends on this agreement being upheld”.