Israel to move Palestinian prisoners to 'tents' due to overcrowding

Israel is currently considering moving some Palestinian prisoners from prison cells to “tents”, Hebrew media revealed, citing a bill proposed by the Israeli Minister of Internal Security, Gilad Erdan.

Israel’s Channel 7 reported yesterday that the proposal is one of the solutions that the ministry is considering to overturn the implementation of a ruling that was issued by the Israeli High Court in mid-June, in which it decided to find alternatives to mitigate the overcrowding of the Palestinian inmates in Israeli jails.

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The High Court’s ruling came in response to a petition filed by several Israeli human rights organisations, in which they demanded increasing the cell space for each inmate to four square metres instead of the current less than three-square metre space, including bed and bathroom, inside Israeli prisons.

According to Haaretz, the Israeli the court recently stated that the Israeli prisons “aren’t fit for human habitation”. On the inmate’s cell space, the agency noted that Israel is placed in a poor position, compared to 8.8 square metres cell space for each prisoner in Europe.

Some 6,500 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli jails, 57 of whom are women while 300 are children, according to the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs (PCPA).