Ramallah - "Jerusalem" dot com - The Palestinian Prisoners Club said today, Thursday, that the Israeli occupation is detaining 13 Palestinian journalists in its prisons, the last of whom was the journalist Amer Abdel Halim Abu Arafa from Hebron, who was arrested on the nineteenth of this July.

In a statement, the club stated that the occupation escalated the pursuit and targeting of Palestinian journalists through a number of systematic abusive tools, most notably arrests. The confrontation in May 2022, the month in which the journalist Sherine Abu Aqleh was martyred by the occupation bullets in Jenin camp.

By arresting journalists, the occupation authorities aim at undermining their role in exposing and exposing their crimes, and restricting freedom of opinion and expression. This broad concept expanded the scope of targeting, especially with the development of tools that enabled the journalist to use it, especially social media, and the emergence of activists alongside journalists who worked to expose its violations.

The Captive Club pointed out that the reality of the occupation imposed over the past decades on the Palestinian journalist to engage in struggle in all its forms and tools as a legitimate right to self-determination and resistance to the occupation, and his struggle is no longer limited to his journalistic work.

Among the journalists are three administrative detainees: Bushra Al-Taweel, Omar Abu Al-Rub, and Ragai Hamad.

Among the most prominent journalists sentenced to high sentences in the prisons of the occupation, who were able, over the years of their detention, to produce poetry and literature and contributed knowledge in various fields, despite their deprivation of performing their profession:

The prisoner Mahmoud Issa, who is sentenced to three life terms and (46) years in prison; The prisoner Basem Khandakji, who is sentenced to three life terms, the prisoner Ahmed Al-Saifi, who is sentenced to (17) years, the prisoner Munther Mufleh, who is sentenced to (30) years, and the prisoner Haitham Jaber, who is sentenced to (28) years.

The occupation also continued to harass them, confiscate their knowledge production, and pursue them. Not only that, but many of them were subjected to a policy of solitary confinement.

The Captive Club renewed its call for international human rights organizations to intervene seriously to put an end to the occupation's ongoing violations against journalists, including systematic arrests, and to guarantee their right to exercise freedom of opinion and expression.