The Prisoner's Club said that the issuance by the Minister of the Israeli Occupation Army, Yoav Galant, of a decision deeming detainees from the Gaza Strip illegal combatants, is a dangerous matter, as it denies them the status of prisoners of war, and is considered a violation of international humanitarian law.

According to the media officer at the Prisoner’s Club, Amani Farahna, international law and the Third Geneva Convention stipulate that detained fighters are prisoners of war, and they are dealt with accordingly, and this obliges it not to investigate them, and not to bring them to trial, stressing that Israel, with this decision, has exceeded what the law stipulates in the event of conflict and war.

Yesterday, Army Minister Galant issued a decision stating that Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip are illegal combatants based on the “Unlawful Combatant Law” issued in 2002. The order stipulated that detainees from the Gaza Strip be detained in a camp called “Sdet Yaman,” near From Beersheba.

In turn, Tala Nasser, a lawyer at the Addameer Foundation for Prisoner Care and Human Rights, said that this decision, which considers the detainees who were arrested from Gaza during the aggression as illegal combatants, is dangerous, because according to it any citizen can be detained for an open period, without an indictment being filed, and a judicial appearance before the central cour every six months, under the pretext that his file is confidential, and neither the detainee nor the lawyer can access it, in addition to arbitrarily detaining him administratively, as is the case in administrative detention.

She stressed that this decision violates international humanitarian law, which considers detainees from the Gaza Strip to be prisoners of war, and is in violation of the Third Geneva Convention, pointing out that the number of detainees from the Gaza Strip during the aggression on Gaza exceeded 50 detainees.

She demanded that all detainees be considered prisoners of war, stressing that there is communication with the institutions concerned with prisoners in the West Bank and Gaza to unify the discourse and work on the lawyers’ refusal to deal with any detainee inside the court as an illegal combatant, and to confirm that they are prisoners of war.