The Israeli occupation authorities released yesterday (July 7, 2026) nine prisoners from the Gaza Strip, including “Hamada Al-Banna,” whose family believed that the Israeli army had killed him three months ago while he was in the Israli prisons. This incident proves the systematic crime of enforced disappearance committed by Israel against civilians in the Gaza Strip to further torture them and their families as part of a collective punishment policy against the residents of the Strip. It also confirms that hundreds of families live the agony of loss, believing that the Israeli army killed their sons in separate incidents, while they are secretly detained inside Israeli prisons.
The Palestinian Center for the Missing and Enforced Disappeared emphasizes that the deliberate withholding of the names and fates of detainees represents a blatant violation of international humanitarian law, leaving families in a whirlpool of psychological torture and continuous doubt regarding the fate of their loved ones. It also points out that the absence of human rights oversight turns these prisons into secret detention centers where data and the health status of detainees are completely hidden from the outside world.
In this context, the Center demands a binding international intervention to force the Israeli authorities to immediately allow the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and specialized organizations to visit the prisons, as well as to obtain complete lists of names and review the health conditions of the detainees, as this measure is the essential step to end the crime of enforced disappearance and resolve the issue of missing persons.
