Etaf Elian was forced by Israeli soldiers to open her mouth for them to spray gas in

By Yasser Al Banna, IOL Correspondent

GAZA, July 11 (IslamOnline.net) - An Israeli Knesset member Friday, July 11, called for setting up a fact-finding mission to investigate into acts of torture against Palestinian women detainees protesting squalid cells and tough treatment two days before.

Eight female detainees were critically injured when the prison authorities tried to disperse striking prisoners Wednesday, July 9, Mohamed Baraka told Islamonline.net.

Baraka, the head of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, said other detainees joining hands in the protest sustained moderate wounds when an Israeli military force broke into the prison courtyard and assaulted them.

“Some 70 soldiers burst into the place, attacked the female protestors and dragged them back to their small notorious cells after releasing gas in them, causing injuries and suffocation, said Fatin Al-Aseibi, a lawyer in the Palestinian Detainee Affairs Ministry.

Aseibi cited the case of Etaf Elian, a detainee “whom the Israeli soldiers forced her mouth open to spray gas in”

Elian was then whisked away to unknown area, with no information available on her health conditions since.

After the raid, Arej Al-Shuhari was left sick after the attack, Aseibi said.

On Monday, July 7, the same detainees organized a protest against their tough deplorable living conditions and Israel’s deceptive promises of their release. They were harshly repressed by large number of the jailers.

Israel had declared that it would release some 200-300 detainees after Palestinian factions declared a temporary suspension of attacks last week.

Disappointed, Palestinian dismissed the move as inadequate, as the Jewish state held more than 6,000 Palestinian detainees.

The Palestinian Detainee Affairs Ministry said in a statement that among the Wednesday protestors were Palestinian student detainees whom Israel had prevented from completing their studies.

“The detainees presented the prison administration with demands to improve their living conditions, with a threat to go in hunger otherwise,” said a lawyer for  the Conscience Center for prison welfare and human rights.

The demands, including ending the solitary confinement of a number of detainees and their frisking as well as providing medical treatment to some of them suffering chronic epidemics, were met with rejection.

Ironically enough, among the demands turned down were allowing the access of garments and other personal property and for relatives to visit detainees.

Amid such a bleak picture, Palestinian detainees remained defiant and attempt to expose Israeli merciless policies towards them.

A Palestinian detainee in the notorious Israeli Naqab prison told IslamOnline.net Monday, June 23, by a cellular phone smuggled to his cell about his distress of undergoing a two-hour medical operation by an Israeli surgeon to remove his appendix without being anesthetized.

On June 2, families of thousands of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails gathered in Gaza in the courtyard of the International Committee of the Red Crescent to denounce the Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon’s decision to set free “only two Palestinian detainees”.

The families deemed that decision a mere deception for the world public opinion.

One day earlier, the Palestinian Prisoner Club on Sunday, June 1, accused the Israeli occupation army of torturing and humiliating children taken prisoners and denying them visits by their relatives.

In a report on the children taken prisoner issued on the occasion of the World Child Day, the Club said, “The number of prisoners between 13-18 amounts to 350, including 11 girls.”