While Israel has waged a genocide on Gaza - a parallel escalation has unfolded in the West Bank through violent laws, courts, and bureaucracies designed to make life unlivable. Amongst the most severe policies has been a brutal escalation of violence against Palestinian prisoners. As Israel moves forward in legalizing the execution of political prisoners, it is clear that Israel not only uses prisons as an instrument of control to instill fear in the collective Palestinian psyche— Israel is turning prisons into specialized death camps.

Since October 2023, Israel has arrested over 18,000 men, women, and children from the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinian children–as young as the age of 12– and adults alike are interrogated for up to 90 days, denied access to lawyers, routinely subjected to physical, sexual and verbal torture, starvation, and denial of medical treatment, as well as other cruel, degrading and inhumane forms of abuse, deprivation, and detention.

These patterns of torture, abuse and strategic killings are not isolated. They’re part of Israel’s broader attempt to completely erase Palestinians. Israel is executing a genocide against Palestinian Prisoners, deliberately shielded from the international community and allowed to persist without accountability.

Canada is a state Party to the Geneva Conventions and numerous international human rights treaties, and has consistently affirmed the importance of upholding international humanitarian law. Canada has leverage to demand accountability and protect human rights and due process. I call on Canada to:

1. Demand an independent investigation & disclosure of the identities and conditions of Palestinian Political Prisoners. Palestinian prisoners have been abducted and held in administrative detention without charge or trial; a severe violation of human rights and due process;

2. Demand an immediate end to all forms of torture. Several reports describe Israeli prisons as “torture camps” where detainees face violence and severe deprivation of basic necessities;

3. Demand the immediate access to legal representation, family visits, health care, and adequate access to water, food and hygiene. Human rights organizations and international bodies have documented a severe and systematic deterioration in the conditions of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel;

4. Demand the restoration of all rights achieved by the Political Prisoners movement, including medical care, family and legal visits, and improvement in the conditions of all prisoners;

5. Demand accountability and Sanctions against all perpetrators of war crimes against Palestinian political prisoners – War crimes against palestinian prisoners have been documented through hundreds of testimonies, material evidence, and public threats by Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and the Israeli government;

6. Demand the immediate and unconditional release of all Palestinian Political Prisoners.

We understand that the genocide in Gaza is not separate from the assault we are seeing in the Israeli prisons; it is actually a transfer of the same colonial logic of collective punishment and domination. The fate of Palestinian political prisoners is not a distant humanitarian concern for Canada, it is a test of Canada’s stated commitments to human rights and international law.

Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter.

Sincerely,