A demand for the closure of the Dhahiriya detention facility in Hebron has been retracted by Israel’s Association for Civil Rights.
The association, petitioning with four Dhahiriya detainees, had asked that the facility be shut down because of inhuman conditions there. Their petition included complaints about overcrowding, a lack of light and ventilation and generally unhygienic conditions.
But a visit to the West Bank detention center by a panel of judges from the High Court of Justice showed that improvements had recently been made, according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Davar.
In anticipation of the court’s visit, wider windows were installed in the detention center, hygiene conditions improved and the time allotted for detainees’ walks outside their cells had been extended.
Following the panel’s visit, the High Court ruled that a committee at the Ketziot detention facility should also supervise the conditions at Dhahiriya.
Davar also reported that leaders of detained at the Ketziot facility have rejected a recent proposal by the Israel Defense Force.
The army had proposed that detainees work at binding books for Gaza schools. The detainees refused on the grounds that such cooperation with prison authorities was prohibited by the unified leadership of the uprising.
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