On Sunday, Hamas’s Prisoners’ Media Office said that Israel had informed the family of paramedic Khafaja that he was “in their custody after he went missing several weeks ago on Salah al-Din Street in the central Gaza Strip, while performing his humanitarian duty driving an ambulance belonging to the Ministry of Health.”
The ministry said in a statement: "After the occupation announced its responsibility for the arrest of paramedic Khafaja, who was kidnapped weeks ago while performing his humanitarian duty, we condemn in the strongest terms this crime and consider it a blatant attack on medical teams and the sanctity of humanitarian work."
She explained that this crime comes within the framework of a "systematic policy targeting health workers during the war of extermination on Gaza," and pointed out that Israel arrested 362 health workers during the two years of extermination.
“Their sentences have ended”
In the same context, the Prisoners' Media Office said in a statement on Monday that Israel continues to detain 32 Palestinian prisoners from the Gaza Strip after the end of their sentences, in a violation it described as a "legal and humanitarian crime".
The statement explained that Israel is holding "32 prisoners who have completed their sentences without any legal justification," amid expectations that more will be added to the list at the beginning of the new year.
He continued: “Some of these prisoners have completed their sentences several months, or even years, without being released or brought before any judicial authority, which makes their continued detention an arbitrary and illegal detention that amounts to a war crime.”
He considered this policy to be "systematic collective punishment" because it deprives detainees of their freedom after the end of their sentences, in addition to preventing their families from visiting or obtaining information about their health conditions.
The statement also pointed out that this violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, as Article 132 of it stipulates "the release of detainees immediately upon the expiry of their sentence," according to the statement.
These prisoners are being held by the Israeli Prison Service, along with more than 10,000 Palestinians, including children and women, who are suffering torture, starvation, and medical neglect that has led to the deaths of many detainees, according to Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations.
During the two years of genocide that Israel began on October 8, 2023, the Israeli occupation army arrested hundreds of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, and refuses to disclose their numbers.
Bombing and demolition
This comes as the Israeli occupation army continued to violate the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip, by carrying out bombing, demolition and gunfire operations in areas under its control according to the agreement.
Local sources said that the Israeli occupation army carried out demolition operations at dawn today on residential buildings west of the city of Rafah (south), which is entirely under its control, and also opened fire east of the city.
The same sources reported that the occupation army shelled several targets east of Khan Yunis city within the areas under its control with artillery and helicopters, and indicatedthat Israeli helicopters fired east of Khan Yunis.
According to the Gaza Government Media Office, Israel has committed hundreds of violations of the ceasefire agreement that began on October 10, resulting in the deaths of 376 and injuries to 981 others, following the deaths of 5 new Palestinians in the past 24 hours, including two who were pulled from under the rubble, according to a statement issued by the Gaza Health Ministry on Monday.
The ministry added in its statement that the number of victims has reached 70,365 martyrs and 171,058 wounded, most of them children and women, since October 7, 2023, in addition to the occupation causing massive destruction in Gaza, the cost of reconstruction of which the United Nations estimated at about $70 billion.
