During the opening session of the conference on supporting the Palestinian detainees in Brussels
Abu Baker calls on the European Union to act immediately and hold Israel accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian detainees

 The head of the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees' Affairs Qadri Abu Baker started his speech in the Fifth European Conference for Supporting the Palestinian Detainees by calling on the European Union to act immediately to put an end to Israel's crimes against the Palestinian detainees and hold it accountable for violating the International Law and the International Humanitarian Law.
Text of the speech:
In the name of Allah the most merciful the most compassionate
Ladies and Gentlemen
Distinguished guests
 May peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you
Let me first deliver the greetings and gratitude of the Palestinian people, leadership and detainees and their relatives on organizing this important conference, in which we hope that its works be successful. We also hope that we can create a real space to support the Palestinian detainees, especially that we are in the 21st century, where the principles of democracy, human rights and justice exist all over the world except in occupied Palestine which suffers from a colonial Israeli occupation that targets stones and trees before human beings. The Israeli authorities are currently holding 5700 detainees, who live in tragic situation and do not provide the human and legal protection set forth in many international conventions and laws.
The Israeli occupation governments have exceeded all international laws and norms in dealing with Palestinian detainees and behave as it is the only state in the world. Israel resorted to legalizing their revenge, where the Israeli Knesset approved more than 15 racist laws since 2015 to take revenge from detainees and their relatives, in addition to many draft bills which still in the reading process by specialist committees in the Knesset, such as: deducting the salaries of martyrs and detainees, execution of detainees, stop funding the medical treatment of detainees and wounded persons, expel  detainees' relative and deport them  away from their accommodation area and stop the early release of detainees. This was a result of fierce competition between Israeli politicians who are racing to turn the lives of detainees into hell.
Ladies and gentlemen
The Israeli occupation authorities hold the Palestinian detainees in 22 jails and detention centers, all of them are located outside the occupied territories in 1967, which are considered Palestinian territories according to the settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict draft bill, and this contradicts articles 49, 76 and 77 of  the Fourth Geneva Convention which states that the occupying state shall detain the citizens of the original state in jails located inside the occupied territories, noting that the only jail located inside the occupied territories in Ofer prison, near the city of Ramallah.
As mentioned earlier, the Israeli occupation authorities hold more than 5700 detainees, including 570 detainees who are sentenced to life sentence, and 500 detainees held under the policy of administration detention that became a collective punishment, in which Palestinians are imprisoned without trials or charges. Children are also included, where 250 minors still held in Ofer, Damoun and Megiddo prisons. The occupation deprived them of childhood rights in order to meet the desires of intelligence officers in the occupation army, who have the right to carry out arrests based on their wishes without taking into consideration their weak physical structure and young age.
47 females are held in Damoun prison, which was a location for storing tobacco, in addition to 7 representatives of the former Legislative Council, and 26 detainees held before the Oslo Accord such as Kareem Younis and Maher Younis who are arrested since 37 years and Neal Barghouthi who is arrested since 39 years. Moreover, there are more than 750 sick detainees, tens of them have serious conditions and about to die due to the policy of medical negligence and medical crimes committed against them. They are deprived of treatment and they are only provided with painkillers, such as Sami Abu Dyak, Israa' Ja'abees, Fuad Shobaki, Bassam Sayeh, Mansour Moukadi, Khalid Shaweesh and Mohammad Barrash.
The Israeli occupation turned the policy of medical negligence into a crime committed against Palestinian detainees, where 218 martyrs of the captive movement died due to depriving them of treatment, in addition to hundreds of released detainees who got outside of prisons with many chronic diseases and dies thereafter, so that their stories are witnesses to the ugliness and hatred of this occupation.
The past few months witnessed unprecedented attack against our detainees, especially in Ofer, Negev, Remon and Nafaha prisons, where Special Forces broke into the cells and sections of detainees, attacked them and humiliated them. They used tear gas, pepper gas, rubber coated bullets and live ammunition. Detainees were beaten and kept in the prisons' yards in cold weather, isolated, prosecuted by internal trials, deprived of family visits and sentenced to high fines. In addition, many jamming devices were installed inside prisons, close to the rooms of detainees, which may cause unknown diseases among detainees.
Ladies and gentlemen

The stable attitude of the Palestinian leadership, represented in refusing the deal of the century and refusing to deal with the American administration after its unjust procedures against the Palestinian cause and rights, made the United States to cut off its financial aid to the Authority, which was allocated to the services and infrastructure sector, which affected the PA budget. The financial crisis aggravated with the refusal of the PA to receive the incomplete clearing fund because the occupation decide to deduct the allocations of the martyrs and detainees' families, which had multiple economic, political and popular consequences.
Cutting the aid by America is a vulgar step aiming at forcing Palestine to sacrifice one of its basic principles, which is not acceptable to our people or leadership. Israel expends great efforts through media to mislead nations and governments, especially the European societies. It depicts itself as a victim who seeks for an international protection.  It launched a campaign in which it used all its energy, and urged the Zionist lobby to obtain an international attitude that condemns the Palestinian leadership's stand with the detainees and their families. It also practiced pressure on them to abandon their commitments towards those struggling people.
We witnessed a wave of incitement against the money provided for detainees' families, which is a simple allocation that helps to provide a decent life for them. This is refused by Israel, which hide bad intentions to turn the Israeli Palestinian conflict into a conflict between the Palestinians, because it knows very well the status of detainees and their families to the Palestinian people and his leadership.
Palestine being a recognized state by the United Nations and by joining more than 100 international treaties is subordinate to international jurisdiction, not to the jurisdiction of the Israeli military laws and legislation. The responsibility of the Palestinian National Authority is to provide social insurance to the distressed families. This is applied by all states in the world, including the state of Israel which applies the social insurance on Israeli criminals.  This insurance comes within the framework of an international legal rule that requires taking care of affected families regardless of the affair done by one of their members. Responsibility is individual and not collective, and this will reflect the social, economic and security stability.
We assure that our detainees is are not criminals nor terrorists as Israel and the United States try to depict them, but actually they are freedom fighters and symbols of the struggle of the Palestinian people.
Ladies and gentlemen
Providing financial aid for detainees' families is a process organized by law and includes clear clauses. It states that the salary of the detainee is related directly to the period served in Israeli jails and the social status wither be married or bachelor. The more years spent in jail the more the proportion of salary become, and that what is paid to the detainees and their families has nothing to do with the sentence.  The increase in salary is justified by the change of basic requirements of life, the requirements of detainees' families increase in terms of education, health and others.
This refutes the occupation's narrative and its media that the system of funds provided to detainees and their families encourages the Palestinians to do acts of "violence" because they will receive more salary. Unfortunately, we got surprised that there are international diplomats who have believed in this misleading and false analysis, which is ratified by the law of funding detainees.
It is worthy to mention that Israel pays salaries for Israeli prisoners, and that the extremist who killed the former Prime Minister Rabin, is receiving salaries from three Israeli sides. He was allowed to marry and take leaves outside the prison, which is not given for the Palestinian detainees.
Ladies and gentlemen
In conclusion, I would like to thank all those who contributed to the success of this conference, and I would like to take the advantage of being here to call upon all organizations of International Community to break its terrible silence, and to assume its legal, human and moral responsibilities towards the Palestinian detainees. We also would like to emphasize the necessity of mobilizing all international efforts to support the issue of detainees and the Palestinian leadership to face Israeli inflexibility, and we value the efforts of the solidarity movements in Brussels and the rest of the world.
We wish that the works of the conference to succeed and to take advantage of its papers, in order to be able to mobilize European people and governments.
We hope to start the work and influence from here, from the Belgian capital, Brussels, due to the existence of the European political center represented in the European Union.  We call on you by the name of our agonized detainees in Israeli jails to work to exert pressure on the European decision-makers to stop the Israeli war against Palestinian detainees, especially minors and sick detainees, which violates international law and the UN Charter of Human Rights, in order to hold Israel accountable for its continuous violations.
Long live Palestine, long live the struggles of our people… we will be together until liberating the Palestinian people and land… May peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you