Gaza: The Palestinian Prisoner's Society (PPS) said on Monday that Israeli occupation authorities continue to escalate their targeting of students across the occupied West Bank, with four Tawjihi (General Secondary Education Certificate Examination) students detained since the start of the examination period.
According to Palestine News and Information Agency - WAFA, the PPS reported that four students have been detained since the start of the examinations, including one who was placed under administrative detention. The Society highlighted that Israeli occupation forces had previously detained 65 male and female Tawjihi students before and during the current academic year.
Tawjihi is a crucial examination taken by students at the end of their secondary education. The results of the Tawjihi exams determine a student's eligibility for higher education and university admissions. The PPS added that since the beginning of Israel's war in October 2023, Israeli occupation authorities have intensified detention campaigns targeting students at all educational levels, affecting tens of thousands of Palestinians.
The Society emphasized that this critical stage in Tawjihi students' educational journey has been turned into yet another form of abuse through their detention, depriving them of the opportunity to sit for their final examinations. The escalation has extended beyond the expansion of detention campaigns to include the conditions of student and child detainees in Israeli prisons, where they have been deprived of their right to education.
The PPS stressed that the denial of detainees' right to education has become one of the most dangerous policies adopted by the Israeli prison system in the aftermath of the war. The Society noted that the right to education had long been one of the key rights that detainees struggled to secure and preserve, despite attempts by the prison administration to strip them of that right.
The PPS pointed out that with the onset of the war, the Israeli prison system revoked all detainees' rights, transforming prisons into environments of torture, abuse, and systematic violations. It emphasized that the prison system is implementing a comprehensive policy of systematic torture, humiliation, and abuse aimed at undermining detainees physically and psychologically, including child detainees and detained students.
The Society called on international human rights organizations and relevant United Nations bodies concerned with human rights, children's rights, and the right to education to assume their responsibilities regarding the escalating crimes against detained Palestinian students. It urged them to exert immediate pressure on Israeli occupation authorities to end the policy of targeting students and depriving them of their right to education, ensure protection for child and student detainees, and end systematic torture policies that constitute violations of international humanitarian law, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.