RAMALLAH, The Ramallah office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said today that the visit of the families of prisoners from the Gaza Strip, which was scheduled for today to Eshel prison in Beersheba in southern Israel, had been canceled due to the Israeli extension of the closure of the Beit Hanoun/Erez crossing, the only pedestrian crossing between Gaza and Israel.

The recent closure was imposed last week as a collective punishment policy against the Gaza Strip’s two million Palestinian population, already living under total siege since 2005.

The Red Cross said it will update the families on new dates for the visits after the reopening of the crossing.

Israel had suspended visits for Gaza families to their sons in the Israeli prisons in March 2020 due to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and resumed the visits in March of this year.

Similar visits by families in Jenin, Nablus and Hebron districts in the occupied West Bank were also canceled this week due to a closure imposed on the West Bank and collective punishment policy, mainly against Palestinian residents of the Jenin district.

Israel is holding more than 4500 Palestinian freedom fighters in its jails, including 220 from the Gaza Strip most of them serving long prison terms.

Source: Palestine News Agency