The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor estimated the number of children and women arrested by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip at about 200, out of more than 3,000 recorded cases of arrest. He called for Israel to be obligated to return the kidnapped girl.
The Observatory (based in Geneva) said that it does not have “any official information about the locations of their detention or the conditions and charges against them.”
The Observatory indicated that there are no accurate statistics on the number of detainees from Gaza to this day, due to incidents of arbitrary arrest and enforced disappearance committed by the Israeli army inside the Strip, as well as the difficulty of receiving reports, due to the dispersal of families and the almost permanent interruption of communications and the Internet.
For their part, the PLO’s Commission for Prisoners’ and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said on Thursday that “the Israeli authorities are arresting 51 Palestinian women from the Gaza Strip in Damoun prison in northern Israel.”
On a related topic, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor pointed out the seriousness of the incident of “an Israeli officer kidnapping a Palestinian infant from inside her home in the Gaza Strip, after her family members were killed in an Israeli raid.”
The Observatory expressed its “fear and deep concern that the Al-Radiyah incident was not an isolated case,” noting that testimonies it had received indicated “the detention and transfer of Palestinian children without knowing their later fate.”
Euro-Med called on the international community to “obligate Israel to hand over the child whom the Israeli officer admitted to kidnapping, and whose fate or whereabouts are not yet known, and to reveal all cases of kidnapping and forcible transfer committed against Palestinian children, and hand them over to their families immediately.”
On Tuesday, the Israeli army provided information contradicting the account of one of its soldiers regarding the kidnapping of a Palestinian infant from a home in the Gaza Strip.
The army said, “After examining the matter, no Palestinian baby was taken from Gaza into Israel.”
On Sunday, soldier Shahar Mendelsohn revealed the kidnapping incident while speaking to Army Radio, quoting his friend, an officer in the Givati Brigade, Harel Itach, who was killed in battles in the northern Gaza Strip on November 22.
In response to a question about the Palestinian baby, Mendelsohn said, “Itach spoke with a friend during his period of service in Gaza, and he told him that in one of the homes he entered, he heard the sound of a baby crying, and that he decided to send her to Israel.”
The soldier did not clarify the location of the house where Itach found the Palestinian girl in the Gaza Strip.
Regarding whether the baby’s family was likely killed by an Israeli bombing and no one was around her, Mendelsohn replied, “Correct.”
The soldier or Israeli Army Radio did not clarify the fate of the Palestinian baby.
The Israeli news website Ynet quoted one of the officer’s friends as saying during his funeral, “Harel told me that he heard a girl crying in Gaza, and made sure she was taken to a hospital in Israel to receive treatment,” without mentioning the name of the hospital.