called Shalit Law.272 During the 14 days we were not allowed to have anything. The Israeli women were swearing at us all the time, using very dirty words. Sometimes they’d be so high [loud] that I felt like I was in a mental hospital, not in prison. We were in the criminal women section, but we were not in the same cells with them. I was alone in my cell but I was surrounded by criminal women who were yelling all the time. The guards in that prison were women, but the administrators were two male soldiers. They obviously used to discriminate against us; while the Israeli criminal women were free to use their phones and free to walk around all the day long. We didn’t have anything and were only allowed to get out of our cell to walk around for half-an-hour a day. During that half-an-hour, they used to force the Israeli women inside their cells in order not to confront us, so they hated us and swore at us all the time because of that.” Former female prisoner, Yatta, West Bank Interview: 23 November 2016 Palestinian female prisoners are also subjected to sexual harassment through rape threats and sexually degrading insults, and to sexual abuse in the forms of regular and invasive body searches and strip searches.273 Body and strip searches can be particularly damaging as they are often performed in front of male guards or in the middle of the night as a punishment.274 Those who refuse are frequently put in isolation. Dr. Mahmoud Saiwail, who directs a treatment and rehabilitation center for victims of torture in Ramallah, has declared that in certain circumstances these searches can amount to torture.275 They are also in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment,”276 and the Rome Statute of the International Court, which declares sexual violence to be both a war crime and a crime against humanity.277 When combined, according to Addameer, “These occurrences are a fundamental part of Palestinian women’s prison experience and should be understood as a common and systematic form of racial and gender-based State violence.”278 272 The so-called Shalit Law “was approved on Sunday 23 May 2010, deprives Palestinian detainees of visits by lawyers and families and limits the visits by Red Cross representatives to one every three months.” Al Mezan, Al Mezan Condemns the Israeli Approval of the 'Shalit Law” Bill and Calls for Intensifying International Efforts to Abolish this Racist Law, 24 May 2010. Available at: goo.gl/s43zsR 273 Addameer, Imprisonment of Women and Girls, op. cit., February 2016 274 MIFTAH, Fact Sheet – Palestinian Prisoners, last update: June 2012. Available at: http://www.miftah. org/Doc/Factsheets/Miftah/English/Prisoners.pdf 275 Addameer, Imprisonment of Women and Girls, op. cit., February 2016 276 Geneva Convention IV, Article 3(1)(c) 277 Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute, 1998), Article 7(g) and 8 278 Addameer, Imprisonment of Women and Girls, op. cit., February 2016 75