Palestinian Prisoners and State Repression - ICSPP

 

Palestinian Prisoners and State Repression

For several decades now, human rights organizations have been documenting and gathering testimonies from Palestinian prisoners that attest to the devastating conditions in Israeli prisons. The situation of Palestinians must be understood as a history of systematic repression, disenfranchisement, and state violence, perpetuated by decades of Non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International have classified Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip as genocide, and the independent UN Commission of Inquiry concluded in September 2025 that Israel committed acts in the Gaza Strip that constitute genocide. However, even aside from these organizations and commissions, thousands of reports from Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as well as from journalists and media professionals, document displacement, starvation, and genocide.

A particularly significant component of this repression is the Israeli prison and detention system. According to B’Tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), a total of 9,187 Palestinians were in detention as of the end of June 2026. Among them, 3,233 people were in administrative detention, and 1,237 people were being held under the so-called Unlawful Combatants Law. Under administrative detention, a person can be held without a specific criminal offense being proven against them in a regular trial. Detention orders can be extended in such cases, while those affected and their attorneys are unable to access essential information. In addition, there are hundreds of people from Gaza who have been detained in military facilities without due process or, in some cases, even without being registered, which is why the actual number of cases is likely to be in the tens of thousands.

These figures reflect a system in which deprivation of liberty has become a tool of political and social control.

Torture as a Daily Reality of Detention

Even more serious are the numerous reports regarding the treatment of prisoners: Amnesty International documents, among other things, beatings, sleep deprivation, starvation, denial of medical care, shackling, blinding, the use of dogs, rape, and other forms of sexual violence. According to Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, at least 98 Palestinians died in Israeli custody between October 2023 and November 2025. In late 2025, the UN Committee Against Torture described a de facto state policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment.

A UN report from 2024 had already documented statements from former prisoners. People reported that they were kept blindfolded and shackled for extended periods, naked or clad only in diapers, in cage-like facilities. Others reported electric shocks, cigarette burns, waterboarding, beatings, sleep and food deprivation, as well as being held for extended periods in painful stress positions. Numerous reports have also come to light in which detainees describe sexualized torture.

The nature of this repression was also evident, among other things, in the treatment of international activists who attempted to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza. The Global Sumud Flotilla was intercepted by Israeli forces in 2025 and again in 2026. In April 2026, approximately 175 activists were arrested.

Amnesty documented, among other things, sleep deprivation as well as the denial of drinking water and medical care for flotilla participants who had already been arrested in October 2025. Investigations were launched in Italy into the treatment of 36 Italian female activists on suspicion of torture and other forms of abuse.

In the case of the Madleen, which set sail for Gaza in June 2025 with twelve activists—including Greta Thunberg and Rima Hassan—all crew members were arrested following the interception. Amnesty described the detention of the unarmed activists as arbitrary detention.

The Death Penalty and Legal Inequality

The expansion of the death penalty in 2026 is particularly drastic. It is important to be precise here: Israel did not introduce the death penalty for the first time in 2026. Rather, what is new is a law that significantly expands its application. The Knesset passed this law on March 30, 2026. Amnesty International is calling for its repeal and criticizes it as discriminatory.

Its application in the West Bank is particularly relevant. There, under the Israeli military justice system, the death penalty can be imposed on Palestinian women convicted of certain homicide offenses related to acts classified as terrorism. The problem lies not only in the death penalty itself, but also in who is subject to this legal system. Palestinian women in the West Bank are prosecuted in military courts, while Israeli settlers there are generally subject to Israeli civil law. Amnesty and other human rights organizations criticize this legal inequality.

This creates a situation in which the same territory is governed by different legal systems -depending on whether a person is Palestinian or not. The new death penalty regulations further exacerbate this inequality.

Torture, sexual violence, arbitrary detention, and the death penalty are not legitimized simply because a state justifies them on the grounds of “security.” We therefore demand an end to the genocide and the abolition of the death penalty.

Freedom for all Palestinian prisoners!

Freedom for all political prisoners!