Hamas challenges its proscription in Britain in legal application; Samidoun submits expert report on Palestinian political prisoners

On 9 April 2025, Riverway Law and the legal team of Fahad Ansari (Riverway Law), Franck Magennis (Garden Court Chambers) and Daniel Grutters (One Pump Chambers) filed an application to the British Home Secretary on behalf of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, calling for its deproscription under British law.

Under the British Terrorism Act of 2000, even purely moral, political and associational support for a proscribed organization can be used to criminalize activists, journalists and community organizers. Indeed, people across Britain and Scotland have had their homes raided, been arrested, been detained and questioned at the airport, had their devices confiscated, and even faced criminal charges based on allegations of “support” for Hamas as a proscribed organization, for example, for giving speeches in which a speaker discusses the legitimacy of the al-Qassam Brigades’ resistance to occupation and calls for their victory, or for something as simple as wearing a small sticker-size image of a Palestinian paratrooper on a back or jacket.

The application highlights several arguments: that the proscription of Hamas violates British obligations under international law and aids and abets genocide; the proscription violates freedom of expression and association and is discriminatory; and the proscription is disproportionate, as no threat is posed to Britain and “Israel” has no right to exist nor to deny Palestinians their right to armed resistance. It further highlights the role of Britain and its responsibility, through the Balfour Declaration and its colonial policies, for the Zionist colonization of Palestine.

The submission is accompanied by witness statements provided by Mousa Abu Marzouk of Hamas, as well as over 20 expert witness reports which focus on various aspects of the Palestinian cause.

Charlotte Kates, co-founder of Samidoun, submitted a report on “The Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement as Central to the Palestinian Liberation Struggle” as part of the expert reports, which also include documentation on the Great March of Return, Zionist ideology, Britain’s relationship with Zionism, the centrality of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa in the Palestinian cause, socio-economic conditions of Palestinians, the psychological effects of dispossession and Zionism, the siege on Gaza, media coverage of Palestine, settler-colonialism and resistance, dignity in Islam, the history of the martyr Izz el-Din al-Qassam, counter-terror laws and journalism, and comparative examples from South Africa, submitted by a broad array of scholars and experts in their fields.

Read all of the documents in the case at https://hamascase.com, a website for the case set up by Riverway Law:

• Executive Summary of the Application
• Application Volume 1: Submissions and Witness Statements
• Application Volume 2: Expert Evidence

Charlotte Kates’ report as co-founder of Samidoun is republished below, and can be found on the case website at: https://hamascase.com/volume-ii/17_kates-prisoners/

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REPORT ON

THE PALESTINIAN PRISONERS’ MOVEMENT AS

CENTRAL TO THE PALESTINIAN LIBERATION STRUGGLE

BY

CHARLOTTE KATES

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1. INSTRUCTIONS

1. I have been instructed by Riverway Law to provide a report on matters within my expertise in support of the application to the British Home Secretary to deproscribe Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah (‘Hamas’).

2. This expert report examines the centrality of Palestinian political prisoners to the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people from the settler colonial conditions of their occupation. Palestinian prisoners have been celebrated and supported by resistance movements since the time of British Mandate to the contemporary moment, particularly under Israel’s system of administrative detention – a system of arbitrary detention inherited by the British colonial authorities. All resistance movements, in fighting Israel, make consistent demands for their prisoners to be released, often engaging directly in the taking of Israeli hostages in order to force such releases. Over the years, Palestinian groups may have made a number of concessions to Israel, but they have never abandoned their prisoners.

2. QUALIFICATIONS

3. I give this report in my personal capacity.

4. I am the co-founder of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. In this context, I have written and produced numerous reports on the current situation of Palestinian prisoners as well as the historical struggle of Palestinian prisoners and the role of Palestinian prisoners of the resistance. Most of my work in this regard is available at samidoun.net.

5. I have spoken at hundreds of events, forums and activities internationally regarding the current situation and the political role of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, including at universities around the world, study centres, conferences and parliaments, including in Portugal, Brazil and the European Parliament.

6. I have travelled to Palestine on multiple occasions and met with former political prisoners and the families of current political prisoners, and produced interviews, reports and analyses of the situation facing Palestinian prisoners and their relevance to the current political moment.

7. I am the recipient of the Debra Evenson Venceremos Award from the National Lawyers Guild in the United States and the Islamic Human Rights and Human Dignity Award in Iran for my work in publicizing, advocating for and addressing the current situation and political history of Palestinian political prisoners.

8. I am active with the US National Lawyers Guild and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers

9. I graduated in 2006 from Rutgers University School of Law.

THE PALESTINIAN PRISONERS’ MOVEMENT AS CENTRAL TO THE PALESTINIAN LIBERATION STRUGGLE

3. INTRODUCTION

10. The centrality of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement¹ to the cause of the Palestinian liberation struggle can scarcely be overestimated. Frequently referred to as “the compass” or the “moral authority” of the Palestinian cause, the prisoners held in Israeli jails, many for lengthy sentences imposed by military courts or under arbitrary administrative detention without charge or trial, are widely regarded as symbols of principled commitment to Palestinian freedom and political symbols – and, indeed, protagonists of Palestinian unity². Beyond their political importance, the Palestinian prisoners’ issue is one that touches Palestinians intimately. According to many estimates, approximately 40% of Palestinian men in the West Bank and Jerusalem have spent some time in Israeli jails; prior to 2005, equal percentages could be found in Gaza³. Nearly every Palestinian family has some experience with imprisonment by Israeli forces, whether that is a briefer detention and interrogation or long-term incarceration. If an immediate family member has not been imprisoned, it is rare to find Palestinians in the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, and to some extent Palestinian citizens of Israel, who have not seen an uncle, aunt or cousin detained behind Israeli bars.

11. As a result of the political, social and cultural importance of the prisoners – alongside the general social value of honoring those who have sacrificed for the cause of liberation as veterans – every Palestinian political party and resistance organization has developed a program for their liberation. Having served time in Israeli prisons is a distinguished feature of leadership in Palestinian resistance and politics⁴. The most successful and dramatic releases of Palestinian prisoners, particularly those with a long history in armed struggle or key leadership roles in Palestinian resistance organizations, have come through prisoner exchanges with the Palestinian resistance. Indeed, many of the most well-known and spectacular Palestinian resistance operations historically, including many of the airplane hijackings of the late 1960s and early 1970s, were at least in part explicitly motivated by a demand to release Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails, or in Western countries’ jails allied with Israel and its occupation⁵.

12. Since 1967, over 800,000 Palestinians, including children, have been detained on the basis of an array of authoritarian rules enacted, enforced and adjudicated by the Israeli military.⁶ As we write in December 2024, there are approximately 10,300 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. This number includes approximately 3,400 Palestinians held in administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial on the basis of a “secret file” that is indefinitely renewable. It also includes 345 Palestinian child prisoners, around 100 Palestinian women prisoners and 200 Palestinian political prisoners who are from occupied Palestine 1948, ie, who hold Israeli citizenship⁷⁸⁹. It is clear that this number is incomplete, as at least dozens of Palestinians from Gaza were killed under severe torture in the occupation prisons and detention camps, and the occupation has refused to release information about their names and the dates of their deaths.

13. In addition, through its practices of collective confinement in the occupied Palestinian territory, Israel reproduces a pattern of carcerality, an essential feature of settler-colonialism. This can be defined as a large-scale system of deprivation of liberty that forces into a condition of captivity entire populations, who are also dispossessed of their lands. “Over time, Israel has expanded its multifaceted hold over the Palestinians as a people, through physical, bureaucratic and digital mechanisms. Behind-bars imprisonment dovetails with confinement techniques that envelop the entire occupied Palestinian territory, accompanying and enabling arbitrary seizure of land and Palestinians’ forcible displacement. This has turned Palestinian life into a “carceral continuum”, where different levels of captivity co-exist: from the micro level of individual deprivation of liberty, through mass incarceration, to population entrapment in strictly controlled enclaves in which the occupied population is confined as a collective security threat, and any form of resistance to the occupation’s territorial expansion and dispossession is repressed.”¹⁰

14. The conditions of Palestinian prisoners are also a major source of concern in Palestinian society. Israeli politicians, especially those assigned the post of “Minister of Public Security” who are, therefore, in charge of the Israel Prison Service, frequently boast about their poor treatment of Palestinian prisoners in the Hebrew-language media and seek to raise their profiles by speaking about how they aim to make life worse for Palestinian prisoners. The past two politicians holding this post, Gilad Erdan and Itamar Ben-Gvir, have been particularly notable for their promotion of poor treatment of Palestinian prisoners as they aimed to raise their profile among the right-wing and far-right-wing sectors of the Zionist movement¹¹.

15. Beyond the Israeli politicians’ boasts, however, Palestinian prisoners and their lawyers have frequently spoken out about the poor conditions to which Palestinians detained by Israel are subjected. These conditions have routinely included severe torture under interrogation, denial of medical treatment, denial of family visits, inadequate, spoiled or inappropriate food, denial of education to imprisoned children, denial of legal visits, beatings and assaults by guards, violations of the privacy of women prisoners, and other forms of assaults on the human dignity of the Palestinian prisoners. While such treatment may have been intended to undermine or repress Palestinian resistance, it has instead helped to solidify the culture of sumud, or steadfastness, under interrogation and inside the prisons, alongside a firm commitment to achieve freedom and liberation¹².

16. Palestinian prisoners not only constitute a set of individual victims of the brutality of occupation soldiers or of the Israeli regime. Many are members of political parties and resistance organizations, who continue to carry on their work behind bars in clandestine manners that range from tiny, nearly undetectable paper messages called “capsules” to the modern equivalent of smuggled cell phones that are little more than a SIM card and circuit board. Most of the Palestinian resistance organizations, such as Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement; the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; and even Fateh, the National Liberation Movement, have branches of their organizations in prison that participate in internal deliberations, cast their votes, and carry a strong moral weight behind their interventions in political activity due to their experience and sacrifices.¹³

17. All Palestinian political organizations speak frequently and openly about the need to free Palestinian prisoners and honor their role in the liberation movement. Even the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, despite engaging in “security coordination” with the Israeli occupation authorities under the Oslo Accords, continues to provide support payments to the families of prisoners, despite demands from the Israelis and various Western governments to cease such payments, because that support for the prisoners is a key source of popular legitimacy for the Authority, and abandoning the prisoners would be widely understood as an act of national treason.¹⁴

4. THE PALESTINIAN PRISONERS’ NATIONAL MOVEMENT

18. However, in addition to their role within the various Palestinian resistance organizations and political parties, Palestinian prisoners constitute what is generally referred to as the Palestinian prisoners’ movement. This movement reflects the organization of the prisoners themselves to achieve their freedom from Israeli jails, to play their role in the liberation of Palestine from colonialism, settler colonialism and occupation, and to engage in constant and ongoing confrontations with their jailers over both these larger issues as well as a range of struggles over conditions of confinement through a range of tactics that include hunger strikes and mass civil disobedience. The Palestinian prisoners’ movement also exerts an influential voice in Palestinian politics and society as a whole, with statements issued by the movement – from the 2006 “Prisoners’ Document” on Palestinian national unity to calls to action on urgent issues – bearing a significant weight in setting political and action priorities.

19. The Palestinian prisoners’ movement is not a new development and indeed, in many ways, predates the Israeli occupation. Under the British Mandate for Palestine, 1929 witnessed a wide-scale Palestinian uprising known as the Buraq Revolution. At least 900 Palestinians were imprisoned by the British and 26 sentenced to death for participating in the revolt.¹⁵ There was such an outcry by the Palestinian people that most of these sentences were converted to life imprisonment, with some key exceptions. On 17 June 1930, three of the earliest heroes and symbols of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, Fouad Hijazi, Atta al-Zeer and Mohammed Khalil Jamjoum, were executed by the British in Akka prison.

20. On the day of their execution, Palestinians organized a general strike throughout Palestine as large crowds gathered in major cities across the country – in Yafa, Haifa, al-Khalil and Nablus. After the executions, their bodies were handed to the men’s families, who had been denied the right to bury them in their home cities. Thousands of Palestinians streamed through the streets of Akka in honor of Jamjoum, Hijazi and al-Zeer, figures and symbols of Palestinian resistance to colonialism. The song written to commemorate Hijazi, al-Zeer and Jamjoum, “From Akka Prison,” today remains one of the most well-known and powerful poems of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.¹⁶

21. Indeed, the message to the public from Jamjoum, Hijazi and al-Zeer in many ways echoes the messages emerging from Israeli jails nearly a century later: ““Now we are at the doors of eternity, offering our lives to save the sacred homeland , for dear Palestine, we plead to all Palestinians not to forget our spilled blood and our souls that will fly in the sky of this beloved country, and to remember that we have willingly given ourselves and our skulls to be a basis for building our nation’s independence and freedom, and that the nation remain persistent in its union and its struggle for the salvation of Palestine from the enemies, and to keep its lands and not to sell one inch of it to the enemies, and that its determination not be wavered and not be weakened by threat and intimidation, and to strive until it gains victory.”¹⁷

22. While the Nakba of 1947-48 – the mass dispossession of the Palestinian people by Zionist militias establishing the Israeli state on stolen Palestinian land – is best-known for the hundreds of thousands dispossessed from their lands and forced into the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and neighbouring countries, massacres in villages like Dawaymeh and Deir Yassin, and the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages, like every other major incident of colonial assault on the Palestinian people, imprisonment and the exploitation of Palestinian labour was also a key characteristic of the aggression. As documented by Salman Abu Sitta and Terry Rempel, thousands of Palestinians were imprisoned in prisoner of war camps and exploited in forced labour in order to bolster the Zionist war effort in conditions described by one International Committee of the Red Cross official as “slavery.”¹⁸ At least 5,000 Palestinian prisoners of al-Nakba were later expelled from their lands.

23. The modern Palestinian prisoners’ movement, like the Palestinian liberation movement, began and escalated in 1967, although it has its roots in these earlier experiences as well as the imprisonment of many Palestinian citizens of Israel prior to 1967 under the martial law directives. Indeed, the first organization designated an “illegal organization” by the Israeli occupation was Al-Ard, an association of Palestinian citizens of Israel dedicated to reclaiming the stolen land of Palestine. ¹⁹Today, the charge of “membership in” or “support for” an “illegal organization” – which includes all major Palestinian political parties, resistance organizations, student blocs and even the Palestine Liberation Organization, despite the Oslo Accords – is one of the most common charges under which Palestinian prisoners are held in Israeli jails.

24. Approximately one million Palestinians have been arrested and detained by the Israeli occupation forces since 1967, with the first administrative detention order issued in the West Bank on 3 September 1967. ²⁰ Alongside the development of the Palestinian factions like Fateh, the PFLP and the DFLP, their prison organizations also grew and developed. One of the first collective hunger strike demands in 1969 of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement inside Israeli jails was for paper and pencils to be able to write, and the prisoners’ movement quickly “turned the prisons of the occupier into revolutionary schools,” developing their organizations, sharing knowledge and building an organized political movement to which young Palestinians contributed even more significantly upon their release from prison.²¹

5. BATTLES OF EMPTY STOMACHS

25. The history of hunger strikes or the “battles of empty stomachs” that have characterized the Palestinian prisoners’ movement have not only mobilized the prisoners themselves but also Palestinian society more broadly as well as wide-ranging global attention. Hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners date back to 1968, with the 1969 strike for stationery being one of the first to receive widespread attention outside the prison walls.²² This strike also demanded an end to forced labour and the requirement to address guards as “yes, sir,” and ended with a crackdown on the prisoners and many held in solitary confinement.

26. Hunger strikes continued to develop as a means of prisoners’ struggle behind bars, including the first hunger strike conducted by imprisoned Palestinian women at Neve Tirza in 1970 to demand access to sanitary products as well as to outdoor time. In July 1970, the first recorded martyr of the modern Palestinian prisoners’ movement, Abdul-Qader Abu al-Fahm, was killed through force-feeding during a hunger strike at Asqalan prison, when the feeding tube was inserted into his lungs instead of his stomach. Hunger strikes continued through the 1970s and 1980s, including a 32-day strike at Nafha prison in 1980 in which Rasem Halawa and Ali al-Jaafari were killed through force-feeding, while prisoners won improved conditions.²³

27. Improved conditions of Palestinian prisoners have typically been won through hunger strikes and mass action, even as Israeli political figures typically seek to appeal to their domestic audience by promising even worse conditions for jailed Palestinians. One of the most historically significant strikes took place in 1984 for 13 days at Junaid prison, when a strike by 800 prisoners gained access to a communal radio and TV, changes of clothes and better-quality food prepared by the prisoners themselves. In early 1987, a hunger strike by over 3,000 Palestinian prisoners in multiple prisons following an attempt by a new prison authority to roll back the prisoners’ achievements, played a role in leading up to the Intifada of the Stones, which burst into full prominence on 9 December 1987. ²⁴

28. In 1992, 7000 Palestinian prisoners launched a hunger strike, amid the ongoing Intifada, at multiple prisons, which led to closing the isolation section in Ramle prison, putting an end to strip searches, allowing more cooking equipment and increasing family visits. As the early Oslo period came to an end and amid the growing awareness that the Oslo Accords had brought no freedom to the Palestinian people but only renewed colonization, at least 650 Palestinian prisoners launched a collective hunger strike in January 2000 to demand an end to strip searches and allowance of family visits. Much like the 1987 strike, this was part of the growing unrest among the Palestinian population after years of settlement construction and broken promises that led to the Al-Aqsa Intifada.²⁵

29. Throughout the past 25 years, individual and collective hunger strikes have remained a mainstay of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement and have garnered a significant amount of external attention, within Palestinian society, across the Arab region and internationally. Collective hunger strikes in 2004, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2017 and 2023 involved hundreds to thousands of Palestinian prisoners, with an array of demands including an end to isolation and solitary confinement, ending administrative detention, and improving conditions, particularly as a form of resistance to repeated attempts by the Israeli prison administration to roll back all the achievements of the prisoners’ movement over the prior decades.

30. The decade of the 2010s was also marked by a substantial rise in the number of individual hunger strikes, most frequently around the issue of administrative detention. First introduced to Palestine as part of the British Mandate’s emergency laws, administrative detention has been one of the most widely practiced methods of the Israeli regime to target Palestinians for arbitrary detention, particularly when they have been unable to obtain a confession. Administrative detention is frequently used against influential Palestinians, community leaders, student activists and others who are prominent in their communities in an attempt to remove them from the scene.

31. Administrative detention orders are issued for up to six months at a time. They are issued by a military commander and then approved by a military court, although this is more of a rubber-stamp procedure than any kind of meaningful due process. These orders are indefinitely renewable, and many Palestinians have spent years at a time jailed under such repeatedly renewed administrative detention orders. The use of administrative detention has been on a sustained increase for years.

32. Administrative detention also serves as a form of psychological torture for the detainee as well as collective punishment for their family members. Because they never know if or when they will be released or continually held in prison, they cannot plan for the future or determine their next steps. In addition, they do not have access to any meaningful form of appeal, as they are denied access to the “secret file” used to justify their imprisonment, as are their lawyers; therefore, they are unable to meaningfully object to any of the content contained therein. The widespread use of administrative detention therefore sparked the individual hunger strike movement of the 2010s.

33. The most prominent figure of this movement was Sheikh Khader Adnan. A baker from Jenin and a member of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, Khader Adnan conducted four successful hunger strikes in which he won his freedom from administrative detention. Of course, he was not alone; many other prominent hunger strikers included Bilal Diab, Thaer Halahleh, Hana Shalabi, Hisham Abu Hawash, Nidal Abu Aker, Bilal Kayed, Mohammed al-Qeeq, Kayed Fasfous, and many others, all of whom were held in administrative detention and many of whom gained their freedom through these strikes. ²⁶

34. However, the Israeli regime responded to this increase in hunger strikes with even more repression. In 2015, the Knesset officially adopted the “Law to Prevent Harm Caused by Hunger Strikers” to officially approve force-feeding of hunger-striking prisoners. The prison administration also clearly adopted a policy of refusing to respond to hunger strikers, particularly in the post-2020 era. Fewer hunger strikers were able to win their release, and on multiple occasions, Israeli officials reneged upon or denied agreements that they had made with Palestinian prisoners and their lawyers. ²⁷

35. In July 2022, the case of Khalil Awawdeh, on hunger strike for over 150 days, was one of the major issues in the Israeli aggression on Gaza and the response of the Palestinian resistance, as the Islamic Jihad Movement and its armed wing Saraya al-Quds demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners. Despite Egyptian guarantees of the release of Awawdeh and Bassam al-Saadi, a prominent leader of the movement, the Israelis reneged on the agreement and claimed to find a smuggled phone with Awawdeh upon his transfer to hospital, keeping him in administrative detention. ²⁸

36. In May 2023, Sheikh Khader Adnan died after 82 days on hunger strike in his most recent imprisonment, inside Israeli jails, after he was denied medical care and treatment. His wife and multiple advocacy organizations had warned on multiple occasions that the situation for Adnan was dire and that he was facing, in effect, a “slow assassination” inside Israeli jails. These incidents highlighted the limitations of the tactic of hunger strikes inside the prison to win the release of Palestinians, especially as the number of administrative detainees – and prisoners in total – continued to increase through ongoing mass arrests on a daily basis throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem.²⁹

6. SELF-LIBERATION AND PRISONER ESCAPES

37. Hunger strikes were not the only mechanisms that Palestinian prisoners used in order to liberate themselves from Israeli prisons, as the Palestinian prisoners’ movement consistently developed plans for prisoner escapes. Much like the prisoners’ movement as a whole, these escapes have roots in the Palestinian resistance to British colonialism as well as the post-Nakba imprisonment of Palestinians prior to the emergence of the modern Palestinian national movement.

38. In 1938, one of the leaders of the 1936-1939 revolt in Palestine against British colonialism, who fought alongside Sheikh Izzedine al-Qassam, Issa Hajj Suleiman al-Battat, escaped with several other Palestinian prisoners jailed by the British in 1938 from Atlit prison. Two decades later, Shatta prison – still a prison holding Palestinian political prisoners today – was the site of the largest prison uprising and escape since the Nakba. Approximately 190 Palestinian and Arab prisoners revolted inside the Shata prison in the Jordan Valley on 31 July 1958. 77 prisoners escaped after fierce fighting in which 11 prisoners and two jailers were killed. Mohammed Jahjah, the grandfather of Zakaria Zubaidi, who would later participate in a 2021 escape, was one of the prisoners who liberated himself in this rebellion, who then participated in leading the fedayeen in armed struggle in Irbid, Jordan, before moving with the fighters to Syria.³⁰

39. Palestinian prisoner Hamza Younes, from Ara, south of Haifa, escaped from occupation prisons on three occasions, in 1964, 1967 and 1971: from Asqelan prison, from a hospital and a third time from Ramle prison, respectively, before he escaped to Lebanon where he joined the Palestinian resistance. In 1969, Mahmoud Abdullah Hammad from Silwad, near Ramallah, escaped during a prisoner transfer. He evaded occupation forces for nine months and successfully made it to Jordan.

40. In 1983, Nasser Issa Hamed was 15 years old, taken to the occupation court on 27 January. His fellow prisoners launched a confrontation inside the court and Nasser escaped into Ramallah, where he took shelter in an unfinished construction project. He hid in a well as he attempted to make his way home to Silwad, but eventually turned himself in after his mother was arrested by the occupation forces. One month later, learning of the story, Majdi Suleiman Abu al-Safa escaped in the same way from the occupation courts, making his way to Jordan and then to Colombia and Brazil, where he has remained until the present day.

41. One extremely significant prisoner escape took place on 17 May 1987, when Misbah al-Suri and his comrades Sami al-Sheikh Khalil, Mohammed al-Jamal, Imad Saftawi, Khaled Saleh and Saleh Ishteiwi escaped from Gaza Central Prison. The incident – and the “Battle of Shujaiyya” that ensued in October as the released prisoners carried out resistance operations and fought with Israeli soldiers – has been long considered one of the sparks of the great Intifada of 1987, along with the mass hunger strike earlier that year. The prisoners refashioned kitchen tools into screwdrivers and were able to smuggle in a tiny saw inside a loaf of bread. The prisoners tied bedsheets together to make a rope ladder to scale down the wall of the prison and secure their liberation. The date of the Battle of Shujaiyya – 6 October 1987 – is now marked as the anniversary of the founding of the Islamic Jihad Movement, underlining once again the importance of the prisoners to all sectors of the Palestinian liberation movement.

42. On 21 May 1990, Omar Nayef Zayed escaped from occupation prisons four years after his arrest as he was transferred to a hospital in Bethlehem. He made his way to Jordan and then to Bulgaria in 1994. In 2016, occupation forces attempted to have him extradited from Bulgaria to occupied Palestine, and he took refuge inside the Palestinian Authority embassy where he was later killed on 26 February 2016. His fight against extradition sparked an international campaign to support him and demand his freedom.

43. Saleh Tahaineh escaped from Ofer prison in a complicated plan involving his fellow struggler Nu’man Tahaineh — later also assassinated by the occupation — and another Palestinian prisoner scheduled to be released. He took the place of the prisoner whose release was scheduled, who then noted that he had not been released. He had earlier switched places with Nu’man, who had a much lower sentence. He was pursued and eventually killed by occupation forces after being captured. Both Saleh and Nu’man Tahaineh were mentors of Mahmoud and Mohammed al-Ardah, who led the 2021 Freedom Tunnel escape.

44. On 6 September 2021, six Palestinian prisoners, Mahmoud al-Ardah, Mohammed al-Ardah, Yousef Qadri, Ayham Kamamji, Munadil Nafa’at and Zakaria Zubeidi, escaped the Israeli regime’s “high security” Gilboa prison. Pictures of puzzled soldiers and guards examining a tunnel crafted outside the prison by the six men circulated widely on social media and the image of the spoon – used as one of the tools to dig the tunnel out of the prison – became a national symbol of the Palestinian cause. While the men were recaptured, their escape was a beacon of hope and of Palestinians’ creativity and commitment to freedom. Palestinian resistance leaders and spokespeople, including Abu Obeida, the spokesperson of the Ezz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, pledged that the six men – and other prisoners who had participated in supporting their escape – would be highly prioritized in a prisoner exchange. ³¹

7. PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE AND PRISONER EXCHANGES

45. Prisoner exchanges have been the most significant mechanism of the Palestinian national movement to free large numbers of Palestinian prisoners, particularly prominent national leaders that the Israeli regime is typically unwilling to free or have been given high sentences, including life and multiple life sentences. Because of the achievements of prisoner exchanges in releasing thousands of prisoners, particularly leaders and those with high sentences, securing the prisoners of war necessary to complete an exchange has been a high priority for Palestinian resistance organizations for decades. In total, over 8,000 Palestinian prisoners have been released through exchanges, and the capture of Israelis and especially Israeli soldiers or settlers has been a high priority for the Palestinian resistance in the past and at present in order to achieve the liberation of additional prisoners.

46. On 23 July 1968, the first exchange was successfully completed between the Palestinian revolution and the Israeli occupation. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked a plane from Rome to Tel Aviv, releasing the passengers in exchange for 37 Palestinian prisoners, some with high sentences imprisoned before 1967. On 28 February 1971, Palestinian prisoner Mahmoud Bakr Hijazi was exchanged for an Israeli soldier in an exchange agreement between Fateh and the Israeli occupation.³²

47. On 14 March 1979, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command conducted an exchange agreement with the Israeli occupation for the release of 76 Palestinian prisoners, including 12 women prisoners. In 1980, Palestinian prisoner Mehdi Bseiso was released in exchange for a collaborator captured by the Fateh movement.

48. On 23 November 1983, 4560 Palestinian detained Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in southern Lebanon, including 65 Palestinian women prisoners were exchanged for six Israeli occupation soldiers arrested in southern Lebanon, in an exchange with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

49. On 20 May 1985, 1155 Palestinian prisoners were released in an exchange for three Israeli soldiers captured by the PFLP-GC, including 380 serving life sentences. Many of the Palestinian prisoners released later became leaders in the intifada that arose in 1987. Often called the “Jibril Agreement,” after PFLP-GC leader Ahmad Jibril, those released in this exchange included Misbah al-Suri, later re-arrested, who planned the escape from Gaza Central Prison in 1987; Kozo Okamoto of the Japanese Red Army; Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, later the spiritual leader of Hamas; and Ziyad Nakhaleh, the current general secretary of the Islamic Jihad Movement.

50. In September 1997, the Mossad attempted to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Jordan with a poisonous injection. Two Mossad agents were arrested in Jordan and in exchange for those agents, the Israeli state released Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and leader of the Hamas movement, then serving a life sentence in Israeli prisons. (Yassin had been re-arrested after the 1985 prisoner exchange.)

51. In January 2004, the Israeli occupation released 436 prisoners and returned the remains of 59 soldiers in exchange for the remains of three Israeli occupation soldiers and the release of drug dealer, businessman and potential intelligence agent Elhanan Tannenbaum, in an exchange with Hezbollah in Lebanon. In 2008, Samir Kuntar of the Palestine Liberation Front and four Hezbollah fighters were released in exchange for the remains of two Israeli occupation soldiers in southern Lebanon, in an exchange with Hezbollah.

52. In 2011, the Palestinian resistance conducted its most significant prisoner exchange since 1985, the Wafaa al-Ahrar (Faithful to the Free) prisoner exchange, in which 1027 Palestinian prisoners were released in exchange for captured occupation soldier Gilad Shalit. This exchange agreement, led by Hamas and the al-Qassam Brigades, led to the release of a number of prominent Palestinian prisoners with lengthy sentences, including Yahya Sinwar, the chairman of the Hamas movement and one of the architects of the Al-Aqsa Flood, killed in battle in Gaza on 17 October 2024; Hussam Badran; Ahlam Tamimi; Zaher Jabarin; Hussam Badran; Nael Barghouti; Samer Issawi; and many others. The Wafaa al-Ahrar agreement is credited with playing a major role in helping to develop the resistance in Gaza, particularly as many Palestinian prisoners were exiled to Gaza as part of their release, into readiness for advanced military action and armed struggle.

53. The Wafaa al-Ahrar prisoners have been repeatedly targeted for re-arrest by Israeli forces, including longest-held Palestinian prisoner Nael Barghouti, whose previous life sentence was re-imposed upon him. Like the prisoners of the Freedom Tunnel, the re-arrestees of the Wafaa al-Ahrar exchange are a high priority for the Palestinian resistance in a prisoner exchange. ³³

54. In addition, the Israeli regime refused to release multiple prominent prisoners with lengthy sentences in the Wafa al-Ahrar exchange, leading Palestinian resistance organizations to seek a stronger hand in order to obtain the freedom of prominent leaders such as Marwan Barghouti, the prominent Fateh leader; Ahmad Sa’adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Abdullah Barghouti, the longest-sentenced Palestinian prisoner with 67 life sentences; and Ibrahim Hamed, Abbas Sayyed and Hassan Salameh, military leaders of the Hamas movement.

8. CONCLUSION

55. So long as the Israeli regime and its illegal occupation continue to imprison thousands of Palestinians, many of them jailed without charge or trial, in extreme and inhumane conditions, Palestinian prisoners and their political parties and resistance movements will seek their freedom by all means. The release of the Palestinian prisoners is a consensus position among Palestinians with strong support from all sectors of society, and the Israeli occupation has made clear that a prisoner exchange has been, for many years, the only effective way to ensure the release of significant numbers of imprisoned Palestinians, especially of imprisoned Palestinian national leaders.

56. Palestinian prisoners are not separate to the resistance movements operating within the Occupied Territory, they are an integral part of how resistance operates for all factions. In many ways, it cannot be overstated that the moral conscience of the historic and contemporary movement for a Palestine free of settler colonisation can be found explicitly in the centrality of political prisoners to every part of Palestinian society.

9. EXPERT OBLIGATIONS

   I confirm that I have made clear which facts and matters referred to in this report are within my own knowledge and which are not. Those that are within my own knowledge I confirm to be true. The opinions I have expressed represent my true and complete professional opinions on the matters to which they refer.

   I understand that proceedings for contempt of court may be brought by anyone who makes, or causes to be made, a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth without an honest belief in its truth.

   I confirm that I have not received any remuneration for preparing this report.

Charlotte Kates

Co-founder, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

Tunis

Tunisia

17 December 2024

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