Serious concerns about the health and well-being of imprisoned Palestinian leader Raja Eghbarieh are being raised by his family and comrades. Eghbarieh, 73, is a leading figure in Abnaa al-Balad, the Left Palestinian movement in Occupied Palestine ’48. He was seized by occupation forces from his home in Umm al-Fahm on 9 April 2025, followed shortly thereafter by the issuance of a 4-month administrative detention order for him to be imprisoned without charge or trial.
Administrative detention orders were introduced to Palestine by the British colonial mandate and then adopted by the Zionist regime. They are issued for up to six months at a time but are indefinitely renewable, and Palestinians spend years at a time jailed on the basis of a “secret file” with no charge or trial. There are currently over 3,600 Palestinians held in administrative detention among at least 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners.
While he had a court hearing scheduled in the Haifa district court on 8 May 2025 — these hearings are often held behind closed doors, with the public denied access to the sessions — Eghbarieh was not brought to the court either in person or via video link. Held in Megiddo prison since his arrest, he had suddenly been moved to Ramon prison. When his family and lawyers demanded a picture of him to be sent to the court, the prison administration refused to turn over a picture. They stated that he was now being held in the closed section of Ramon prison where he, alongside other prisoners, has developed the scabies skin disease. Scabies is rampant in the Zionist prison system, because the occupation refuses to provide proper medical care or even basic hygiene supplies to the imprisoned Palestinians. He was also denied a legal visit on the pretext that he could not be exposed to others due to scabies.
In addition, his lawyers and family received reliable reports from fellow detainees who had been held with Eghbarieh that he has been beaten, abused on transfer, and suffered a broken leg. The Abnaa el-Balad movement issued a statement urging “immediate action by legal and national bodies, because he is in danger of assassination…We hold ‘Israel’ and all its security and intelligence agencies and prison authorities responsible for his fate and underline that our nation and people stand strongly for victory, to cry out in the face of administrative detention and for a victory of the prisoners’ movement that is confronting unprecedented crimes.”
Since 7 October 2023, over 66 Palestinian prisoners have been martyred in the occupation prisons due to torture, denial of medical care and starvation, the process of “slow assassination.” These numbers do not include Palestinians from Gaza held in the notorious military torture camps, where severe physical, psychological and sexual torture, malnutrition, beating and a complete absence of healthcare are well-documented.
In their prior call to action, the Abnaa el-Balad movement stated:
The administrative detention against Eghbarieh comes in the context of the ongoing genocide that is carried by the Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza. Since October 7, 2023, Israel is conducting a relentless campaign of murder, ethnic cleansing, and terror against the Palestinian people. This terror campaign is not limited to Gaza and the West Bank, but is also directed against Palestinians in the areas that are occupied by Israel since 1948, aiming to silence any protest. Attempts to demonstrate against the genocide are brutally oppressed. Many were persecuted for simple social media expressions of solidarity with the people of Gaza. Hundreds were arrested, tortured, sentenced to prison, and expelled from work and universities.
Eghbarieh has been very active in the Palestinian liberation movement since the 1980s, and was one of the leaders in organizing a general strike of ’48 Palestinians on 9 December 1987, named “Palestine Day,” two days after the outbreak of the great Intifada on 7 December 1987. He was ordered to administrative detention alongside several other leaders; he was elected as Abnaa el-Balad’s first general secretary two years later, in 1990.
As Abnaa el-Balad noted in their call, “While all efforts should be concentrated to end the genocide in Gaza, defending the freedom of those who struggle against this genocide is an integral part of this vital world-wide struggle. Political repression in ’48 Palestine is designed to terrorize and paralyze an important part of the Palestinian people.”
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges all to act in solidarity for the liberation of Raja Eghbarieh and all Palestinian prisoners jailed for their struggle for liberation. We emphasize that the occupation regime — and the imperialist powers that sponsor it as a base of Western imperialism in the region, including the US, France, Canada, Britain, and Germany — are fully responsible for the ongoing crimes against humanity being carried out in the occupation prisons, and for the lives and health of the Palestinian prisoners being subjected to torture, starvation and “slow assassination” through medical neglect.
Free Raja Eghbarieh poster (Download PDF):
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