On Wednesday, 7 May, Zionist occupation forces arrested Palestinian lawyer Banan Abu al-Haija as she passed through the illegitimate Jabara checkpoint south of occupied Tulkarem, in the West Bank of occupied Palestine. Banan was traveling, at the time, to visit her mother, Asmaa Abu al-Haija, who is receiving cancer treatment and has suffered from recurrent brain tumors, and is currently hospitalized in the Istishari Hospital in Ramallah.
Banan Abu al-Haija is the daughter of Jamal Abu Al-Haija, the Palestinian resistance leader and political prisoner serving 9 life sentences in occupation prisons and currently held in isolation alongside fellow leaders of the prisoners’ movement. She is the sister of Abdel-Salam and Asem Abu al-Haija, both of whom are currently held in administrative detention, arbitrary imprisonment without charge or trial; her third brother, Imad, a freed prisoner, has been imprisoned by the collaborationist “Palestinian Authority” for months on end, under “security coordination” with the Zionist regime. Their fourth brother, Hamza, is a martyr who was assassinated in 2014 by the occupation regime.
Banan herself was detained by the occupation in the past, and her mother Asmaa served nine months in administrative detention without charge or trial. Her husband is Abdullah Rusrus, who is also a liberated prisoner who spent six years in occupation prisons and was also detained by the PA as a political detainee under the “security coordination” regime.
Banan’s father, Jamal Abu al-Haija, is one of the prominent imprisoned leaders of the the Hamas movement. A hero of the Jenin refugee camp resistance in 2002, he is serving 9 life sentences plus 20 years in occupation prisons for his role in the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Prior to his arrest in 2002, he had been arrested four more times since he returned to Palestine in 1990. He was born in Jenin refugee camp in 1959 to a family forcibly displaced from Ein Hod, near occupied Haifa, in the Nakba.
During his childhood, he was influenced by his father, Sheikh Abdel-Salam Abu al-Haija, the imam of the mosque in the camp. Their home was known, then and decades later, to shelter resistance fighters from Jenin and all areas of the West Bank of occupied Palestine. He graduated from Jenin’s high school before attending university in Amman. After his graduation, he taught in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait until returning to Jenin in 1990, amid the great popular Intifada. He joined the Hamas movement, founded in 1987, and became its spokesperson and coordinator with other national and Islamic resistance forces during that period.
Throughout the 1990s, he became a leader in the Hamas movement in the northern West Bank and a member of the Jenin refugee camp support committee, a body established to defend the rights of its residents. During this time, he was arrested first in 1992, then held for five months in 1993, for another four months in 1995, and for over a year between April 1998 and July 1999. He was also imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority in 1996 for six months under its “security coordination” with the occupation for protecting members of the resistance in his home.
Amid the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, he was heavily involved in leading and organizing the resistance, including in the 2002 battle to defend Jenin refugee camp against the invading occupation forces. The occupation openly declared their intent to assassinate him; while they failed to do so, he was hit with an explosive bullet in his left hand, which caused shrapnel to spread throughout his body. His left arm was amputated due to his injuries.
Jamal Abu al-Haija with his children before his imprisonment.
Upon his arrest on 26 August 2002, he was held under “military interrogation” and tortured for months. The occupation directly targeted the family’s home with a missile and later destroyed their home in Jenin camp, which they rebuilt. During his imprisonment since 2002, he has been repeatedly held in isolation and solitary confinement. Classified by the occupation as a “dangerous prisoner,” he was held in isolation for 10 years until he was returned to the general population by the 2012 Karameh hunger strike, alongside other isolated leaders. Today, like fellow leaders of the prisoners’ movement, he has been held in isolation repeatedly following Al-Aqsa Flood and the escalated Zionist-imperialist genocide in Gaza since 7 October 2023.
Both of her brothers, Asem and Abdel-Salam Abu al-Haija, are currently held in administrative detention and have spent years in occupation prisons, and both have also been repeatedly pursued and detained by the collaborationist Palestinian Authority under its “security coordination” with the occupation. Asem Abu al-Haija was last released by the occupation on 24 January 2023, where he received a warm reception from the resistance fighters and the people of the camp. However, he was re-arrested only six months later, in July 2023, and has now been held under administrative detention once again, without charge or trial, for nearly two more years. He has spent over eight years in occupation prisons, mostly under repeatedly renewed administrative detention orders.
Abdel-Salam Abu al-Haija has been held in administrative detention since August 2022; his detention has been repeatedly renewed. During this time, he has gone on hunger strikes to demand to be reunited with his brothers and father. He has spent around 15 years in occupation prisons over multiple arrests and was also detained by the Palestinian Authority for multiple months.
Imad Abu al-Haija was held in administrative detention, imprisoned by the occupation for multiple years alongside his brothers and father, until being released in April 2023. His detention came after a previous release after two and a half years in occupation prisons, and he has spent over seven years in occupation prisons. Like his brothers, he also went on a hunger strike to be reunited with his family members, a demand that was repeatedly denied inside the occupation prisons. He has now been imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority under its “security coordination” with the occupation for over five months, held in Junaid prison since 3 December 2024, separated from his wife, their four children and his ill mother.
The martyr Hamza Abu al-Haija
Hamza Abu al-Haija, Jamal and Asmaa’s youngest son, born in 1992, was also a struggler in the Al-Qassam Brigades. He was martyred in March 2014, assassinated by occupation forces after multiple years pursuing him. He resisted the occupation forces, which fired a missile at his apartment, until the last moment. He was martyred alongside two fellow resistance fighters, Yazan Jabarin and Mahmoud Abu Zeina, at dawn on 22 March 2014. He had been imprisoned by the occupation under administrative detention, and, upon his release, was imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority for one month. At the time of his assassination, he was wanted by both the occupation and the PA.
Asmaa Abu al-Haija, the wife of Jamal and mother of Banan, Abdel-Salam, Asem, Imad, Hamza and Sajida, currently receiving cancer treatment
In 2003, Asmaa Sabaaneh Abu al-Haija, Jamal’s wife and the mother of Banan, Abdel-Salam, Asem, Imad, Hamza and their sister Sajida, was held in administrative detention for nine months. Asmaa, 61, has battled serious illness for years. She underwent surgeries for brain tumors in 1992 and 1998; she was hospitalized in 2014 at the time of Hamza’s martyrdom. His last words to her were to apologize for being unable to bring her a Mother’s Day gift because he was wanted by the occupation, the day before he was martyred. Over the years, Asmaa was prevented from traveling to Jordan to receive specialized treatment for her recurrent cancer; she was even prevented from visiting a French hospital in Jerusalem for surgery, even after she lost sight in her left eye.
Banan was previously detained for 23 days in 2007 in the Jalameh interrogation center; like her mother, she has been subjected to travel bans preventing her from traveling abroad. Banan emphasized that she chose to study law in order to support the prisoners, attending their court hearings, following up with their families and highlighting their cases. She, like her brothers and mother, inside and outside prison, has been repeatedly denied permission to visit her father. They have only had a few family visits over the years, and almost all of their applications are routinely denied.
Sajida, Banan’s sister, shared the message that her father had sent to her for her wedding day in 2022, when Jamal, Asem, and Imad were all imprisoned, speaking about the reasons for their sacrifice and struggle:
“This is for you, my daughter, and for the sake of all young men and women. We accept captivity today so that tomorrow we may bequeath to you a free homeland without captivity or restrictions. We accept fear and deprivation today so that tomorrow you may live in safety, where there is no occupation or aggression. This is for you, my daughter.
Tomorrow, when you tell your children the story of the liberation before bed, you will tell them: Raise your heads to the clouds, for this dear, free homeland in whose shade you enjoy, your grandfathers and uncles sacrificed their lives for the sake of God to expel the occupier from its soil.”
A banner for Jamal, Asmaa, Abdel-Salam, Asem, Imad and Hamza Abu al-Haija hanging in Jenin refugee camp
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network demands the immediate release of Banan Abu al-Haija, her brothers and father from the occupation prisons. The arrest of Banan is another form of targeting of the family and an attempt to deprive her beloved mother of support at a critical time for her health. It also represents the ongoing targeting of Palestinian lawyers defending the Palestinian prisoners, their resistance and the Palestinian people as a whole. It also comes as Jenin refugee camp, where Banan was born, is under attack by the occupation alongside all of the refugee camps of the northern West Bank, with thousands displaced in an attempt to steal more land for settler-colonial confiscation, suppress the Palestinian resistance, and liquidate the core Palestinian right to return to their original homes and lands.
It is those who resist the occupation who are on the front lines fighting the genocide, and they are targeted for mass slaughter, assassination and imprisonment by the Zionist-imperialist genocidal occupation forces. As in the ongoing genocidal slaughter in Gaza, which has taken the lives of over 52,000 precious Palestinian martyrs, including well over 100 in just the past day, these crimes are carried out with the full support, complicity and responsibility of the imperialist powers: the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and other EU countries. We urge all supporters of Palestine to raise your voices for the Abu al-Haija family and for all Palestinian prisoners. Their liberation is part and parcel of ending the genocide in Gaza and throughout Palestine — on the road to the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.
Over 100,000 people have already signed on to the petition to stop the French state’s planned dissolution of Urgence Palestine, the large national coalition and collective for Palestine that has risen to the forefront of the movement in France over the past 18 months of resistance to Zionist-imperialist genocide.
On the evening of 29 April, Urgence Palestine revealed that the French state had delivered a notice of dissolution, stating that the organization would be dissolved effectively on 7 May if the attack is not blocked by legal action. While Urgence Palestine’s legal team has already declared that it will file the necessary legal documents as soon as any ban is implemented, the campaign is also focusing on building mass, popular support to stop this latest attack by the French state against the Palestinian diaspora and the Palestine solidarity movement.
This attack also comes alongside another dissolution attempt — announced by French Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau in the National Assembly, also on 29 April — on Jeunes Gardes, a youth antifascist organization. Of course, it also follows the dissolution of the Collectif Palestine Vaincra and multiple similar attacks on anti-fascist groups, Muslim organizations, local mosques and campaigns against Islamophobia, and as France continues to imprison Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the Lebanese Arab struggler for Palestine jailed in French prisons for the past 40 years and awaiting yet another hearing on his case in June, despite being eligible for release since 1999.
People from all walks of life have expressed their opposition to the dissolution order, with prominent trade unionists, artists, elected officials, musicians, actors, writers, athletes and public intellectuals joining the campaign, documented on the Urgence Palestine Instagram.
A mass outdoor public meeting against the dissolutions drew thousands in Paris alongside multiple elected officials, while demonstrations and public meeti
ngs against the dissolution are also being organized in Lyon, Strasbourg, Chambery and many other French cities.
Like its fellow imperialist powers, France fully supports the Zionist project in occupied Palestine as an outpost of Western imperialism in the region. After aligning with Britain and the Zionist regime in 1956 — and being defeated by Egypt — France collaborated with “Israel” to develop its nuclear weapons program that it continues to use today to threaten the entire region. Today, this same alliance is reflected in the ongoing arms trade conducted by the French state with the Zionist regime amid the escalated genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine.
France is fully complicit with that genocide, through its provision of arms, aid and support to the Zionist regime, but it is also aiding and abetting genocide by engaging in a concerted attack on the freedom of expression of all in order to suppress, criminalize and silence those working to bring an end to the genocide, epitomized by the latest attack on Urgence Palestine.
We urge all in France and around the world to stand with Urgence Palestine and Jeune Garde.
Demonstrate at a French embassy, consulate, or Alliance Française (official government representative of French cultural activities) in your area against the dissolution and repression — and against France’s ongoing complicity with Zionist genocide throughout occupied Palestine. Use the signs below!
In this moment, it is clearer than ever that it is critically important to build the broadest, strongest alliance for Palestine, insisting on full and clear support for the Palestinian resistance to occupation by all means, led by the armed resistance forces; the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea; and a firm commitment to anti-imperialist organizing and solidarity. These attacks must mobilize us to escalate our actions and build the international popular cradle of the Resistance. We must not back down or seek to comply with these illegitimate and indeed, illegal attacks, but only escalate our international solidarity to defend freedom of expression, defend Palestine, and defeat the repression — and, of course, to defeat imperialism and Zionism.
Stop the dissolution of Urgence Palestine!
End the genocide in Gaza and throughout Palestine!
Stop the aggression against Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and the people of the region!
Haiti won, Algeria won, Vietnam won, and Palestine will win!
Victory to the Resistance!
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
As part of the ongoing assault on the Palestinian prisoners’ movement leadership, one of the prominent leaders of the movement, Mohammed Arman, is being subjected to ongoing physical and psychological torture, starvation and medical neglect in solitary confinement in Megiddo prison. At least 66 identified Palestinian prisoners have been martyred in Zionist occupation prisons amid the ongoing Zionist-imperialist genocide in Gaza. Palestinian prisoners with high sentences who are priorities in a prisoner exchange with the resistance, like Arman, face particularly cruel and inhuman conditions as part of the “slow assassination” policy, part and parcel of the ongoing Zionist-imperialist assassination regime targeting the Palestinian national leadership and all resistance forces.
Mohammed Arman has been imprisoned since 18 August 2002, sentenced to 36 life sentences for his role in the Palestinian resistance during Al-Aqsa Intifada in the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades of the Hamas movement. Since Al-Aqsa Flood, he was transferred to solitary confinement in Megiddo prison. In his dark solitary cell, he faces repeated incursions and attacks by repressive units, who storm the cell, tie his hands and feet and beat him, accompanied by police dogs.
He has lost tens of kilograms in weight and now weighs around 65 kg, while being provided with very little food insufficient to sustain his life and health. Despite repeated injuries due to beatings and his ongoing health deterioration due to malnutrition, he is being denied medical care or treatment.
“In the depths of the dark cells, where light barely reaches, the symbols and leaders of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement in the occupation’s prisons are waging an unequal battle against a systematic machine of death, specifically designed to eliminate the remaining living consciences that embody the memory and will of Palestinian struggle…The leaders of the prisoners’ movement are not merely names topping prisoner lists. They are the nucleus of resistance consciousness and the symbols of this stage, and of Palestinian steadfastness behind bars. They face a vicious assault targeting their very human and revolutionary existence, under the cover of international silence and moral complicity…
These men were never mere numbers in the registers of captivity; they are lanterns that lit the path for an entire generation of strugglers, bearing the responsibility of preserving Palestinian human dignity inside the occupation’s cells…
We, at the Prisoners Media Office, are not merely warning — we are crying out to the world: the leaders are being killed slowly, and we are losing the pillars of patience and steadfastness one after the other.
“The leader Mohammed Arman is being subjected to a slow assassination attempt in isolation, and today he stands between life and death, fighting hunger and resisting pain, alone in a narrow cell.
As we sound the alarm, we warn that the horrific violations committed against the leaders of the prisoners’ movement will lead to a destiny that may reach their martyrdom at any moment.
We hold the occupation fully and directly responsible for the lives of the imprisoned leaders, and we affirm that the torture and abuse committed against them is a full-fledged war crime that history will mark the disgrace of the silent international community.
We join the call of the Prisoners’ Media Office and urge all supporters of Palestine and the Palestinian cause to speak out actively and take action through demonstrations, mass actions and direct actions to confront the abuse of Palestinian prisoners. The imperialist powers, like the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, that continue to arm, support and provide cover for the Zionist genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine, are fully implicated in these inhuman actions.
Mohammed Arman
Born on 22 November 1975 in the village of Beitlu, Mohammed Arman is from a family forcibly displaced in the Nakba from the village of al-Burj near occupied Ramla in occupied Palestine ’48. His family now lives in the village of Kharbatha Bani Harith west of Ramallah. He has been imprisoned since 18 August 2002, sentenced to 36 life sentences for his role in the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Like other residents of Kharbatha Bani Harith, he daily passed through a checkpoint outside his village, where he witnessed the routine cruelty, assaults and abuse directed at his fellow Palestinians at the hands of the occupation forces, and was motivated to join the resistance.
He was arrested for the first time in 1994 as a university student, and held in administrative detention for four months; in 1998, he was arrested again and sentenced to 14 months in occupation prisons.
He worked as a technician in the Palestine Telecommunications Company, and escalated his involvement the ranks of the resistance with the emergence of the Al-Aqsa Intifada and soon began working alongside the leaders Ibrahim Hamed and Abdullah Barghouti to plan, execute and carry out resistance operations. They formed the Silwan cell of the al-Qassam Brigades, the resistance cell that the occupation described as “the most dangerous” to its security.
He was subjected to harsh interrogation for over three months after his arrest, and has repeatedly been held in solitary confinement; he was returned to the general prisoners’ population in 2012 in the Al-Karameh hunger strike alongside dozens of other imprisoned leaders.
Mohammed Arman is married and the father of a son, Bilal, and two daughters, Iman and Salsabil; his youngest was only a year old at the time of his arrest. Inside the prisons, he has been heavily involved with the prisoners’ movement, serving on multiple occasions as the head of the leadership council of the Hamas prisoners, or as a member of the leadership body. During his time in isolation, he wrote a book, “A View of the Resistance from Within.”
His father passed away in 2019 and Mohammed was denied the ability to bid him farewell; he was barred from visiting Mohammed for years.
The Palestinian prisoners and their leadership — and the entire Palestinian people — is under Zionist-imperialist genocidal attack. Our entire movement must respond collectively to such aggression by organizing even more loudly, clearly and effectively to shut down the imperialist-Zionist war machine, to support the Palestinian resistance and all forces of resistance in the region, and to ensure that the Palestinian prisoners are not now and will never be isolated from the Palestinian people, the Arab, Islamic and regional liberation causes, and the international movement for justice.
Freedom for all Palestinian prisoners in occupation jails! Victory to the Resistance!
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
On Tuesday, 6 May, occupation forces targeted several liberated prisoners as part of their daily assaults on the villages, towns and refugee camps of the Palestinian people throughout occupied Palestine, including Wael Jaghoub, the Palestinian leader who was released on 25 January from his life sentence in occupation prisons as part of the Toufan al-Ahrar exchange with the Palestinian Resistance, and Thaer Hanani, who previously served 20 years in occupation prisons, both in Nablus.
The occupation routinely targets liberated prisoners in its campaigns of arrest, viewing them as leaders in the Palestinian liberation movement that serve as a perpetual challenge and confrontation to the occupation. In previous prisoner exchanges — notably, the Wafa al-Ahrar exchange — the occupation deliberately targeted liberated prisoners and reimposed their previous sentences on them when rearrested. Almost all of the Wafa al-Ahrar prisoners were freed again in the Toufan al-Ahrar exchange, and the Palestinian Resistance ensured that the exchange agreement itself explicitly prevented the occupation from arbitrarily re-arresting and re-imposing their former sentences on the liberated prisoners.
Nevertheless, the occupation regime has continued to harass and pursue the liberated prisoners. Nearly all of the liberated women prisoners have been summoned to interrogation, and many have been subjected to travel bans. Samah Hijjawi, released in the November 2023 prisoner exchange and then re-arrested, was released once again in the January 2025 Toufan al-Ahrar exchange. However, she — and her father, Bilal — were once again abducted by the occupation forces from their home in Qalqilya on 1 April 2025.
On Sunday, 4 May, occupation forces detained liberated prisoners Mahmoud Kleibi and Ihab al-Sharafa, both from the Shweika neighborhood of Tulkarem; however, the two were released that night. Both were released in February from life sentences in occupation prisons in the Toufan al-Ahrar exchange.
Wael Jaghoub has been a highly visible public spokesperson for the cause of the prisoners and of Palestinian liberation since his release, writing multiple articles and appearing on podcasts and interviews. This builds upon his years of study and leadership inside the occupation prisons; his targeting by the occupation is a direct attack on the liberated movement leaders. He was seized in the early morning hours of Tuesday, 6 May, from his home in the Rafidia neighborhood of occupied Nablus.
Born on 23 May 1967, Wael was involved in activism from an early age, especially with the advent of the first great popular Intifada. In 1992, he was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison for his resistance to the occupation, before being released in 1998.
With the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, his leading role reemerged, and on 1 May 2001, the occupation arrested him, where he was subjected to harsh and long interrogation, and later the occupation sentenced him to a life sentence for his role in the resistance to the occupation regime as a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
During his years of captivity, Wael Jaghoub was subjected to solitary confinement on multiple occasions, as the occupation prison administration deliberately isolates active prisoners from their comrades because of their effect on the development and growth of the prisoners’ movement. As a result of this isolation, he was deprived of family visits for years.
He was active within the prisoners’ movement at an organizational level, serving as deputy head of the PFLP’s prison branch for several years, and has also been one of the most prominent writers of the prisoners’ movement.
During his imprisonment, he published several books and studies, reflecting the collective concern of the prisoners’ movement, including “Letters of the Detention Experience,” through which he chronicled various stages of the struggle of the prisoner movement and its martyrs; “The Organizational and Detention Experience of the Prison Branch Organization,” which covers the period between (2006-2016), written together with his comrade, fellow prisoner Kamil Abu Hanish; and “Asira Dreams,” which was published in 2007. He also published articles and political studies related to prisoners, and various intellectual studies, including a study on the crisis of the Palestinian left and seeking its renaissance.
He has continued this work since his liberation, after, over two periods of imprisonment, 30 years in the occupation jails.
Also on the morning of Tuesday, 6 May, occupation forces re-arrested Thaer Hanani, of Beit Dajan, Nablus, as he was crossing the Beit Furik military checkpoint. Abducted by the occupation in 2004, he was sentenced to 20 years in occupation prisons for his role in the resistance with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and its armed wing, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades; he was released on 30 June 2024 at the end of his sentence. During his time in prison, he was an active part of the prisoners’ movement and participated in hunger strikes in 2004, 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2017.
He also was very involved in both political/organizational and cultural work inside the occupation prisons; he served as a member of the Central Committee of the Prison Branch of the PFLP, and published multiple articles in Palestinian and Arab newspapers and magazines during his imprisonment, as well as writing and publishing the novel, “Live Where You Perish,” released in 2022.
The situation inside occupation prisons is dire, with the prisoners’ movement as a whole, and leaders in particular, being subjected to a policy of “slow assassination.” At least 66 identified Palestinian prisoners have been martyred in the occupation prisons since 7 October 2023 alone, alongside the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Palestinian prisoners from Gaza are particularly subjected to horrific conditions of torture and abuse, while denial of medical care, torture and beatings, physical and sexual assault, starvation and isolation are systematic practices against the over 10,000 Palestinians imprisoned by the occupation.
We urge supporters of Palestine around the world to act and organize to demand the liberation of Wael, Thaer, Samah and that of all Palestinian prisoners as part and parcel of ending the genocide in Gaza — on the road to the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.
The leadership of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement is under attack. Amid the ongoing assault on the Palestinian prisoners as a whole, where denial of medical care, torture, physical and sexual assault, and starvation have become systematic attempts of “slow assassination,” in which at least 66 Palestinian prisoners have been martyred since 7 October 2023, the leaders of the movement are particularly targeted for mistreatment and abuse.
Palestinian prisoner leaders with high sentences who are priorities in a prisoner exchange with the resistance are facing solitary confinement, torture and medical neglect, including Muhannad Shreim, 49, a leader in the prisoners’ movement serving 29 life sentences plus 20 years for his role in the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades’ resistance during the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
For the past seven months, he has been held in solitary confinement, transferred between the isolation section of Gilboa prison to the isolation section of Megiddo prison, facing complete isolation in narrow cells with no light. During this time, he has lost 45 kilograms of weight and now weighs only 60 kg.
He has severe pain throughout his body, continues to be denied food and medical care, and is held in solitary confinement to deny him access to any independent monitoring of his status. This is the policy of “slow assassination” being carried out against the leaders of the prisoners’ movement, being put in practice.
This policy of “slow assassination” is part and parcel of the ongoing Zionist-imperialist genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine, one manifestation of the ongoing assassination policy of the occupation targeting the leadership of the Palestinian resistance. We urge supporters of Palestine around the world to act and organize to demand their liberation and that of all Palestinian prisoners as part and parcel of ending the genocide in Gaza — on the road to the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.
Muhannad Shreim
Muhannad Talal Mansour Shreim was born on 12 November 1975 in Tulkarem, where he grew up and graduated from high school in 1993. He began his education at An-Najah National University in Nablus in 1994, where he became one of the most prominent and visible leaders of the Islamic Bloc on campus.
He was known for being present, speaking and chanting, at every demonstration, celebration, funeral procession or memorial, speaking about the resistance and the liberation struggle, the defense of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. He was often the leader of the youth in chants, mobilizing the people and urging greater action.
He was repeatedly arrested by the occupation forces for his activity in the student movement, and he soon joined the Hamas movement and became a fighter in the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He was unable to continue his studies due to his repeated detention, although he later returned to study Islamic law at Al-Quds Open University (and in 2021, achieved his master’s degree in Israeli studies from inside the Zionist prisons).
He was arrested for the first time in October 1993 and soon released, and arrested again one month later in November 1993, where he was held in administrative detention for nine months until he was released in August 1994. Several months later, in January 1995, where he was imprisoned for over three years until his release in May 1998.
Muhannad Shreim was arrested by the occupation forces on 8 May 2002 after a lengthy pursuit for months as a leader in the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, particularly for his role alongside Abbas al-Sayyed and Muammar Shahrour in the Park Hotel operation in Netanya. Hundreds of occupation soldiers invaded the city of Tulkarem with dozens of armored vehicles and tanks in order to arrest Muhannad, invading the building where he was staying in hiding. He had earlier escaped the Zionist soldiers despite being detained, after presenting a fake identification card.
He was held under harsh military interrogation and torture for over two months, and three months after his arrest, occupation forces demolished not only his home but the entire building, including the floors owned by his father and his brothers, Mansour and Mohammed. Both Mansour and Mohammed are also former prisoners who were imprisoned by the occupation during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Muhannad Shreim was sentenced to 29 life sentences plus 20 years inside the Zionist prisons.
Since he was imprisoned, his father passed away in 2005, and Muhannad was denied the ability to bid him farewell. He has been repeatedly transferred from prison to prison, and was held in solitary confinement for several years before being released from isolation along with other imprisoned leaders following the Karameh hunger strike in 2012.
He was publicly listed with several fellow imprisoned leaders prior to the Wafa al-Ahrar exchange as one of the prisoners that the Zionist regime would refuse to release in the exchange. He has written many articles inside the occupation prisons, but none of his words have escaped the prison walls since the beginning of Al-Aqsa Flood and amid the Zionist-imperialist genocide in Gaza. He is currently being isolated and starved in an attempt to prevent his words and his voice from reaching the Palestinian, Arab and international people again — and the challenge is to us to act to defend him and his fellow imprisoned Palestinian resisters, strugglers and leaders.
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We urge all supporters of Palestine and the Palestinian cause to speak out actively and take action through demonstrations, mass actions and direct actions to confront the abuse of Palestinian prisoners. The imperialist powers, like the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, that continue to arm, support and provide cover for the Zionist genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine, are fully implicated in these inhuman actions.
Our entire movement must respond collectively to such repression by organizing even more loudly, clearly and effectively to shut down the imperialist-Zionist war machine, to support the Palestinian resistance and all forces of resistance in the region, and to ensure that the Palestinian prisoners are not now and will never be isolated from the Palestinian people, the Arab, Islamic and regional liberation causes, and the international movement for justice.
Freedom for all Palestinian prisoners in occupation jails! Victory to the Resistance!
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
“I was arrested in December 2023 and was immediately transferred to interrogation, which lasted for six days. These were some of the most intense and difficult days. I was subjected to what is called the ‘disco’ and ‘diaper’ interrogation methods. Throughout the six days, I was exposed to nothing but extremely loud music. I was forced to use diapers to relieve myself, and they were only changed twice. I was deprived of food and provided with very little water—half a glass a day. I was handcuffed and blindfolded during the entire interrogation.” – One Palestinian detainee from Gaza held in the Rakefet prison
A new report, “Israel’s Underground Prison for Palestinian Political Detainees Abducted from Gaza,” issued by the Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society exposes the horrifying reality for Palestinians from Gaza abducted by the occupation’s genocidal invading forces.
In particular, the report exposes the “Rakefet section,” an underground wing of the Nitsan-Ramle prison set aside for Palestinian political prisoners from Gaza. As the authors of the report state:
The visit began with the legal teams being led to the entrance of a building resembling an old warehouse. A door was opened, revealing a staircase descending underground, as described by the lawyers. The area was full of cockroaches with holes in the floors and walls. The visits were conducted under strict guard and heavy surveillance. Lawyers were instructed not to inform the detainees of anything related to their families or events happening outside.
The lawyers documenting the visits noted that “This section, which the occupation has designated for prisoners who it calls ‘elite’ prisoners, is part of those who were visited and is classified by the occupation as ‘illegal combatants.'” The occupation claims that it may indefinitely detain Palestinians from Gaza by labeling them ‘illegal combatants,’ the same term used by the United States to hold prisoners indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay naval base. It uses this term against a broad array of Palestinians from Gaza, including Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the heroic pediatrician and director of Kamal ‘Udwan hospital, abducted by the occupation for his heroic defense of Palestinian healthcare.
Many Palestinians from Gaza, seized en masse by the invading genocidal forces throughout the besieged Strip over the past 19 months, have been subjected to extreme forms of torture and abuse, including sexual and physical assault and rape, mass starvation, beating and torture to the point of severe injury or death, and various forms of abuse, combined with the almost complete denial of medical care. While many of these assaults have taken place in the military camps, like Sde Teiman and Anatot, the abuse continues inside the official Zionist prison system.
Of the at least 66 identified Palestinian prisoners who have been martyred in the occupation prisons since 7 October 2023, amid Al-Aqsa Flood and the ongoing genocide, at least 40 have been from Gaza. The locations and identities of abducted Palestinians have largely gone unreported, as the occupation refuses to turn over this information, leaving many Palestinians missing — with their families unable to learn whether they are being held in an occupation torture camp or martyred under the rubble.
As the report notes, “It is worth noting that the number of Gaza detainees acknowledged by the Israeli Prison Services as of early April 2025 stands at 1,747, classified as ‘unlawful combatants.’ This figure does not include all Gaza detainees held in camps run by the Israeli army—only those under the jurisdiction of the prison system.”
“Disco” interrogation, discussed in many testimonies, refers to being shackled while loud music is played continually for days at a time. (This technique was also notoriously used by U.S. interrogators at CIA black sites and at Guantanamo Bay.) “Diaper” interrogation refers to Palestinians being forced to wear diapers, shackled to chairs, and prohibited from accessing toilet facilities, also for days on end. One detainee who provides testimony in this report was subjected to these interrogation methods for six days straight without interruption.
The detained Palestinians note that:
Finger-breaking is used as a method of torture, punishment and control by occupation guards;
No sunlight enters their cells or even the yard;
They have been beaten with objects on the genital areas;
They are denied access to underwear;
They are denied medical treatment;
They are frequently forced to curse their mothers by the guards.
We are re-publishing the full text of this important report below and urge its broad distribution.
We urge supporters of Palestine around the world to act and organize to demand the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners as part and parcel of ending the genocide in Gaza — on the road to the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.
Issued by the Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club
“Underground Visit to Gaza Detainees”
The first visits to Gaza detainees in the section under Nitzan-Ramla Prison, or what is called the Rakefet Section.
6/5/2025
Note: This section, which the occupation has designated for prisoners who it calls “elite” prisoners, is part of those who were visited and is classified by the occupation as “illegal combatants.”
The Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club are reviewing new testimonies that will be added to the list of shocking and horrific testimonies about the details experienced by Gaza detainees during their arrest, interrogation, and transfer from one prison to another, and from one camp to another, over the course of several months of detention. They faced systematic crimes, which were, in their entirety, crimes of torture that they experienced moment by moment since their arrest. These testimonies were obtained through visits, the first of their kind that legal teams were able to conduct recently, during which a group of detainees were visited under strict conditions and under a high level of supervision in the (Rakefet) section located under the (Nitzan – Ramla) prison.
An underground visit to Gaza detainees in the Rakefet section
In the details of the visit that took place to a group of detainees, the visit began with the legal teams entering the entrance of an old warehouse-like building. A door was opened, which is the entrance to an underground staircase, according to what the lawyers described, full of cockroaches and holes in the ground and walls. The visits took place accompanied by the prison guards and under strict supervision, during which the lawyers were informed that it was forbidden to tell the detainees anything related to their families or anything that was happening outside. Signs of terror and fear were evident on the bodies of the detainees who were visited. At first, there were great difficulties in starting a conversation with any detainee, due to the level of supervision imposed on the visit. However, after attempts made by the lawyers, they were able to reassure the detainees and confirm to them that they were lawyers who had come to visit them.
Here, we review some of the detainees’ testimonies, including the shocking details they contain. These testimonies are an extension of dozens of testimonies and statements obtained from Gaza detainees since the beginning of the genocide.
The Rakefet section is the most difficult and harsh in terms of detention conditions compared to other prisons and camps.
Detainee (S.J.) testimonial: “I was arrested in December / December 2023, and I was immediately transferred to the investigation that lasted for 6 days, which was the most intense and difficult, during which I was subjected to the (disco) and (pampers) investigation, and throughout the 6 days I only listened to very loud music, and throughout these days I was forced to use (diapers) to relieve myself, they were changed only twice, and I was deprived of food, and the water was very little, half a cup a day, and throughout the investigation period I was handcuffed and blindfolded, and later I was transferred from (Sde Teiman) camp to (Ashkelon) prison, where I remained for (45) days, then I was transferred to the (Moscobiyya) detention center for (85) days, then to (Ofer) prison, and finally to the (Rakefet) section in (Nitzan) Ramle prison.
The detainee indicated that the detention conditions in the Ramleh Rakefet section are the most difficult compared to all the prisons he was transferred to during his detention. In each cell there are three prisoners, one of whom sleeps on the floor. The exit to the “furah” (prison yard) takes place day after day, during which we remain handcuffed, knowing that this area is not exposed to the sun. Throughout their time in the “furah” they are exposed to humiliation and degradation, and they are also forbidden from raising their heads throughout the “furah”.
We don’t know when the sun rises and when it sets.
Detainee (W.N.): “I was arrested in December / December 2024, I was interrogated by the occupation army before being transferred to a camp in the Gaza Strip. I was interrogated by the intelligence service, threatened and beaten, and later transferred to Ramla prison. Today, I suffer from health problems and severe pain in my body. What increases my suffering is that we are forced to sit on our knees for long periods. I was also sexually assaulted by being beaten with a scanner on sensitive parts of my body. Today, we are completely isolated from the outside world. We do not know when the sun rises or sets. We are provided with worn and damaged clothes, but we are forced to wear them. We are denied underwear. In addition to all of this, they force us to curse our mothers, and we are subjected to beatings and oppression. The beating during my transfer to the prison caused one of my fingers to be broken, knowing that the prison guards use the method of breaking fingers, and this has happened to more than one detainee.
Finger breaking is a method of torturing detainees.
In the same context, the detainee (Kh. D.) indicated that he was subjected to a “disco” investigation, and later to investigation by the occupation intelligence, and this was repeated 3-4 times. They deliberately hung him on a chair for long periods, and threw him on the floor while handcuffed. The investigation continued for 30 days in the cells of Ashkelon prison, and throughout this period he was subjected to severe beatings. Today he suffers from scabies, which he contracted during his detention in Ofer prison, and the disease continued with him after he was transferred to Ramla prison. Today, in addition to scabies, he suffers from severe chest pains that increase in severity as a result of the handcuffing operations that are carried out from behind. The detainee indicated that the prison administration punishes prisoners by breaking their thumbs.
Cameras inside the cells document the detainees’ movements around the clock.
“As for the detainee (A.G.), he said: “I was detained for (35) days in the (Sde Timan) camp. I was subjected to a (disco) investigation for five days. When I was arrested, I was suffering from an injury and did not receive any treatment. I had a high fever at the beginning of the detention, and I was screaming all the time from the severity of the pain in my body. In addition, I suffer from heart problems and I lost consciousness several times. They were satisfied with just confirming that I was alive. In the first stage of detention, I did not have clothes or a blanket. I felt very cold because I was detained in a (barrack) open from several sides, which exacerbated my suffering. For 15 days, my hands were tied and my eyes were blindfolded all the time. Then I was later transferred to the (Rakefet) section in the (Ramla) prison. In all the rooms here, there were cameras that documented our movements constantly. We were forbidden to pray, and they threatened us with death all the time. The process of taking us out for a break was an opportunity for the prison guards to assault us with severe beatings and insult us while our hands were tied. We never see the sun, we are forced to curse our mothers, the jailer decides when and for how long we can shower, every three days each cell is given a roll of toilet paper, and the amount of food is very small. We know it’s dawn because the jailers pull out the mattresses and blankets.
Rakefet Prison – Ramle is one of the prisons and camps that the occupation has established since the genocide or that have been reopened again to detain detainees from Gaza. The most prominent of them are: (Sde Teiman), (Anatot), (Ofer) camp, (Rakefet) and another camp that was opened for detainees from the West Bank, which is (Manashe) camp. These camps were the most prominent headlines for torture crimes, as the occupation turned them into spaces for torturing detainees physically and psychologically on the spot.
It is noteworthy that the number of Gaza detainees recognized by the Israeli prison administration until the beginning of April / As of April 2025, 1,747 people were classified as “illegal combatants.” This figure does not include all Gaza detainees held in Israeli military camps, but only those under Israeli prison administration.
Amid the ongoing assault on the leadership of the prisoners’ movement, in which prominent leaders of the Palestinian people and their resistance, especially those who are a high priority for release in a prisoner exchange, are being subjected to solitary confinement, beatings, starvation and torture, Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is being held in isolation in Megiddo prison.
He was assaulted and brutally beaten during his last transfer to isolation in Megiddo and has faced dangerous health conditions and denial of medical care, imprisoned in a situation not fit for human life. In a statement, the PFLP said that the attack on Sa’adat “comes in the context of a systematic and dangerous escalation targeting the leaders of the prisoners’ movement, aiming at their slow physical and psychological liquidation, through medical neglect, torture, abuse, isolation and systematic starvation.”
This policy of “slow assassination” is part and parcel of the ongoing Zionist-imperialist genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine, one manifestation of the ongoing assassination policy of the occupation targeting the leadership of the Palestinian resistance. We urge supporters of Palestine around the world to act and organize to demand their liberation and that of all Palestinian prisoners as part and parcel of ending the genocide in Gaza — on the road to the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.
Ahmad Sa’adat is the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. One of over 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners, he has been sentenced to 30 years in Zionist prisons for a range of “security-related” political offenses. These charges include membership in a prohibited organization (the PFLP, of which Sa’adat is General Secretary), holding a post in a prohibited organization, and incitement, for a speech Sa’adat made following the Israeli assassination of his predecessor, Abu Ali Mustafa, in August 2001, in which he declared “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” In retaliation for the murder of Abu Ali Mustafa, on 17 October 2001, fighters from the PFLP’s armed wing assassinated Rehavam Ze’evi, the notoriously far-right, racist Tourism Minister in Ariel Sharon’s Israeli government, in the Hyatt hotel in Jerusalem.
Born in 1953, Sa’adat is the child of refugees expelled from their home in the village of Deir Tarif, near Ramleh, in the Nakba of 1948. A math teacher by training, he is married to Abla Sa’adat, herself a noted activist, and is the father of four children. He has been involved in the Palestinian national movement since 1967, when he became active in the student movement. He was elected General Secretary of the PFLP following the assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa.
On 15 January 2002, Sa’adat attended a meeting with “Palestinian Authority” security chief Tawfiq Tirawi under false pretenses, from which he was abducted and taken to the Muqata’a compound in Ramallah, then-PA President Yasser Arafat’s headquarters, as part of “security coordination” with the Zionist regime. In a deal involving the Zionist regime, Britain and the U.S., Sa’adat was then held in a Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho for over four years under the oversight of U.S., Canadian and British guards along with Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, Majdi Rimawi, Hamdi Qur’an, Basil al-Asmar and Fouad Shobaki. The director of the US/British “supervision” of the prisoners at Jericho Prison formerly ran the infamous Maze Detention Center for Britain in the occupied North of Ireland, where Irish republican prisoners were held, and another British official there was later involved in creating the “White Helmets” in Syria.
In January 2006, he was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council on the Abu Ali Mustafa slate. These were the famous PLC elections won by the Change and Reform bloc, aligned with Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement. On 14 March 2006, days before Ismail Haniyeh was to take office as prime minister — after making a clear commitment in the electoral campaign to free Palestinian prisoners held in PA jails under “security coordination” — the Zionist military stormed that prison at Jericho as the U.S., British and Canadian guards stepped away to aid the assault. They killed two Palestinian guards and abducted Sa’adat and five fellow prisoners and took them to occupation military prisons.
He was arrested by the Israeli occupation on numerous occasions, notably in 1970, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1989 and 1992 for a total of 10 years of detention.
In 1993, he was elected to the Political Bureau of the PFLP and became responsible for the West Bank sector in 1994. In this context, he was arrested several times between 1994 and 1996 by the Palestinian Authority as part of security coordination with the Israeli occupation established following the Oslo accords of 1993.
On 25 December 2008, Sa’adat was sentenced to 30 years in the colonial occupation prisons. His lengthy sentence, produced by a Zionist military court, was intended as a mechanism for imprisoning the resistance and the commitment of the Palestinian people to seek freedom, justice, liberation and self-determination. Sa’adat consistently and repeatedly refused to recognize the legitimacy of the illegitimate court, refusing to stand and delivering statements of rejection.
Since that time, he has continued his leadership of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement behind bars. He was held in isolation for nearly three years, and was repeatedly denied family visits. Several major Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strikes, including the September-October 2011 hunger strike and the April-May 2012 hunger strike, placed an end to isolation as a central demand, including an end to the isolation of Sa’adat. Sa’adat was finally released from isolation and returned to the general prison population in late May 2012, following the agreement to end the prisoners’ hunger strike. During the strike, Sa’adat was hospitalized due to the severe physical stress of consuming only salt and water.
Today, over 66 Palestinian prisoners have been martyred due to torture, assault, starvation and medical neglect since 7 October 2023, and leaders of the prisoners’ movement like Sa’adat are being particularly targeted for torture, isolation and liquidation behind colonial bars.
We urge all supporters of Palestine and the Palestinian cause to speak out actively and take action through demonstrations, mass actions and direct actions to confront the abuse of Palestinian prisoners. The imperialist powers, like the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, that continue to arm, support and provide cover for the Zionist genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine, are fully implicated in these inhuman actions.
Our entire movement must respond collectively to such repression by organizing even more loudly, clearly and effectively to shut down the imperialist-Zionist war machine, to support the Palestinian resistance and all forces of resistance in the region, and to ensure that the Palestinian prisoners are not now and will never be isolated from the Palestinian people, the Arab, Islamic and regional liberation causes, and the international movement for justice.
Freedom for all Palestinian prisoners in occupation jails! Victory to the Resistance!
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
A still from The Encampments. Photograph: Watermelon Pictures
By Benay Blend
Early on the morning of April 17, 2024, hundreds of students set up camps on the main squad of Columbia University in New York City.
Their demands included disclosure and divestment from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
A recent film, The Encampments, jointly produced by Watermelon pictures and Breakthrough News, documents the rekindling of pro-Palestinian activism across college campuses in recent years.
Inspired by the anti-Vietnam war protests of the late 1960s, the students called their encampment “The Liberated Zone.”
They could have looked back farther to view the sit-ins at Ford Motor plants in the 1930s.
Because elite universities are incubators of American leadership, the Columbia administration quickly threatened to shut down the student action. Two days later police in riot gear entered the campus with the blessings of the administration.
Throught 2024, encampments spread to over 100 universities, thus raising awareness of US support of Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
As pictures of demolished structures and dismembered babies flooded social media, protestors escalated their demands to encourage their administrations to cut all ties with Israel.
When officials countered that this procedure was too complicated for people to understand, students reminded their administrators that there were precedents. Under pressure, universities had divested from South Africa as well as from fossil fuel companies, so what makes divestment from Israel so different?
Directors Kei Pritsker and Michael T Workman cover several months of life in the encampments, showcasing in particular the principled motivations of the students which countered misguided “extremist,” “antisemitic,” and “extremist” characterizations by members of Congress, campus administrators, mainstream media and Zionists within the general public.
It was perhaps unfortunate that the directors spent so much time countering these charges. Not only does it allow Zionists to control the script, but it paints a picture of “good activists”/ “bad/activists”; non-violent protest/armed resistance; and “good Palestinians”/ “bad Palestinians.”
In all, it reinforces the view of Palestinians as “perfect victims,” a role that Mohammed El-Kurd traces in Perfect Victims: The Politics of Appeal (2025). Such depictions override the right of Palestinians to be viewed as people with dignity who are fighting for the liberation of their land.
Juxtaposing clips of Israelis claiming that Palestinians do not care about their homes, their dead, or really anything that would make them human with scenes of Gaza’s destruction Illustrates the unrealistic ways that Zionists justify the genocide of Palestinians. Like the 1974 documentary “Hearts and Minds,” which used the same techniques to denounce official U.S. propaganda during the war in Vietnam, no words are needed to show the lengths that imperialists will go to in order to justify their aims.
“The scenes of Gaza’s destruction add a certain urgency and elucidate the students’ demands as neither whimsical nor abominable,” Azad Essa claims. Nevertheless, he qualifies that the film ignores the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, an issue that turned Palestinian solidarity into a criminal offense on college campuses around the world.
Emphasizing that the activists chose non-violent resistance creates the “danger of dividing pro-Palestinian advocates into ‘good’ and bad’ protestors based on this appeal to the liberal gaze,” Essa claims, reiterating the assertions that El-Kurd made in his book.
In the end, this appeal fell on deaf ears, as the government proceeded to punish selected students based solely on their words.
Nevertheless, as the directors show, these accusations are not only groundless but have far-reaching effects. Under the influence of Zionist donors and various right-wing groups, the charges have led to the stripping of foreign student visas and the disappearances of green card holders, including Mahmoud Khalil, who remains detained in a Louisiana prison.
As Essa notes, the film exposes “how the accusation of antisemitism, long weaponised by supporters of Israel, became the state-approved cudgel to beat down on those opposing US foreign policy and university investments.” That these claims came from a community of pro-Israel students and faculty who were fully backed by the administration, the police force, and several layers of government, the film also discloses “the willfully dishonest paranoid delusions of the Zionist project itself.”
Like the sit-ins led by auto workers in the ‘30s, who held classes in labor history, these encampments provided a cultural/scholarly component, where students studied how to dance the dabke as well as learned about de-colonial movements of the present and the past.
Echoing the Occupy movement several years ago, the students created the kind of community in which they would like to live, a place where there would be time for relaxation as well as learning, where there was food sharing that would ensure no-one would go hungry, and where differences would be honored along with commonalities.
Facing powers greater than themselves, the movement would be visibly over by the start of summer. But, as the late writer/revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani said, it’s possible to murder individuals but impossible to kill ideas.
“A lot of the students are not going to stop,” director Kei Pritsker concluded. “I don’t think anyone involved in the Palestinian movement signed up for the movement because they thought it would make them more safe or comfortable. I think most of us understood that it would make us less safe. It might actually pose risks to our safety, but none of that matters because if none of us are safe – if someone out there is under the threat of being bombed or being shot at any moment on any given day – then we’re all unsafe.”
2 May 2025 marks the second anniversary of the martyrdom of Sheikh Khader Adnan, leader of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, on his 86th day of hunger strike inside the Zionist prisons, deliberately denied medical care in order to ensure his martyrdom. The martyrdom of Sheikh Khader Adnan should be understood clearly as part and parcel of the Zionist assassination policy, meant to silence and erase a symbol of the Palestinian people, the prisoners’ movement and the resistance who, with his dignity, strength and humanity, represented victory over the jailer in his very being.
Khader Adnan, married to Randa Musa, with whom he was the father of nine children (Maali, Beesan, Abdel-Rahman, Hamza, Mohammed, Ali, Maryam, Omar, and Zainab), was a beloved leader in his community, Arraba, Jenin, and among his family, where he was a model of love and warmth. He was a baker, running a grocery and bakery nearby Qabatiya, Jenin, and a spokesperson for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement. He was a tireless freedom fighter who won his liberation from occupation prisons on four separate occasions through his hunger strikes, who sparked a new renaissance in the prisoners’ movement. He was ever-present in the solidarity tents supporting hunger strikers, in the funerals of every martyr, by the side of every liberated prisoner when they gained their liberation. Every prisoner and every prisoner’s family could count on the support of Sheikh Khader Adnan. He attended, led and spoke at all of the demonstrations, whether large or small, in support of the prisoners’ movement, demanding liberation, and confronting the so-called “security coordination” of the Palestinian Authority, a relentless voice of conscience and resistance.
His martyrdom, indeed, his assassination behind bars, sparked an immediate response from the resistance in Gaza as well as a series of assassinations targeting the Islamic Jihad movement’s leadership. In the Battle of the Revenge of the Free in May 2023, despite the painful assassinations of the martyred leaders, the resistance held its ground in Gaza, striking powerful blows against the occupier and renewing its leadership for the next stage of struggle, which we see today in the Al-Aqsa Flood and the resistance to the ongoing Zionist-imperialist genocide.
Today, Sheikh Khader Adnan’s body remains imprisoned by the occupation, one of nearly 700 Palestinian martyrs’ bodies, including 75 Palestinian prisoners’, held hostage by the occupier. His spirit lives on in the spirit of resistance that continues to drive the prisoners’ movement forward under the most severe forms of torture and abuse; in every action of resistance that rises from the villages, refugee camps and cities of the West Bank; in every march, protest and demonstration that insists that Gaza will not be left alone; and, of course, on the streets, among the displaced, and in the tunnels of resistance in Gaza, fighting against the genocide. Sheikh Khader Adnan lives on in every action taken around the world, by Palestinians and Arabs in exile and diaspora, and by the international movement against imperialism and for Palestinian liberation, that exposes the occupation and its imperialist backers and imposes a material cost upon them.
Khader Adnan and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement
Khader Adnan was arrested 15 times throughout his life — 12 times by the occupation and three times by the Palestinian Authority, as part of its “security coordination” collaboration with the Zionist regime, and he served eight years in the occupation’s prisons. Born on 24 March 1978 in Arraba, near Jenin, in the West Bank of occupied Palestine, he attended Birzeit University after completing high school, where he studied mathematics and became deeply involved with the Palestinian liberation movement. As a student, he joined the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine in 1996 and became a spokesperson for the movement, rallying fellow students to confront the so-called “Oslo peace process” and struggle for the liberation of Palestine.
Mona Qa’adan, the liberated prisoner, recalled: “Khader possessed a security, political, and cultural awareness from the very beginning of his involvement with the Islamic Jihad movement, which increased his effectiveness in all arenas, starting with Arraba, then Birzeit University, and extending to other cities.”
He was first detained by the occupation in 1999, spending four months in Zionist administrative detention, imprisonment with no charge or trial on the basis of a so-called “secret file,” which neither the detainee nor their lawyer can access. Administrative detention orders are indefinitely renewable, and as a result, Palestinians routinely spend years at a time imprisoned under these arbitrary orders. Currently, over 3,600 out of over 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Zionist jails are held under administrative detention orders, which are often used to target community leaders and activists, including in the student movement, the women’s movement, land defense movements and other social movements.
In February 2000, he was arrested for the first time by the Palestinian Authority, after an incident that has since become famous in the history of the student movement at Birzeit University. Lionel Jospin, then the French prime minister, visited Birzeit only days after he condemned Hezbollah and the Lebanese resistance to Zionist occupation of the south of Lebanon — months before they were to achieve the complete liberation of their land on 25 May — as “terrorist.” Khader Adnan was the first student to stand up and denounce Jospin, inspiring his fellow students to hurl shoes and rocks at Jospin, expelling him from the university.
It was during this detention by the Palestinian Authority that he launched his first hunger strike — for 10 days — demanding his liberation, which would become a powerful weapon in the struggle against unjust imprisonment, and a tactic with a lengthy history in the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.
In 2002, amid the height of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, he was arrested again by the occupation, held in administrative detention for a year. Only six months after his release in 2003, he was abducted once more, this time being held in solitary confinement. Mohammed al-Qeeq, who would later himself become a hunger striker in the occupation prisons, recalled Adnan’s resistance from early on: “I met Adnan during my second arrest in 2004, when Israeli soldiers transported us in a bus from Megiddo prison in northern Palestine to the Negev (Naqab) in the south.
The soldiers insulted the prisoners on the bus, and Adnan protested angrily. After we arrived – following six hours of fatigue and exhaustion, sitting on metal seats – he refused to get off the bus as a protest against this treatment, and they ultimately returned him to Megiddo.”
In 2005, he married his wife Randa; before they married, they had a serious conversation about which Randa later said: “He told me that his life was not normal, that he might be around for 15 days and then be gone again for a long time. But I always dreamed of marrying someone strong, someone who struggles in defence of his country. I am proud of him whether he is under the ground or above it.”
Only months later, in August 2005, Khader was once again seized by the occupation forces; this time, he was held in administrative detention without charge or trial for 15 months before he was released. During this time, he launched his second hunger strike for 25 days in Kfar Yona prison to demand his release from solitary confinement — and won. When he was finally released, Khader and Randa had their first child, Maali, in 2008, who would be followed by eight more brothers and sisters, including a set of triplets. In March 2008, once again, he was arrested and ordered to administrative detention for another six months; and in October 2010, it was once again the Palestinian Authority arresting and imprisoning him for his ongoing political activity and clarity, refusing normalization and collaboration with the occupier.
Khader Adnan’s Hunger Strikes for Freedom
On 17 December 2011, occupation forces once again invaded the Adnan family’s home at 3:30 in the morning, abducting Khader and ordering him to administrative detention once more. His arrest came two months after the Palestinian Resistance had achieved the Wafa al-Ahrar exchange, liberating 1,027 Palestinian prisoners from the occupation prisons in two releases, in October and December 2011. When the Wafa al-Ahrar exchange was announced on 18 October 2011, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners were engaged in an open-ended hunger strike launched on 27 September against the solitary confinement and isolation of Palestinian leaders, especially Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The strike was suddenly interrupted with stunning news: a prisoner exchange agreement had been released between the Palestinian resistance and the Israeli occupation.
This time, Sheikh Khader Adnan launched an individual hunger strike from the moment of his arrest, a strike that would last 66 days, galvanize the Palestinian streets, motivate international solidarity and launch a series of individual hunger strikes as well as leading to the 17 April 2012 collective Karameh strike.
As he continued to refuse food under interrogation, he was subjected to brutal abuse, as documented by Addameer:
Though he was arrested at 3:30 in the morning, Khader was kept shackled until 8:30 am, at which point he was transferred to Megiddo prison. On his first day under arrest, Khader began a hunger strike in protest of his detention. The following morning, he was taken to Al-Jalameh interrogation center. Upon arriving to Al-Jalameh, Khader was given a medical exam, where he informed prison doctors of his injuries and told them that he suffered from a gastric illness and disc problems in his back. Instead of being treated, he was taken to interrogation immediately.
Four interrogators began to insult and humiliate him, especially using abusive language about his wife, sister, children and mother. On the first day of interrogation, he answered general questions despite the continuous spate of insults. After the first session, however, Khader stopped responding and began a speaking strike because of the interrogators’ use of increasingly graphic language. Interrogation sessions continued every day for the next ten days, excluding Mondays.
On his fourth day of interrogation, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) sentenced him in his cell to seven days of isolation due to his hunger strike. In order to further punish him without being required to go to court, the IPS also banned him from family visits for three months, revealing a pre-intention to keep him in detention upon completion of his interrogation. Khader was placed in an isolation cell in a section of the prison shared with Israeli criminal prisoners. On one occasion, a force of soldiers raided his cell in the middle of the night and strip-searched him. While in the isolation period, Khader continued to be under interrogation daily.
Each day, Khader was subjected to two three-hour interrogation sessions. Throughout the interrogation sessions, his hands were tied behind his back on a chair with a crooked back, causing extreme pain to his back. Khader notes that the interrogators would leave him sitting alone in the room for half an hour or more. Khader also suffered from additional ill-treatment. During the second week of interrogation, one interrogator pulled his beard so hard that it caused his hair to rip off. The same interrogator also took dirt from the bottom of his shoe and rubbed it on Khader’s mustache as a means of humiliation.
On Friday evening 30 December 2011, Khader was transferred to Ramleh prison hospital because of his deteriorating health from his hunger strike. He was placed in isolation in the hospital, where he was subject to cold conditions and cockroaches throughout his cell. He has refused any medical examinations since 25 December, which was one week after he stopped eating and speaking. The prison director came to speak to Khader in order to intimidate him further and soldiers closed the upper part of his cell’s door to block any air circulation, commenting that they would “break him” eventually.
Over the weeks of his strike, his face on posters, or captured in a graffiti stencil designed by the Palestinian artist (later himself imprisoned) Hafez Omar, Khader Adnan’s hunger strike brought the situation of Palestinian prisoners and their ongoing struggle into vivid relief on a global level, inspiring solidarity hunger strikes around the world, from campuses to communities, and mass protests on the streets of Palestine. On 15 February, a group of Palestinian leaders, including Sheikh Nafez Azzam, Daoud Shihab, Khader Habib and Ahmed Mudallal of Islamic Jihad, went on a solidarity hunger strike, declaring that it is the “least we can do for this legendary symbol,” while Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh declared in Gaza: “The Palestinian people, with all its components and its factions, will never abandon the hero prisoners, especially those who lead this hunger strike battle.” Thousands of young Palestinians surrounded Ofer prison on 16 February 2012, and one day later, over 5,000 Palestinians gathered in Gaza City to chant, “We are all Khader Adnan!”
During his strike, he lost 30 kilograms (over 60 pounds) of weight. His skin yellowed, he was unable to move, and his voice faded. He was transferred to isolation, then from prison to prison, and then to hospital. His lawyers appealed his four-month administrative detention order, only to be met with denial after denial, until his steadfastness triumphed over the jailer. On 22 February 2012, after 66 days of hunger strike, he announced that he would be liberated on 17 April — Palestinian Prisoners’ Day — with no extension of his detention.
The victory of Sheikh Khader Adnan reverberated throughout the Zionist prisons, sparking a wave of individual hunger strikes: Hana’ Shalabi, Bilal Dhiab, Thaer Halahleh, Mohammed al-Qeeq, Jaafar Izzedine, Mahmoud Sarsak, Mohammed Allan, Hassan Safadi, Hisham Hawwash, Maher al-Akhras, and dozens of others. On 17 April 2012, as Khader was liberated from the occupation prisons, thousands of Palestinian prisoners began the collective Karameh (Dignity) strike, with a series of demands, including the liberation of the prisoners’ movement leadership from solitary confinement; it achieved its major demands in 28 days. When he was released, he visited the homes of the prisoners in Arraba and nearby villages before returning to his own home, emphasizing that his individual strike was a collective action with a collective vision for liberation. This would begin his journey to nearly every demonstration or action for a prisoner or a martyr, everywhere he could attend in Palestine.
Sheikh Khader Adnan became a Palestinian, Arab and international symbol of steadfastness, courage and commitment. He showed that it was indeed possible to defeat the jailer, despite its military force and the backing of the imperialist powers, and sparked an upsurge in the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, both inside the prisons and outside them. Around the world, thousands of people first learned about the struggle of Palestinian prisoners because of Khader’s strike.
After his liberation, Khader was a constant presence in the homes of prisoners on hunger strike, in solidarity tents for imprisoned freedom fighters, in the mourning houses of the martyrs, and on the streets of Palestine, a symbol of victory and steadfastness.
Of course, the Zionist regime did not cease its attacks on Khader, but he continued to achieve victories over the jailers in the years to come. He was briefly detained by the Palestinian Authority on 27 November 2013 as he attempted to protect his cousin, Farouk Musa, from detention by the same PA forces engaged in “security coordination” with the occupation. On 8 July 2014, as the occupation launched its latest assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza, they also arrested him for the 10th time. His sister reported that the occupation forces celebrated with glee as they abducted the symbol of their defeat. He was incarcerated in an attempt to prevent him from playing his charismatic and effective role among the Palestinian masses to build support for the people and the Resistance in Gaza. Once again, he was ordered to administrative detention, without charge or trial, which was renewed once again in January 2015. When the occupation announced the third renewal of his administrative detention on 5 May 2015, he immediately announced his hunger strike, declaring that he would consume only water and salt until his freedom. During his strike, Gilad Erdan — later the infamous UN ambassador of the Zionist regime amid the genocide in Gaza — promulgated legislation ordering doctors to force-feed Palestinian hunger strikers, declaring that the hunger strikes were a “new kind of suicide attack that would threaten the State of Israel.”
Once again, after 56 days of hunger strike, Sheikh Khader Adnan defeated the jailer. He returned home to Arraba on 12 July 2015, surrounded by crowds welcoming him and saluting his newest victory, amid the burgeoning al-Quds Intifada developing in Jerusalem. Just days later, he was arrested going to Jerusalem, only to be released once more.
On 4 January 2016, occupation forces arrested him near the town of Silwad near Ramallah and was again released. However, on 9 October 2016, Khader Adnan, together with fellow liberated hunger striker Mohammed Allan, Maher al-Akhras and others, was again arrested by the Palestinian Authority when they went to greet liberated prisoner Hussein Abu Obeideh in the village of Sarra, near Nablus. Individuals associated with the Fateh movement attacked the delegation with sticks and other weapons; the PA forces then intervened by arresting the liberated prisoners and holding them in Junaid prison for hours. The people of the village gathered around Adnan and his comrades to protect them, but were themselves threatened with arrest. Islamic Jihad responded by saying that the PA security forces have “crossed all red lines…this attack on the sons of the movement proves their loyalty to the Israeli occupation and security coordination.”
On 11 December 2017, once again, the occupation invaded the home of the Adnan family in the early morning hours, beating and interrogating Khader inside his home before abducting him, holding him and seeking a sentence of at least five years against him for membership in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement. On 2 September 2018, after his trial had been postponed 17 times, he once again launched a hunger strike to demand his liberation. Randa, his wife, wrote at the time: “Many have criticised him for choosing to go on hunger strike against a court case; they described it as a death wish. Rights organisations told me that they would not support me if he did this. But who are they to choose or decide what he protests against? Who are they to decide that what the occupation is doing is legal? He has been in prison for almost a year, and no ruling has been issued.
His principal belief is that the occupation is free to decide when to imprison someone, but the occupation is not free to decide when to release a political prisoner. The idea in this hunger strike is that he is against the essence of detention. Any free person with even a shred of dignity would resist the cruelty of the occupation.”
And, once again, on his 58th day of hunger strike, Khader Adnan again defeated the jailer. Suddenly, his trial was no longer postponed, and on 29 October, at the Salem military court, Adnan was sentenced to one year in prison from the date of his arrest, 11 December 2017, and a fine of 1,000 NIS ($270 USD). On 13 November, just two weeks later, Sheikh Khader Adnan once again returned home, victorious, to Arraba, and clearly affirming that resisting the “charges” of the illegitimate entity was also susceptible to the will of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.
On 5 May 2021, once again the occupation forces abducted Khader Adnan, amid the burgeoning Unity Intifada/Battle of Seif al-Quds, after he was seized at a military checkpoint near Nablus. He immediately launched a hunger strike, which he continued for 25 days, until he was released, once again, breaking the will of the jailer.
And on 5 February 2023, Sheikh Khader Adnan was once again seized by the occupation forces, and launched a hunger strike, which he maintained, even as, once again, they charged him with membership in an “illegal organization” (the Islamic Jihad movement), and with “incitement,” for his speeches throughout the West Bank about the prisoners, the martyrs, and the burgeoning armed resistance. Once again, he launched his hunger strike. Randa Adnan issued an urgent call to the world as his strike stretched on.
“My message to the free people of the world and the United Nations is to take action and pressure the occupation to require it to respect human rights, to stop the inhumane treatment of Palestinian detainees, to help my children and me to visit Khader, to save the life of my husband and their father from the slow death he is experiencing, and to release him before it is too late.
I thank everyone who has supported my husband since the first moment of his hunger strike; however, I will not forgive anyone who could have done something to lift this injustice off of my husband, yet they did not. My husband, Khader Adnan, represents the message of a nation and wages this struggle on behalf of his people. He does not like hunger or death but refuses a life of humiliation and fights for freedom and dignity.”
The martyrdom of Sheikh Khader Adnan, the symbol of dignity, freedom and steadfastness, was an Israeli assassination, carried out with forethought and premeditation. When he collapsed on 2 May 2023, surrounded by surveillance cameras, in the so-called Ramleh prison clinic, occupation guards and staff waited over 30 minutes to enter the room — essentially, waiting for his death. It was clear for the months of his 2023 strike that the occupation was determined to eliminate this symbol of prisoners’ resistance and Palestinian sacrifice and commitment and love for his people and land.
The Prisoners’ Media Office emphasized, on the second anniversary of his martyrdom:
“In every strike, Khader was not only challenging his jailers, but also uttering the name of thousands of silent prisoners behind the walls, and reaching their voice to the world through his lean body and empty stomach…
Although two years have passed since his martyrdom, the name Khader Adnan is still alive in the memory of the Palestinians, especially in the cells. Khader did not die, but his steadfastness was distributed to the bodies of thousands of prisoners, and his strike became a school that inspires the resistance.”
While Khader Adnan is perhaps the most famous advocate and practitioner of what has been termed the “individual hunger strike,” it is important to note here that his actions were not individualistic, random or disconnected. Instead, they were part of a profoundly collective effort to revive and advance the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, and the Palestinian prisoners at the center of the Palestinian national liberation movement.
Sheikh Khader Adnan was an organized Palestinian who developed both within and beyond his movement, and who believed deeply in national unity, which he put into practice in his support for the martyrs and the prisoners. He was a man of collective vision who dedicated his actions to the strategic development of the prisoners’ movement and its advance to a new stage of struggle, a development that came alongside that of the armed resistance in the camps in the West Bank — today under brutal assault — and of course, in the heart of Palestine’s resistance in Gaza.
“Khader was a community man, he knew how to mobilize,” Randa said in an interview. “His strategy was the mobilization of the collective. He ensured that when we went to support detainees or hunger strikers or when we would attend vigils, that all of us would go, the whole family. It was a collective act.”
To inscribe his actions as merely “individual” strikes is to misunderstand that his actions were always met with firm support from his comrades. The Islamic Jihad Movement did not launch dozens of missiles at the occupying entity in response to his assassination simply because he was a prominent individual, but because he was a truly collective and organized struggler, at the heart of the resistance in all of its forms.
The history of the prisoners’ movement over the past two decades is deeply intertwined with that of Sheikh Khader Adnan. Just as his complete refusal to confess or to engage with the interrogators has its roots in the long history of rejecting confession, and engaging in the “strategy of confrontation behind bars,” the road to the Freedom Tunnel, when six Palestinian prisoners in Gilboa prison — five of them Islamic Jihad strugglers from Jenin — also runs through the years of struggle in the prisons exemplified by his repeated hunger strikes, aiming not only for his freedom but to return the prisoners’ movement to the center of the cause.
Similarly, it is clear that, alongside the Battle of Seif al-Quds/the Unity Intifada, the Freedom Tunnel – and, of course, the Wafa al-Ahrar prisoner exchange accomplished by Hamas and the Al-Qassam Brigades in 2011 – is one of the immediate forebears of Al-Aqsa Flood. The Freedom Tunnel exposed the illusory nature of the occupation’s proclaimed technological and intelligence superiority and inspired collective hope and optimism in Palestine and around the world about the future of the Palestinian cause, while raising an urgent call for the liberation of the prisoners from the dungeons of the Zionist regime.
Khader Adnan’s Political Clarity
In 2015, upon his liberation, Sheikh Khader Adnan said: “The prisoners’ movement and hunger strikes in particular are a symbol of the principle and demand for justice in Palestine. It proves that of course it is both possible and necessary to break the Israeli occupation….But we need the unity of the Palestinian national movement. We need to fully convince the official bodies, the leadership and the public of the need for resistance. We need to weld all our energies together, from Jerusalem, Gaza, the West Bank, and the diaspora. We need the unification of all these energies with the free people of the world in defence of the rights of prisoners and all Palestinians.”
From his first public, visible statements, challenging then-French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin for his colonial attack on the Lebanese Resistance, he expressed a clear, consistent vision of Palestinian liberation, and an inclusive view of the struggle, as he urged a complete break with the path of Oslo — that of “security coordination,” collaboration with the occupier, and comprador rule.
Indeed, his role in the student movement has continued to inspire generations of students, who not only protested at campuses across Palestine and around the world during his hunger strikes, but who continue to recall his own legacy of student struggle. The 2023-24 Birzeit Student Council — whose leaders were themselves subjected to imprisonment and administrative detention — named themselves the class of the martyr Khader Adnan, with his image on the documents and posters of the student movement.
He was also determined to defend the unity of the Palestinian people in all of their locations; in a 2012 interview upon his liberation, he said:
“My stance will always be with the prisoners, whether next to them, behind them, or in front of them. From the Gaza Strip to the West Bank to the ’48 territories and the exile, every Palestinian is obliged to stand united.
We are all the children of the same cause, and one people living under the same occupation. I saw so much support from our family in 1948 Palestine, from the Palestinian doctors and nurses, the Palestinians in Haifa, the school girls from Nazareth who wrote an assignment on me … I will never forget their love.”
In 2017, Khader Adnan marched in the funeral of Basil al-Araj, the Palestinian fighter, intellectual and activist who took up the path of resistance and had been imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority, going on hunger strike for his freedom and that of his comrades, before being martyred in a battle with the occupation forces. He and al-Araj’s father were attacked by Palestinian Authority forces as they protested later in Ramallah against the PA’s attempt to try the martyr and his comrades. On that occasion, he directed a message to the PA: “If one day I become a martyr, let none of them approach my body, do not enter our homes, do not join our mourning, our condolences, or our celebrations, because you hold more hatred and audacity towards us than the occupation.” And, as Resistance News Network stated, “Indeed, the forces of the PA attacked a march of rage condemning Sheikh Khader’s assassination, not even 24 hours after his martyrdom.”
The Palestinian student movement also linked the three martyrs, in a banner hung to honor Nizar Banat, Basil al-Araj and Khader Adnan, and their legacy of struggle to correct the compass of the Palestinian cause, toward return and liberation.
In February 2022, when Khader went to visit the families of three martyrs in Nablus assassinated by the occupation, he was himself subjected to an assassination attempt by elements linked to the Palestinian Authority, recalling the earlier 2016 attack. While he was unharmed, the brothers of the martyrs were injured. He said that “mercenaries” had fired upon them, and recalled the assassination of Nizar Banat, saying, “Whoever killed Nizar Banat tried to kill me.” He spoke about his early arrests by the Palestinian Authority, noting that when he was imprisoned in Jericho prison as a student, he was thrown around, slapped and held with a bag over his head. He said, “I was arrested in the occupation prisons and went on a hunger strike just like I did in Areeha… The years have passed, the arrests [by the PA] have been repeated, and they have turned into assaults and attempts [on my life] in civilian clothes. The PA advanced, developed, demonized, and incited… They killed Nizar. Today, they want to kill us by distributing false accusations and inciting the homes of martyrs, prisoners, the wounded, and through remote surveillance.”
These physical assaults were accompanied by attempts to assassinate his reputation and unquestioned moral authority among the families of the prisoners of the martyrs. This is particularly important to recall today, when few would admit to having attacked and spread rumors about the martyred struggler, yet while many of the same forces are actively engaged in a Zionist/imperialist-led campaign of psychological warfare against the Resistance in Gaza — and also in Lebanon, Yemen and throughout the region.
Today, the Palestinian Authority’s President, Mahmoud Abbas, is joining the United States, France, Germany and the Zionist regime in demanding the disarmament of the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, as it confronts Zionist-imperialist genocide. The Palestinian Authority continues to attack and arrest resistance fighters, seizing and dismantling their weapons in the West Bank, clearing the refugee camps for the invasions of the occupation that have already displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians. Since 7 October 2023, the “Palestinian Authority” has taken the lives of 21 martyrs and arrested hundreds of people for participating in the resistance or even simply speaking and demonstrating for Gaza. The psychological warfare campaign aiming to turn people against the resistance in Gaza and throughout Palestine is not just collaboration, it is aiding and abetting genocide.
Khader Adnan and the Resistance
Ramzy Baroud wrote, discussing the reason for his assassination, “Despite the potential heavy price of Adnan’s death, for Israel, such Palestinians represent a real danger. They are often poor, humble, community-based, yet unifying figures who challenge a political discourse that has been at work since the signing of the Oslo Accords; a process that divided Palestinians into classes, turning brothers into enemies, and allowing Israel to maintain its military occupation and apartheid, unhindered.”
Indeed, he often spoke with great humbleness, including upon his 2012 liberation:
“During my days in the [Meir Ziv] hospital in Safad, occupied pre-partition Palestine, I was reminded of the holiness and the glory of this land. Being close to the resisting countries of Lebanon and Syria all gave me further incentive to defy the Israeli prison authorities, which I don’t recognise.
I have barely presented anything worth of value to the Palestinian cause. I work at a bakery and sell zaatar, and will continue to do so to remind every Palestinian that their roots are deeply entrenched in this land, among the olive trees and the zaatar.“
At the same time, however, he had only the loftiest descriptions for the resistance, the martyrs and the prisoners’ movement, and advanced a clear and uncompromised vision of liberation: “Tel Aviv and other ‘settlement cities’ established on our occupied land will never be a home for the enemy; the fedayeen will expel the occupier, and we believe in God’s promise of victory and empowerment.” He was a spokesperson and a voice for a Palestinian resistance rooted in the popular classes of the Palestinian people, dedicated to the cause of the Palestinian masses and their advancement, and rejecting all those who sought an advantage through collaboration with the occupier.
Upon his martyrdom, Palestinian fighters in Gaza with the Islamic Jihad movement fired dozens of rockets into the occupied interior of Palestine, expressing outrage and retaliation for the assassination of a great Palestinian leader. The Zionist regime continued its assassination campaign with a series of assaults on leaders of the Islamic Jihad movement — Tareq Izzedine, himself a liberated prisoner in the Wafa al-Ahrar exchange, and the brother of Jaafar Izzedine, one of the hunger strikers who was arrested for participating in actions to demand Adnan’s release in 2012; alongside Jihad Ghannam, Khaled al-Bahtini, Iyad al-Hassani, Ali Ghali and Ahmed Abu Daqqa, all distinguished mujahideen and resisters who played a leading role in developing the resistance in Gaza as well as the West Bank. This developed into the Battle of the Revenge of the Free, in which the Resistance in Gaza confronted the occupier and its US and European-made weaponry for over a week.
The martyr Tareq Izzedine, of the Islamic Jihad movement, gave his last statement before his assassination on the martyrdom of Sheikh Khader Adnan, himself assassinated through deliberate refusal of medical care in the Zionist prisons. His words remain resonant today (video by Resistance News Network): “Whenever a leader ascends, ten will emerge to replace them. When a martyr ascends, 100 martyrs will emerge to replace them. The march continues, and it does not stop until the defeat of the occupation.”
In 2022, Khader Adnan affirmed, with a message that remains as urgent today in the face of the ongoing and escalating Zionist-imperialist genocide: “Our Palestinian people embrace resistance in every arena. The occupation only understands the language of force and resistance. What the occupation fears most is the resistant spirit of our people who reject the occupation, and the courage our people display in the resistance. We call on our people to join the ranks of the resistance to confront the occupier.”
Khader Adnan and Internationalism
Sheikh Khader Adnan viewed the international aspect of the Palestinian cause, and particularly in support of the prisoners, as highly important, and he never hesitated to develop his solidarity with international struggles. He expressed consistent solidarity with fellow prisoners struggling against injustice, as he did in his message to California prisoners on hunger strike in 2012, and in his message to Irish Republicans who stood with him during his own hunger strike.
Speaking in support of California prisoners on hunger strike in U.S. jails, he said:
The policy of isolation is a cheap weapon in the hands of those who hold power. The policy of isolation is used against American citizens who are victims of the political, economic and social order/system that thrives on greed, discrimination and the deprived, including the African-Americans and Palestinian resistors such as Sameeh Hamoudeh and Sami Al-Arian.
The policy of isolation exposes the ugly face of these false democracies that are guilty of occupation, tyranny and social repression…I announce my full solidarity with my oppressed brothers in the American prisons and I ask that the American people and government end the policy of isolation of the detainees and prisoners, and comply by human rights law that forbids continuous isolation because of its destructive effects on the mental and physical health of detainees.
This echoed his statements from 2012 upon his release, when he said:
The mass hunger strike is a signal to all oppressed and vulnerable people everywhere, not just Palestinians. It’s a message to everyone suffering from injustice, under the boot of oppression. This method will be successful, God willing, and will achieve the rights of the prisoners.
I ask God to move the consciences of the free people around the world. I thank them all, especially Ireland, for they have stood by my hunger strike. I ask them to stand in solidarity with all the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in the past, present and future, with our tortured and oppressed people who live under the injustice of occupation day and night.
He urged all who had supported him to support his fellow hunger strikers, “Let all those free and revolutionary join hands against the Occupation’s oppression, and take to the streets – in front of the Occupation’s prisons, in front of its embassies and all other institutions backing it around the world.”
As in his statement in solidarity with California hunger strikers, where he highlighted Palestinian political prisoners in U.S. jails, he did the same in regards to France. When he participated in an event honoring Palestinian political prisoners in Arraba on 28 February 2013, planting seedlings bearing the names of the prisoners, he planted one in honor of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the Lebanese Arab struggler for Palestine jailed in France for 40 years, noting that he had returned his meals for five days in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners.
After his martyrdom, in Toulouse, France, the Collectif Palestine Vaincra mirrored this prior event, honouring Khader Adnan, with Palestinian, Arab and internationalist activists planting a jasmine tree in a community garden, accompanied by portraits of Adnan as well as the flag and map of Palestine. Participants delivered a speech in Arabic underlining his commitment and sacrifice for his people and his land.
His hunger strikes drew widespread solidarity from around the world. They exposed many people for the first time to not only the suffering of Palestinian prisoners, but their resistance and steadfastness. Our own development as the Samidoun network was, in part, linked to the development of Sheikh Khader Adnan’s struggles and their international reverberations.
Ameer Makhoul’s comments in 2012 bear important resonance for our movement today: “This battle highlighted the bankruptcy of the discourse of “moderation” which Israel and the US have foisted on the official Palestinian leadership. This moderate stance claims that if we Palestinians wish to secure international support, we must adopt a moderate posture. In practice, this means voluntarily accepting the oppressive controls imposed by the globalized terror of the state. “Moderation” here means abandoning the right to resist the occupying state.
Yet what we have just witnessed is that the world lends support when Palestinians themselves fight back and stand firm, regardless of their political affiliation. The ability to affect and move international public opinion and secure effective wide-scale solidarity was not the outcome of a public relations strategy but of a real struggle on the ground to stand up to the oppressive colonialist machine.”
All of the imperialist powers — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Canada, and European Union states — that maintain the Zionist project as a base of Western imperialism in the region are fully complicit in the assassination of Khader Adnan, as they have been in the “slow assassination” through torture, starvation, physical and sexual assault, and denial of medical care to over 66 Palestinian prisoners who have been martyred since 7 October 2023 inside the Zionist prisons. There are at least 303 martyrs of the prisoners’ movement since 1967 (data is not compiled for the period 1948–1967). The occupation continues to imprison his body, as it does the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians, including at least 75 martyred prisoners—64 of them since the launch of the Al-Aqsa Flood.
And his martyrdom was mourned around the world. In Ireland, the Bobby Sands Trust also issued a statement mourning Adnan’s death, offering condolences to Adnan’s wife and family, and Anti-Imperialist Action honored both Khader Adnan and Bobby Sands, the martyr of the Irish Republican prisoners’ movement who died in British prison on 5 May 1981, at their protest against the coronation of British king Charles.
In Tehran, Iran, days after people gathered in Filistin Square to mourn Adnan, a large banner mural was hung honoring his commitment to the liberation of Palestine.
In Germany, murals, posters and graffiti remembering Adnan were found on the streets of Berlin and Dusseldorf, only to be followed almost immediately by the deployment of troops of Berlin police to remove the image of Khader Adnan from the wall, indicating how even his image continued to terrify the imperialist powers.
Samidoun stated, at the time of his martyrdom: “Sheikh Khader Adnan was a tireless advocate of resistance, truly dedicated to the Palestinian people. He refused to give up his resistance and his hunger strike until the last moment, committed to his approach of freedom or martyrdom. His martyrdom must become a cry of rage and a commitment to build upon his great sacrifices and dedication to the Palestinian people and the total liberation of the land of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”
Of course, he was not only the popular leader, the struggling mujahid, the freedom fighter, the resistant prisoner.
He was also the beloved husband, father and family member, the man about whom his wife Randa said, “Khader sits on the ground and plays with his children, we clean the bathrooms hand-in-hand, he mops the floors, he blow-dries my hair and removes my blackheads. We have a shared life. He is my soulmate. Although I am bearing the brunt of his absence and the fear of losing him, I support him on this journey. As a family, we believe in love for the land. We believe in sacrifice for our land. Our homeland is in need of people like Khader.”
Amid 18 months of genocide, the assassination campaign continues as a primary weapon of the Zionist-imperialist aggression, targeting the leaders of the Palestinian and Arab people. From Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to Yahya Sinwar, from Ibrahim Aqil to Fouad Shukr to Abbas al-Musawi, from Ismail Haniyeh to Saleh al-Arouri to Fathi Shiqaqi, Abu Ali Mustafa, Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Imad Mughniyyeh, Yahya Ayyash, Abu Jihad, Kamal ‘Udwan, Mohammed al-Najjar, Basil al-Kubaisi, Kamal Nasser, Wadie Haddad, Ghassan Kanafani, Mohammed Boudia, Basil al-Araj, Tariq Izzedine to Samir Kuntar, amid the martyrs of the prisoners’ movement, including his fellow hunger strikers Abdel Qader Abu Al-Fahm in 1970, Rasem Halawa in 1980, Ali al-Jaafari in 1980, Anis Dawlah in 1980, Ishaq Maragha in 1983, Mahmoud Freitekh in 1984, and Hussain Obaidat in 1992; amid the nearly 700 bodies of the martyrs imprisoned by the occupier, Sheikh Khader Adnan and all of his brothers, sisters and comrades in the struggle continue to point forward on the path to liberation.
“My dear Palestinian people… do not despair. Regardless of what the occupiers do, and no matter how far they go in their injustice and aggression, our victory is close,” he affirmed. At this time of Zionist-imperialist genocide, with mass starvation being used as a key tool of genocide atop 17 years of siege on Gaza, amid the overtly genocidal proclamations of Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, Netanyahu and their cohort, at the time of unparalleled bravery and commitment of the Resistance, his words ring ever true today.
As we remember Sheikh Khader Adnan, two years on, the mandate for our international movement remains the same: to build the international popular cradle of the resistance and to escalate the struggle to impose a cost on the occupier. Today, the people, armed forces, and AnsarAllah movement of Yemen stand as an exemplar of what the power of comprehensive resistance can mean, and the epitome of the boycott movement. Khader Adnan must live on in each of us and our actions, in honor of his sacrifice, commitment and willingness to put his body and life on the line not only for his own freedom, but for the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.
We urge all to organize and act to bring the genocide to an end, to break the siege on Gaza, to free the Palestinian prisoners and to free Palestine from the river to the sea, including participating in the global strike on 15 May to mark the anniversary of the ongoing Nakba.
“I starve myself for you to remain. I die for you to live. Stay with the revolution.” – Khader Adnan
Below we are republishing the will of the martyred prisoner, Sheikh Khader Adnan. He wrote his will on 2 April 2023, one month before his martyrdom, nearly two months into his hunger strike. Khader Adnan was martyred inside Israeli occupation prisons on 2 May 2023 after 86 days of hunger strike and amid a clear commitment of the Zionist entity to end his life. Khader Adnan lives on, an eternal symbol of steadfastness, freedom, dignity and resistance:
In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful
The Almighty said: “Verily those who say, “Our Lord is Allah,” and remain firm (on that path),- on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve and never will Allah grant to the disbelievers a way (to triumph) over the believers.”
Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, for granting me the ability to strike for freedom. Praise be to Allah for His countless blessings, and prayers and peace be upon the master of creation, the beloved of truth, our prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and his family and grant him peace.
I am sending you these words of mine, as my flesh has melted, my bones have gnawed, and my strength has weakened from my imprisonment in the beloved, authentic Palestinian city Al-Ramla. This is my will to my family, my children, my wife, and my people.
My wife, I counsel you and my children to fear Him (Allah), the Most High, to cling to His firm rope, to dispense with His bounty from others, to speak the truth in every time and place, to uphold ties of kinship, to pray and to pay Zakat (alms-giving), to preserve Allah‘s sanctities, and His right to our situation, money, movement, residence, and knowledge. The best homes in Palestine are the homes of martyrs, prisoners, the wounded and the righteous.
I entrust the uncles, aunts, relatives and neighbors to you; everyone who has a right over us. I entrust you with not leaving anyone with a debt over me, moral or material, for your love (me) is most in need of His mercy. If it is my martyrdom, do not allow the occupier to dissect my body, bury me near my father and write on my grave “here (lies) the poor servant of Allah, Khader Adnan, your prayers for him, his parents, and Muslims everywhere”. Make it a simple grave, and ask Allah for forgiveness, mercy, consolidation, and the breadth of my grave, and to make our graves a garden of paradise, not pits from the depths of Hell, and that He accepts all our deeds purely for His honorable face.
Umm Abdel-Rahman, my wife, and the children, Ma‘ali, Bisan, Abdel-Rahman, Mohammed, Ali, Hamza, Maryam, Omar and Zainab. Forgive me and my brothers Abu Adnan, Abu Anas, Umm Nour and all the uncles, uncles, relatives, friends, and neighbors for any shortcomings from me on your side as I leave this temporary life, but make sure that I have not been distracted from you except by Allah’s permission for duty.
O our proud people, I send you this commandment of greetings and love, and I am full of confidence in His mercy, victory, and empowerment.
My greetings to our leaders, our commanders, the families of the martyrs and the prisoners, and my greetings to them and to all the revolutionaries.
Your loving husband, Umm Abd al-Rahman; your loving father, my children; your loving brother, my brothers; your loving son, our people.
I pray that Allah accepts me as a martyr loyal to His honorable face.
Your love, Khader Adnan
David Rovics’ song for Khader Adnan:
“Companion of Martyrs”, an anthem dedicated to Sheikh Khader Adnan, translated by Resistance Music and Media. Performed by the Ezar and Qabas Band in 2023.
Palestinian prisoners’ associations announced the martyrdom of imprisoned Palestinian Muhyiddin Nijm, 60, today, Sunday, 4 May, inside the occupation’s Soroka hospital.
Muhyiddin Nijm had been imprisoned without charge or trial under “administrative detention” since 8 August 2023. He was one of over 3,600 administrative detainees held under a so-called “secret file,” among over 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners.
Nijm, from the village of Siris, south of Jenin, was a married father of six children. He spent a total of 19 years in the occupation’s prisons, including the past two years in arbitrary administrative detention. Despite suffering from chronic health problems, he was systematically denied medical treatment by the occupation—a practice that is part of the ongoing genocide perpetrated by the Zionist prison administration, hand in hand with the genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine.
Muhyiddin Nijm is at least the 66th martyr of the prisoners’ movement since 7 October 2023. There are at least 303 martyrs of the prisoners’ movement since 1967 (data is not compiled for the period 1948–1967). The occupation continues to imprison his body, as it does the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians, including at least 75 martyred prisoners—64 of them since the launch of the Al-Aqsa Flood.
On 10 March, he received a legal visit in the Naqab desert prison—one of the prisons with the highest number of ongoing cases of acute and chronic illness, systemic medical neglect and mistreatment, and the rampant spread of scabies. This is in addition to ongoing torture, beatings, and deliberate starvation. During the visit, the severe decline in his health was apparent; he could barely walk and moved only with great difficulty. After multiple demands for treatment, he was finally moved for a medical examination but was never informed of the details of his condition. Instead, he was left to be martyred after two years of imprisonment without charge or trial.
Muhyiddin Nijm had a long history in the Palestinian liberation struggle. He spent 17 years in the occupation’s prisons, having been arrested by occupation forces who surrounded his home on 3 May 1994, while his parents were performing Hajj. He was held under military interrogation and tortured for months before being sentenced by a Zionist military court to 18 years in prison for his involvement in political and resistance activity with Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement.
Born in 1965 into a family of 14 brothers and sisters, he attended university after graduating high school, where he obtained a degree in public health and became one of the most prominent activists of the Islamic Bloc. With the outbreak of the Great Intifada of the Stones, he became involved with the Hamas movement and deepened his involvement in the struggle over the years.
The martyrdom of Palestinian prisoners—today, Muhyiddin Nijm—is part of an assassination campaign inside the occupation’s prisons and detention camps, carried out through institutionalized physical and psychological torture, beatings, starvation, sexual assault, the spread of contagious disease (particularly scabies), and the deliberate denial of medical care. This takes place in parallel with the ongoing, escalated genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine. These war crimes and crimes against humanity are compounded by the denial of family and legal visits, preventing any external monitoring of the mistreatment suffered by imprisoned Palestinians. All imprisoned Palestinians, and especially the leaders of the prisoners’ movement, are living under an ongoing threat to their lives due to the occupation’s policy of “slow assassination.”
Every dollar, euro, and pound exchanged with the occupation; every weapon given to its genocidal forces; and every intelligence-sharing and police-training mission between the Zionist project and the imperialist powers—especially the US, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, and EU countries—are evidence of full complicity in the ongoing genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity against Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinian people as a whole.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network sends its deepest condolences and salutes to Muhyiddin Nijm’s loved ones, brothers and comrades, and to the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, and urges all to organize and take action, to escalate the struggle in the imperial core, to bring the genocide to an end, to break the siege on Gaza, to free the Palestinian prisoners and to free Palestine from the river to the sea, including participating in the global strike on 15 May to mark the anniversary of the ongoing Nakba.
Download this poster of the martyr Muhyiddin Nijm — as well as this group of prisoners’ posters — to include in your next action.
The martyrs of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement in the past 18 months include the following:
Omar Daraghmeh
Arafat Hamdan
Majed Ahmed Zaqoul
Abdel-Rahman Al-Bahsh
Atta Yousef Hasan Fayyad
Zuhair Omar Sharif
Raja Ismail Samour
Walid Abdel-Hadi Hamid
Abdel-Rahman Mar’i
Dr. Iyad Al Rantisi
Thaer Samih Abu Assab
Faraj Hussein Hasan Ali
Hamdan Hassan Anaba
Hussein Saber Abu Obeida
Ali Abdullah Suleiman Al-Houli
Arafat Al-Khawaja
Mohammed Ahmed Al-Sabbar
Mohammed Abu Sneineh
Ahmed Rizq Qudaih
Izz al-Din Ziad Al-Banna
Asif Abdel-Mu’ti Al-Rifai
Khaled Musa Jamal Al-Shawish
Majed Hamdi Ibrahim Sawafiri
Ahmed Abdel Marjan Al-Aqqad
Jumaa Abu Ghanima
Dr. Ziad Mohammed Al-Dalou
Wafa Amin Mohammed Abdelhadi
Kamal Hussein Ahmad Radi
Walid Nimr Daqqah
Fathi Mohammed Mahmoud Jadallah
Abdel-Rahim Abdel-Karim Amer
Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh
Karim Abu Saleh
Ismail Abdel-Bari Khader
Mohammed Sharif Al-Assali
Omar Abdelaziz Junaid
Adnan Ashour
Islam Al-Sarsawi
Sheikh Mustafa Abu Ora
Nasr el-Din Ziyara
Kifah Dabaya
Ayman Rajeh Issa Abed
Zaher Tahsin Raddad
Mohammed Munir Musa
Walid Ahmed Khalifa
Samir Mahmoud Al-Kahlout
Moath Khaled Rayyan
Anwar Aslim
Sheikh Samih Suleiman Muhammad Aliwi
Munir Abdullah al-Faqaawi
Yassin Munir al-Faqaawi
Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Idris
Mohammed Anwar Labad
Alaa Marwan Hamza al-Mahlawi
Mohammed Walid Hussein Al-Aref
Mohammed Rashid Saeed Al-Akka
Ashraf Mohammed Abu Warda
Motaz Mahmoud Abu Zneid
Musaab Hani Haniyeh
Ali Ashour Ali Al Batsh
Tayseer Sababa Abou Al Saeed
Khalil Haniyeh
Ayman Abdel-Hadi Qudaih
Mohammed Yassin Jabr
Raafat Adnan Abu Fannouneh
Khaled Mahmoud Qassem Abdallah
Walid Khaled Ahmad
Musaab Hassan Adili
Khalil Nasser Radaideh
Muhyiddin Nijm
There are at least two more martyred workers from Gaza whose names have not been disclosed.
The following released prisoners were either martyred almost immediately upon their release due to torture and the denial of medical care, or, in the case of Kazem Zawahreh, following the prisoner exchange where he was returned to a Palestinian hospital in a coma.
Amid the ongoing assault on the leadership of the prisoners’ movement, in which prominent leaders of the Palestinian people and their resistance, especially those who are a high priority for release in a prisoner exchange, are being subjected to solitary confinement, beatings, starvation and torture, Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is being held in isolation in Megiddo prison.
