On Monday morning, 12 May, Asmaa Mohammed Sabaaneh (Abu al-Haija), liberated prisoner, the wife of imprisoned leader Sheikh Jamal Abu al-Haija, the mother of her imprisoned children Abdel-Salam, Asem and Banan (all held in administrative detention in Zionist jails) and Imad (held in PA political detention for 5+ months), and the martyr Hamza Abu al-Haija, passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer. Her passing comes just days after Banan Abu al-Haija, her daughter, was arrested by occupation forces on 7 May at Jabara checkpoint south of Tulkarem, while traveling to see her mother at the Istishari Hospital in Ramallah, where she was hospitalized. Banan was one of the major supports and caregivers for Asmaa, and she — alongside her brothers — were taken away from their mother in her last days, preventing them from bidding farewell to their beloved mother.
A banner for Jamal, Asmaa, Abdel-Salam, Asem, Imad and Hamza Abu al-Haija hanging in Jenin refugee camp
Asmaa, 61, was held in administrative detention for nine months in 2003. She battled serious illness for years; she underwent surgeries for brain tumors in 1992 and 1998 and she was hospitalized in 2014 at the time of her son 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.
On Wednesday, 7 May, Zionist occupation forces arrested Palestinian lawyer Banan Abu al-Haija — Asmaa’s daughter — as she passed through the illegitimate Jabara checkpoint south of occupied Tulkarem, in the West Bank of occupied Palestine to support her mother through ongoing cancer treatments.
Asmaa’s husband, Sheikh Jamal Abu al-Haija, is a Palestinian resistance leader and political prisoner serving 9 life sentences in occupation prisons, currently held in isolation alongside fellow leaders of the prisoners’ movement. One of the prominent leaders of the Hamas movement and a hero of the Jenin refugee camp battle of 2002, he has been imprisoned since August 2002, sentenced for his leadership of the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades in the northern West Bank.
Her eldest son, Abdel-Salam Abu al-Haija, has been imprisoned by the occupation regime in administrative detention, without charge or trial, since August 2022, under repeatedly renewed orders. Over multiple arrests, he has spent 15 years in occupation prisons and was also detained by the Palestinian Authority under “security coordination” for multiple months.
Her son, Asem Abu al-Haija, has been imprisoned by the occupation regime under administrative detention, with no charge or trial, since June 2023. He has spent over eight years in occupation prisons.
Her third son, Imad Abu al-Haija, has spent over seven years in occupation prisons, last released in April 2023. He is currently 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.
Banan Abu al-Haija, her elder daughter, a lawyer, was ordered to administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial, just like her brothers, by 9 May 2025, just days after her arrest, almost seemingly timed to deprive her mother of her support in the last days of her life.
Hamza Abu al-Haija, the youngest son of Jamal and Asmaa, was 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 Mohammed Sabaaneh (Abu al-Haija)
The Prisoners’ Media Office said on her passing, “The mother of martyrs and prisoners has departed, but she left behind a legacy of pride and dignity, and a family and home that continues to embody the ongoing Palestinian epic of captivity and martyrdom.”
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network expresses its mourning and salutes, and extends its condolences to the Abu al-Haija family and the Palestinian people on the passing of Asmaa, a symbol of steadfastness in Jenin and throughout Palestine, a liberated prisoner, lifelong struggler, wife of a prisoner and a leader serving nine life sentences in occupation prisons, and the mother of martyrs and prisoners.
On Friday, 9 May 2025, occupation forces launched an assassination raid on Nour al-Bitawi, referred to as “the most wanted man in the West Bank” for his role in leading the Jenin Brigades resistance fighters confronting the occupation. He and his comrade, Hikmat Abdel-Nabi, a struggler with Saraya al-Quds in Nablus, resisted the attack of the occupation for hours, fighting until their last moment in a house to the east of Nablus where they had taken refuge, which the occupation bombed with a drone. He had previously evaded multiple assassination and arrest attempts.
Hikmat Abdel-Nabi
Nour al-Bitawi was a commander of the Jenin Brigades and a leader in Saraya al-Quds, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement. Like his fighting brothers and comrades in arms in Jenin, he was part of the leadership of a new generation of Palestinian resistance in the West Bank of occupied Palestine that is determined to resist the occupation forces by all means, rejecting the path of Oslo on the road to liberation. The occupation forces are currently waging an assault on the refugee camps, particularly in the north of the West Bank of occupied Palestine, seeking to eradicate the resistance and liquidate Palestinian refugees’ camps and their commitment to their right to return to their original homes and lands in occupied Palestine ’48 from which they were forcibly displaced in the Nakba of 1947-48.
As in many other cases, leaders of the resistance are liberated prisoners who spent years targeted by the Zionist-imperialist regime. Nour al-Bitawi was arrested by the occupation for the first time in 2011, serving 7 years in occupation prisons before his release in 2018.
On 8 February 2021, occupation forces arrested him after shooting him with live bullets inside his home in Jenin. He was in critical condition for days following the attack, and parts of his intestines were removed due to the severity of his injuries. He was held in detention for one year, mostly in the infamous Ramleh prison clinic, and repeatedly denied appropriate medical treatment for his wounds. Upon his release, he issued a call, urging that “All Palestinians, in the West Bank, Gaza, in occupied Palestine ’48 and in diaspora must work to release the prisoners and end their suffering.”
The martyr, Sheikh Khader Adnan, welcomes Nour al-Bitawi upon his release as a wounded prisoner in 2022
Later, on 3 November 2023, the occupation forces exploded al-Bitawi’s home in Jenin camp, and one year later, on 6 November 2024, they set fire to his father’s house, preventing civil defense crews from extinguishing the blaze that spread to three neighboring homes.
He was repeatedly pursued by both the occupation and the collaborationist “Palestinian Authority” as part of its “security coordination” with the occupation regime, especially as the PA and then the Zionist military intensified their attacks on Jenin, Tulkarem and Nour Shams camp in December 2024. In January of this year, the occupation arrested his father in an attempt to force him to surrender himself. He was also subjected to a campaign of “moral assassination” and smears by the PA, which attempted to label him a “criminal” and an “Iranian agent.” These tactics have been used frequently by the PA against resistance leaders who are also being pursued by the occupation, such as in the well-known case of Abu Shujaa of Nour Shams camp (Mohammed Jaber, whose mother, Haneen Jaber, is currently imprisoned by the occupation while diagnosed with cancer.)
Indeed, just days ago, PA “security forces” surrounded al-Bitawi’s home in Jenin, seeking to arrest him; he has been one of the “most wanted” for the PA as well, following their December 2024 attack on Jenin camp.
This type of assassination raid and attack targeting resistance fighters and leaders — often liberated prisoners themselves — often overlaps with “arrest raids” targeting the Palestinian people. The attack on Nour al-Bitawi and Hekmat Abdel-Nabi mirrors many such assassination raids against fighters who refuse to surrender themselves to the occupation or to return to Zionist prisons, such as the cases of the “engaged intellectual” and freedom fighter Basil al-Araj, Ibrahim Nabulsi, Mohammed al-Azizi, Abdel-Rahman Soboh, Islam Odeh, Saleh Barghouthi, Ashraf Na’alwa, and Moataz Washaha, to name only a few of the recent targets of the current generation of resistance.
In response to the assassination, the Palestinian resistance organizations, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, pledged to intensify their resistance, urging broad mobilization in the ranks of the resistance to confront the genocidal occupier. As Nour al-Bitawi declared, “We are a people who seek liberation. We will fight until liberation for our dignity, our people, and for God Almighty.”
The assassination raid on Sheikh Nour al-Bitawi and Hikmat Abdel-Nabi echoes the stories of many martyred Palestinian resistance fighters, particularly former prisoners who refuse to return to the dungeons of the occupation. Their commitment to fight until martyrdom in the face of the assassination forces echo those of the resistance fighters from Gaza to Yemen to Lebanon and everywhere throughout the region, of the prisoners who fight with their bodies behind bars, of the Palestinians who insist to remain on their land confronting the genocidal Zionist-imperialist aggression. Despite the massive array of US-made and -provided weaponry arrayed against them by the genocidal occupation regime, they fought heroically until their last breath, resisting for their people, their land, and their liberation.
Victory to the Resistance! From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
The following statement was issued by the Popular Democratic Party and the Arab Socialist Labor Party in Lebanon, in solidarity with Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Sa’adat, alongside fellow leaders of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, is being subjected to isolation, beatings, torture, starvation and denial of medical care — targeted for “slow assassination.”
To the sons and daughters of our nation, To the free people of the world, To our comrades in the path and in resistance,
From the isolation cells in Megiddo prison, where the Zionist executioner attempts to break the will of a man the size of a homeland, we raise our voice loudly, in the name of the joint leadership of the Popular Democratic Party and the Arab Socialist Labor Party – Lebanon, to condemn the systematic torture and brutal isolation inflicted upon the national and internationalist leader, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the imprisoned comrade Ahmad Sa’adat, in a clear attempt to eliminate him physically and morally.
This aggression does not target an individual, but a symbol of Palestinian and Arab resistance, a mind and a heart in the battle for freedom that our people have waged for decades. The torture of comrade Sa’adat is torture of all resisters, and his isolation is a failed attempt to isolate the voice of truth in a time of complicity.
We hold the fascist Zionist entity—along with its imperialist sponsor, the United States, and the regimes involved in normalization—fully responsible for the life and safety of comrade Sa’adat. What is taking place is part of a war of extermination against a people being killed in Gaza, tortured in the West Bank, and pursued in exile.
The silence of the official world, the complicity of the nations, and the cowardice of the regimes will only make us hold tighter to the trench of resistance, until the last breath.
We direct our call to all the free people: in the nation, in the diaspora, and around the world — to trade unionists, intellectuals, students, and all forces of liberation: Strengthen the resistance. Raise your voices for Ahmad Sa’adat and for all the prisoners. Confront the Zionist-imperialist machine of repression with full force.
Our battle is one of existence, dignity, and identity, and it will not end except with the liberation of all of Palestine, from the river to the sea, and the sweeping away of the settler-colonial project from our land.
Glory to Sa’adat, symbol of revolutionary defiance, Freedom for the prisoners and detainees, And victory to the struggling peoples.
On 8 May 2025, we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the massacres of Setif, Guelma, and Kherrata, during which 45,000 Algerians were assassinated by French colonial troops and European militias on 8 May 1945 and in the days that followed.
We commemorate this bloody date this year, as at the same time, in Gaza, the Zionist occupation army has been committing genocide for 19 months, still preventing humanitarian aid from entering the blockaded enclave, condemning the Palestinian population to famine and disease, while continuing to bomb what remains of ruins and tents, and announcing an imminent massive ground invasion of Gaza. At the same time, a bloody offensive has been carried out for over 100 days on the refugee camps of Jenin and Nour Shams, forcing tens of thousands of residents into exile, in an attempt to annihilate the resistance and liquidate Palestinian refugee camps and the right to return.
Despite this violence, the Palestinian resistance continues to inflict significant losses on the occupying forces and to defend its people and land with courage and dignity.
The French colonial empire carried out its massacres in Algeria, in Madagascar, in Indochina, in Cameroon—more than a century and a half after having drowned in blood Delgrès and his comrades in Guadeloupe, and nearly a century after the crushing of the great Kanak uprising.
Today, France is part of the imperialist powers which, in various ways and on different scales, support, finance, equip, enable, and legitimize the ongoing genocide in Gaza. At the same time, it is participating in attempting to impose by force the disarmament of the resistance in Palestine and in Lebanon and the governance of a corrupt and collaborationist Palestinian Authority, while it continues to imprison the Palestinian resistance fighter Georges Ibrahim Abdallah after 40 years of political and judicial persecution. This same government also represses the solidarity movement with Palestine, by demanding the dissolution of Urgence Palestine and, before it, the Collectif Palestine Vaincra.
This genocide is made possible only through the support and direct participation of imperialist and colonial powers such as France, the USA, Canada, Britain and Germany, and the complicity of the Arab normalization regimes.
The martyrs we see in Palestine, whose bodies and blood flood our screens and minds, for whom our eyes no longer have enough tears, and whose memory tears our hearts apart with incomparable pain, are in every way like our martyrs of Algeria, of Vietnam, of Cameroon, of Guadeloupe, and of Kanaky.
In one week, on 15 May 2025, we will commemorate the 77th anniversary of the Nakba. In memory of our martyrs, in memory of the ancestors and peoples cut down by colonial and imperialist violence, mobilizing against genocide, Zionism, colonialism, and in support of the Palestinian resistance is the greatest tribute.
“Each time one of us gives their life, they become a promise we are responsible for keeping” — Mohamed Boudia
Faced with the ongoing genocide in Gaza, where horror follows horror, where the martyrs water the land with their blood, where dismembered bodies appear before our eyes, we must remember that neither mass rapes, nor massacres of entire villages, nor torture and assassinations, nor smoke killings were able to break the resistance of the Algerian people.
We must remember that neither Napalm, nor Agent Orange, nor massive bombings across the entire Vietnamese territory were able to crush the determination and resistance of the Vietnamese people.
Today more than ever, in tribute to those whose lives were taken and crushed by colonial savagery, we must continue to mobilize in support of the Palestinian resistance and echo, here, its struggle against genocide, colonialism, and imperialism. Awaiting the day when the Palestinian people will taste freedom, when colonialism and oppression will be erased from their land, when the dreams of the martyrs will bloom through the smiles and hands of future generations. That day when the colonizer will be truly defeated and pay for their crimes. On that day, a part of the promise to the martyrs will be fulfilled.
Glory to the martyrs, may the infinite love of their people soothe the pain of their loved ones, and may their memory accompany the living along the long road to liberation.
Glory to the martyrs of Gaza, those whose memory is everything, those whose ruins are their dwellings, whose land weeps for their absence and for not being able to embrace their remains.
Glory to the martyrs with cold hands, to the mothers with hearts of fire, to those whose faces cover the walls and whose names are inscribed in the register of the eternal.
One year ago, in the occupation prisons, severely ill prisoner Moatassem Raddad sent a message, saying: “I feel like the next martyr in the occupation’s prisons.” Tonight, 8 May, Moatassem Raddad was martyred, after years of struggle against cancer and years of medical neglect and mistreatment in the occupation prisons, in hospital in Egypt, where he has been for the past several months. Liberated by the Resistance in the Toufan al-Ahrar exchange on 26 February, he has spent his entire time in Egypt hospitalized due to his advanced cancer.
Born in 1982 in Saida, near Tulkarem, he was an athlete in his youth, with three brothers and six sisters. He was one of many youth in Palestine who got involved in the resistance and the liberation movement amid the Al-Aqsa intifada in 2000. He was arrested for the first time in 2002 and sentenced to 17 months in prison. Upon his release, he deepened his involvement with the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, working in student and popular organizing, before joining its military wing, Saraya al-Quds. On 12 January 2006, Moatassem Raddad was severely injured when he and his comrades, the martyrs Ali Abu Khazna and Moataz Abu Khalil, resisted an attack by occupation forces assaulting the Hittin building in Jenin city.
The occupation forces bombed the house with shells and missiles, and arrested Moatassem while he was wounded and bleeding. He was severely injured in his abdomen and had shrapnel throughout his body. He was subjected to a harsh military investigation and sentenced to 20 years in occupation prisons by a Zionist military court. A few years after his imprisonment, following severe weight loss and multiple intestinal infections and bleeding, he was diagnosed with colon cancer, which advanced rapidly. His medical treatments were frequently delayed, and he was repeatedly denied early release. Since 7 October 2023, he was transferred from the Ramle prison clinic to Ofer prison, held in a cell without the basic needs for human life, and many of his medications were stopped. In May 2024, he issued an anguished call for his release, urging action so he would not be left behind to be martyred in prison.
He was included in the Toufan al-Ahrar exchange agreement, but after years of medical neglect and severe complications, he was martyred tonight, in Egypt. While he passed away in freedom, the circumstances were caused by years of systematic medical neglect and abuse at the hands of the occupation.
We salute the martyr Moatassem Raddad and extend our condolences to his loved ones, comrades, family and the Palestinian people on the loss of Moatassem Raddad, after years of medical neglect in the occupation prisons. We urge that his story and legacy be taken as a call to action to our entire movement to escalate our work and action to free all Palestinian prisoners, particularly the seriously and chronically ill prisoners threatened daily with martyrdom behind bars and subjected to systematic medical abuse and neglect.
We are republishing the following statement below from the Prisoners’ Media Office:
In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful Press release issued by the Prisoners’ Media Office
The Prisoners’ Media Office mourns the martyrdom of liberated prisoner Moatassem Raddad, who was martyred a short while ago in Egypt. Raddad’s death came after a long and painful struggle with illness, caused by deliberate medical negligence by the Israeli prison administration.
Martyr Raddad, from the town of Saida in the Tulkarm district, is considered one of the most difficult medical cases the prisoners’ movement has witnessed. He had been diagnosed with cancer for more than 16 years and spent most of his captivity in the Ramleh prison hospital, without receiving even the slightest modicum of medical care.
He was arrested in 2004 and released as part of the final batch of the Toufan al-Ahrar prisoner exchanges, after a long and agonizing journey behind bars. Today, he has ascended as a martyr outside prison, suffering from complications resulting from medical negligence.
We hold the Israeli occupation fully responsible for the martyrdom of freed prisoner Raddad, and we affirm that the policy of deliberate medical neglect against prisoners is nothing more than a slow death tactic whose effects extend even after their release.
We call on the international community and human rights and humanitarian organizations to assume their responsibilities and pressure the occupation to halt this criminal policy, which violates all international laws and conventions.
Mercy for the martyr and freedom for our prisoners.
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.
**
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!
