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Wednesday, June 18, 2025
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Medical abuse, torture and “slow assassination” in Zionist jails: Mohammed al-Natsheh, Ayman al-Haj Yahya, and Zaher al-Shishtari

Palestinian prisoners’ lives are at risk on a daily basis inside the occupation prisons. Over the past 18 months, alongside the escalated genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, the Zionist occupation regime — in full complicity with the United States and European imperialist powers — has also been carrying out a systematic attack on the Palestinian prisoners, using torture, starvation and medical abuse and neglect in a policy of “slow assassination.”

On 30 April, Palestinian prisoners’ associations appealed to the World Health Organization, noting:

“the outbreak of a number of diseases including scabies skin disease and amoebic infections, chronic diarrhea, continuous vomiting, in addition to other serious skin diseases. Child detainees are also exhibiting symptoms of undiagnosed and untreated dermatological illnesses.

All detainees are being denied their right to medical care, and the prison administration refuses to treat the root cause of these illnesses, which is the inhumane and unhygienic detention conditions inside the prisons.”

Since 7 October 2023, amid Al-Aqsa Flood and the ongoing Zionist-imperialist genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine, at least 65 identified Palestinian prisoners have been martyred inside the Zionist jails; the occupation is continuing to detain 63 of their bodies (amid 74 Palestinian prisoners’ bodies and nearly 700 Palestinian martyrs’ bodies in total held in the morgues and numbers cemeteries of the occupation.) Over 40 of these martyrs are from Gaza, and the full list of names of imprisoned martyrs from Gaza has not been released; they include Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, Dr. Iyad al-Rantisi, and many other Palestinians tortured to death through violent beatings, rape and sexual assault.

Days before, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said that “Israeli occupation prison authorities are deliberately transferring sick Palestinian political detainees between different prisons and cells in order to spread infectious diseases among the prison population,” noting that the occupation had been transferring ill prisoners with contagious diseases from Megiddo prison to the Naqab desert prison with no medical treatment or care. “As a result, prisoners in Naqab prison were infected and began exhibiting symptoms such as severe abdominal pain, persistent vomiting, extreme fatigue, in addition to contracting scabies — all of which poses a severe and escalating danger to their lives.”

The occupation is pursuing a systematic policy of denial of medical care or treatment, prohibition of hygiene items and cleaning supplies, overcrowding and starvation, in addition to the ongoing and escalating policy of systematic torture, beating and physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Palestinian prisoner leaders like Abdullah Barghouti are being subjected to ongoing beating and torture and then denied medical care for their wounds, reflecting a policy of “slow assassination” against the prisoners’ movement. A number of Palestinian prisoners are being subjected to campaigns of medical negligence, mistreatment and abuse, including:

Mohammed al-Natsheh

Sheikh Mohammed Jamal al-Natsheh, 65 years old, is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council who has spent over 23 years in occupation prisons, including nine years under administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial. He was arrested for the first time in 1988, amid the great popular Intifada. One of the prominent leaders and symbols of the Hamas movement in the West Bank of occupied Palestine, in 1992 he was among 415 Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials and members forcibly exiled by the occupation to Marj al-Zuhour in southern Lebanon following a resistance operation, before they achieved their return.

He was arrested and ordered to house arrest on multiple occasions by the Palestinian Authority as part of its “security coordination” with the Zionist regime, and arrested and imprisoned once again by the occupation in 2002, amid the Al-Aqsa Intifada. During this time, he was held in solitary confinement for four years. In 2006, he ran in the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council with the victorious Change and Reform slate aligned with Hamas. Upon his release from occupation prisons, he was arrested multiple times between 2013 and 2025, ordered to administrative detention and subjected to a travel ban. During his time behind bars, he participated in several hunger strikes demanding an end to the administrative detention policy.

He was abducted from his home in al-Khalil on 11 March 2025 and immediately subjected to torture, beating and abuse for 10 days under interrogation. He was injured so badly by this violent assault that he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and other internal bleeding and was transferred to the infamous Ramleh prison clinic — referred to as “the slaughterhouse” by Palestinian prisoners. During this time, his family was denied any information about his health and he was denied legal visits.

His family has since learned that he is now suffering from kidney failure and multiple other health issues, and remains in a state of shock as a result of torture and medical neglect. They confirmed that he did not suffer from any acute or chronic illness prior to his arrest, and his current health crisis and urgent situation is caused by the occupation’s torturers.

The Prisoners’ Media Office stated, “We hold the Zionist occupation fully responsible for the life of captive MP Mohammed Jamal al-Natsheh, who was subjected to an attempted assassination and liquidation through severe torture.” Amid the widespread outcry about his torture and medical mistreatment, the occupation announced that his trial was being postponed, and, on 30 April, prevented his lawyer from visiting him once again on the pretext that he was being transferred to another hospital. Sheikh al-Natsheh’s life is at risk on a daily basis inside the occupation prisons, requiring immediate intervention and his liberation.

Ayman al-Haj Yahya

Ayman al-Haj Yahya, from Taybeh in occupied Palestine ’48, has been imprisoned in occupation jails since 2020, sentenced in 2023 to 7 years of imprisonment for allegations of contact with “foreign agents,” a common charge used by the occupation against Palestinians holding “Israeli” citizenship who travel to Lebanon or meet with Arab and regional liberation movements.

He is the general secretary of the Kifah movement, a movement of Palestinians in occupied Palestine ’48 that focuses on organizing Palestinians and boycotting Zionist institutions such as the Knesset, as well as a long-time advocate for the liberation of Palestinian prisoners. He served as the Secretary of the Prisoners’ Association in occupied Palestine ’48. During the three years of detention during which his trial was repeatedly postponed, he lost his wife, Rula al-Haj Yahya. Ayman and Rula are the parents of four children.

Ayman’s son, Jihad al-Haj Yahya, was sentenced in 2024 to 13 months in prison for “incitement to terrorism and identification with Hamas” for posting three stories to his social media account, in which he declared, “Our Gaza will not die” and expressed his solidarity with the Palestinian resistance, as part of the Palestinian people. These “incitement” charges are frequently used to target Palestinians in ’48 occupied Palestine and silence even verbal or social media activism against genocide.

His fellow prisoners in the Naqab desert prison issued an appeal to the world to protect his life and health after he fell seriously ill inside the Naqab prison and was denied access to health care or medical treatment, with only his fellow prisoners providing him with support with the nearly nonexistent supplies available to them. Following the appeal of the prisoners to the world, his lawyer announced that he was currently hospitalized with pneumonia.

In this context, Ayman’s own words, urging support and action for the prisoners, serve as a call to action for all: “Do not forget your prisoners, those you left behind — raise their voices high, for we are dying in the prisons.” – prisoner Ayman Al-Haj Yahya

Zaher al-Shishtari

Zaher al-Shishtari is a leader in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who has been a dedicated struggler for Palestinian liberation since his youth as a co-founder of the Union of Secondary School Students while a high-school student. From Nablus, he has been arrested and detained over 30 times by the occupation since 1979, serving years behind bars.

Most recently, he has been imprisoned by the occupation since August 2024, when he was abducted from his home in a late-night invasion. Since his imprisonment, he has suffered from serious deterioration of his medical condition, developed the skin disease scabies, and been denied necessary medications and treatment for his chronic health conditions as part and parcel of the systematic medical mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners.

He suffers from multiple sclerosis, a chronic disease that affects the central nervous system and leads to weakness in movement and balance. The occupation confiscated his cane and has denied him the prescribed injections for his MS, which he is supposed to receive monthly. He also suffers from cranial nerve palsy (facial paralysis) and chronic diabetes. His lawyer, Nadia Daqqa, reported that he can no longer walk without the assistance of his fellow prisoners and relies upon them for his daily needs, including assistance in using the bathroom. On one occasions, he tried to go to the bathroom on his own, fell, and suffered severe injuries and bruising as a result. He has lost over 15 kg (33 pounds) inside the occupation prisons due to medical neglect and the occupation’s starvation policy.

**

These three imprisoned leaders are not alone in their struggle against the “slow assassination” policy against the Palestinian prisoners. Just days ago, imprisoned mother Haneen Jaber was diagnosed with cancer inside the Zionist jails, raising fears for her life and health, while leading Jenin journalist Ali Samoudi has been transferred to hospital after being arrested by occupation forces on 29 April.

Samoudi, who suffers from multiple chronic health conditions including diabetes and high blood pressure and who recently had a heart attack, has been injured many times by occupation forces while carrying out his journalistic duties — most recently in May 2022 when he was injured while witnessing the assassination of his colleague, Shireen Abu Aqleh by Zionist soldiers in Jenin refugee camp. As a result, he has pieces of shrapnel throughout his body, including in his spine, feet and head, causing further risk to his life and health.

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!

International Workers’ Day 2025: The workers’ flood for Palestine, against genocide and imperialism

“The sons and daughters of the popular classes of Palestine, the workers, the farmers in the villages, the refugees of the camps, have always been the leaders and the driving force of our Palestinian national liberation movement. The Palestinian popular classes have been the freedom fighters, the strugglers and the resisters on the front lines, confronting the occupation and Zionist colonization in Palestine. And so it is the case that the popular classes of Palestine fill the ranks of the Israeli prisons, the builders of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement continuing on the front lines of resistance, building the ongoing Palestinian revolution.” – Kamil Abu Hanish, imprisoned Palestinian struggler, 2017

This International Workers’ Day, 1 May 2025, is a day of workers’ struggle that comes amid the ongoing imperialist-Zionist genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine, as the war machine of capitalism and imperialism aims to grind the flesh and blood of the Palestinian people to fuel its plunder and profits around the world. International Workers’ Day also comes this year amid Al-Aqsa Flood and the ongoing resistance to Zionist-imperialist colonialism and genocide; let this day be a day for the workers of the world to join the people’s great flood against the common enemies of humanity.

On this International Workers’ Day, we salute the Palestinian workers, and the working people and popular masses of the region, who are those who create the ranks of the resistance, who form its popular cradle, who are imprisoned in the dungeons and torture camps of the occupier, and who are targeted for assassination, imprisonment and massacre for carrying out their work: civil defense workers, doctors, nurses and health workers, farmers, fishers, construction workers, aid workers, journalists and media workers, electricians, technicians, security workers, the teachers and domestic workers — all of those whose labor creates the structure of Palestinian society. We salute the workers of the resistance who toil with love and faith below the ground to manufacture the weapons that allow Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and all of the forces of the resistance to defend themselves against the occupier, the imperialist and the genocidaire.

We salute the workers of Yemen, who set an example for the workers in the world in their popular, national and military mobilization that is shutting down the supply lines of genocide in the Red Sea. Today, Yemen, whose workers live under the bombs of the U.S. war machine, presents the greatest example to the world of the implementation of the boycott of the Zionist project and of upholding international law and its absolute prohibition against genocide.

We salute the dockworkers of Morocco, who despite the normalization regime, refused to load and unload the Maersk ships carrying the products of the U.S. war machine to arm the Zionist entity against the Palestinian people. We salute the strugglers of Palestine Action, who put their bodies and freedom on the line to shut down, damage and impose a cost upon the factories that manufacture the weapons of the imperialist-Zionist war machine, particularly Elbit Systems. We salute the tech workers who raise their voices and refuse to participate in the AI and surveillance products being used to target and massacre the Palestinian people and direct the bombs of death and destruction. We salute the Palestinian workers of UNRWA, who are fighting internal repression, criminalization, assassination and destruction to aid their people and defend their right to return. We salute all of those workers of the world who continue to strike and boycott, to confront normalization, to ensure their labour unions and international federations exclude the genocidal “Histadrut,” boycott Zionist bonds, and stand with the Palestinian people and their just cause. We salute the workers who face firing, repression and imprisonment around the world for standing up for Palestine and confronting the genocide.

We echo the call of the Masar Badil, the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, to the Palestinian workers of the world: “We, the Palestinian workers in exile and diaspora, are part and parcel of the workers of the world. It is long past time to escalate our participation in this struggle to a material level that can shut down the trade routes of genocide, occupation and colonialism, cutting off the flow of weaponry, bombs and artillery that allows the Israeli regime to slaughter Palestinian men, women and children,” and that of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions in Gaza to workers in the United States: “Your struggle for workers’ rights in the United States is inseparable from our struggle against occupation and colonialism. True labor solidarity is demonstrated through actions, not just words, and we count on your awareness and determination to take concrete steps to end this tragedy.”

This International Workers’ Day, we call upon the workers of the world to manifest their material solidarity with the imprisoned, massacred, targeted Palestinian workers under genocide, occupation and colonization, to confront the war machine of imperialism and capitalism, and to constitute an international popular cradle of the Resistance defending humanity by taking real, serious and meaningful collective action to shut down the workplaces, ports and factories that continue to fuel genocide. Examples already exist of the dockworkers in Morocco, South Africa, India, Sweden, Norway, Turkey, Italy, Belgium and even the ILWU on the United States West Coast refusing to handle the occupier’s cargo, shipped by ZIM, Maersk and other complicit profiteers of genocide.

The Zionist entity is an advanced base of U.S. and Western imperialism in the region, and it targets not only Palestinian workers, but the workers of the world. The road to the liberation of the international working class, the defeat of imperialism and capitalism, runs now, centrally and clearly, through ending the genocide, the victory of the Resistance, and the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. 

We know that the Palestinian workers in Gaza, with their minds and hands, will rebuild all that has been destroyed by the occupation, as they have many times over the years and indeed, the centuries. It is our responsibility to act now to bring about that new day.

On 1 May 2025, we call upon workers and labour organizations around the world to affirm clearly their position against genocide and with the Palestinian people through:

  • General strikes, wildcat strikes and widespread workplace and civil disobedience against genocide and imperialist war crimes. Demand a complete end to the genocide in Gaza, the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners, and full boycott and divestment from all Zionist corporations and imperialist war profiteers complicit in genocide.
  • Enforce and impose grassroots and popular sanctions — in the example of Yemeni workers — by refusing to handle the weapons shipments and cargo of ZIM, Maersk and their fellow war profiteers
  • Boycotting the Zionist “labour” federation, the Histadrut, “Israel Bonds,” and complicit corporations and organizations
  • Acting collectively to defend workers and students targeted for repression, firing, silencing and imprisonment for their action, organizing and speech for Palestine

(We have revised and updated the following text for International Workers’ Day 2025. All images are classic posters of the Palestinian revolution via the Palestine Poster Project.)

Palestinian workers and the popular classes have always played the key, leading role as the force of the Palestinian liberation movement, inside and outside Palestine. The prisoners’ movement is no exception; indeed, the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners come from the working and popular classes, the refugee camps and the villages, and it is these workers who put their bodies and lives on the line for freedom. Today, it is Palestinian workers and popular classes on the front lines confronting a genocidal assault for over 18 months, after 77 years of ongoing genocide.

Palestinian workers: A history of leadership in struggle

Palestinians have engaged in labor organizing from the early days of the 20th century, organizing unions, defending their work against Zionist attempts to exclude Palestinian labor from Palestinian land, and taking action to defend their rights as workers and as indigenous Palestinians.

General strikes have always been a key mechanism of Palestinian resistance, from the earliest revolts of the Palestinian people against British and then Zionist colonialism. In the 1936 revolution, Palestinian workers’ six-month general strike was at that time the longest in the world. This continued over the years, as Palestinian workers in exile built the Palestinian liberation movement and its organizations, and as Palestinian workers and labor unions led in the organizing of the first intifada. UNRWA workers and others in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon paved the way for the modern revolution, as revolutionary leaders like Abu Maher al-Yamani organized refugees for liberation and return on the basis of their trade union work before the Nakba in Palestine.

In the 1950s, Palestinian labor organizers in occupied Palestine ’48 were jailed as they attempted to keep their organizations intact under martial law. At least seven Palestinian trade union leaders were deported from the West Bank between 1969 and 1979. These attacks happened as Palestinians inside Israeli jails fought to end forced labor, a victory that was achieved only through great sacrifice. Omar Shalabi, a Syrian prisoner, was killed under torture in October 1973 during the protests against Israeli forced labor.

Targeting and imprisonment of Palestinian workers

Palestinian workers are regularly subject to colonial forms of imprisonment, from the political targeting of workers’ organizations to the mass criminalization of Palestinians seeking employment inside occupied Palestine ’48. Palestinian workers are frequently arrested for “entering Israel without a permit,” despite the fact that many of these same workers are Palestinian refugees denied their right to return to their original homes and lands for the past 74 years. The systematic siege and subjugation of the Palestinian economy, from the texts of the Paris Protocols to the so-called “Abraham Accords” promoted by U.S. imperialism through their sponsorship of reactionary Arab regimes, has forced thousands of Palestinians to seek work with or without permits as day laborers, often in construction.

At any given time, there are approximately 1000 Palestinians arrested, detained or fined for seeking to work in their own homeland; they are not classified in the Israeli colonial system as “security” prisoners and are thus missing from the statistics related to Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails. However, it is clear that everything about these workers’ situation is deeply political – they are imprisoned for their Palestinian existence on Palestinian land, specifically as Palestinian workers. Palestinian workers from Gaza working in the West Bank — as well as those abducted from Gaza — have been subjected to the most extreme and severe forms of torture and abuse, from beating to rape and sexual assault to starvation and sleep deprivation — in the notorious prison and torture camps like Sde Teiman and Anatot.

Palestinian workers are subjected to ongoing abuse at checkpoints, systemic discrimination on the job from the river to the sea, and economic isolation, starvation and siege meant to compel workers into becoming construction workers and servants in illegal settlements. For over 18 years, the siege on Gaza has served as yet another attack on Palestinian workers. Even before the escalated genocide, the Gaza Strip had the highest levels of unemployment in Palestine due to the deliberate targeting of the Palestinian economy and its productive basis, including workers, fishers and farmers. Today, hundreds of thousands more have been forced into unemployment and are targeted daily for death and destruction.

There are currently over 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners jailed by the Zionist regime, including over 3,600 jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention. Confronting torture, abuse and starvation inside the Zionist jails, which has led to the martyrdom of over 65 prisoners over the past 18 months, the Palestinian prisoners are on the front lines of Palestinian resistance on a daily basis. They are leaders in the Palestinian, Arab and international camp of resistance — and like the freedom fighters and martyrs of Palestine, they represent the workers and popular classes of Palestine, those who face multiple forms of exploitation and oppression at the hands of the Zionist regime. The liberation of the prisoners is so precious to the Palestinian people and their resistance that it was a central goal of Al-Aqsa Flood and the great crossing of struggle. Freedom for Palestinian prisoners is essential to the liberation of the Palestinian working class and popular masses — the central feature of the liberation of Palestine from imperialism and Zionism, from the river to the sea.

The Histadrut: A colonialist entity that must be boycotted

The drive to exclude Palestinian workers has always been part of the Zionist colonial project. This has been reflected in the founding principles and continued operation of the Israeli Histadrut, a trade union federation founded with the explicit purpose of promoting Zionist colonization of Palestinian land and excluding Palestinian labor. Despite having a fraternal relationship with the AFL-CIO and other major labor unions worldwide, it actually exploits Palestinian workers inside “Israel” by deducting fees from their salaries while denying them benefits, let alone its ongoing and systematic role as part of the Zionist-imperialist machine of genocide. Its role predates the Nakba and continues to reflect this colonial relationship. Today, it must be more clear than ever: any relationship with the Histadrut is complicity in genocide, and those responsible for complicity in genocide must be held accountable — first and foremost, by the workers.

Palestinian workers in exile and diaspora fight back

Palestinian workers in exile also continue to struggle against exploitation and oppression. In Lebanon, amid the targeting of Lebanon, its people and its Resistance by the Zionist attacks that daily violate the ceasefire, the imperialist powers and financial exploiters, Palestinian refugees continue to be denied access to numerous professions, leading to massive unemployment and frequent despair among the working class. Palestinian refugees forced to flee to Europe, North America and elsewhere from Lebanon, Syria and occupied Palestine confront racist, repressive policies that inhibit their right to work and threaten them with deportation, detention and exclusion.

They confront the racism of “Fortress Europe” and criminalization of refugee workers alongside fellow migrants and workers seeking safety and refuge from the military, social, environmental and economic disasters forced upon their home countries by the very imperialist states that then deny their rights. They face severe exploitation in black market labor. Still, these workers continue to struggle despite all odds not only to confront racism and exclusion in the imperialist countries but also to organize to confront imperialism and win their liberation. Palestinian workers are marching in, leading and organizing the demonstrations that took massively to the streets of the world to confront the genocide and stand with the Palestinian people, and are the first to be targeted for these actions by police and state repression. Workers around the world, and particularly in the imperial core, have been fired, dismissed and imprisoned because they speak out for Palestine, and Palestinian workers in exile and diaspora have been among the foremost examples. Inside and outside Palestine, the workers and popular masses are protecting Palestine and pushing the struggle forward, without compromise.

Confronting imperialism, Arab reactionary regimes and the Oslo Palestinian Authority 

Zionist genocidal colonialism reflects the sharpest edge of capitalist exploitation for the Palestinian working class, backed up fully by the most powerful and dangerous imperialist powers, especially the United States. However, they also face Arab reactionary regimes, such as Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, that are complicit with the exploitation and marginalization of Palestinian workers even as they are complicit with the genocide of the Zionist regime through normalization and direct participation. Palestinian workers are exploited by the ruling class of these states directly in exile and diaspora as well as through their direct engagement with and promotion of the colonial economy of Zionism, and Arab workers are themselves threatened with imprisonment and harsh repression when they take action to defend the Palestinian people.

Palestinian workers also confront Palestinian capitalists and the Palestinian Authority, formed as a security subcontractor to the Israeli occupation. The Jordanian monarchy acted in the 1970s and 1980s to repress union organizing in the interests of Palestinian capitalists, while ultra-wealthy Palestinian capitalists like Bashar al-Masri are on the first lines promoting normalization and undermining the boycott of Israel.

Imperialism is on the attack around the world, using its military might and its weapons of siege and sanctions against peoples around the world. As always, it is workers and the impoverished classes who bear the heaviest brunt of these assaults. Fighting back against imperialism, including U.S., Canadian and EU sanctions on Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and indeed, nearly one-third of the world, in addition to its direct involvement and armament of genocide, its bombing of Yemen, its military interventions, warmongering and ongoing violent attacks on all forms of resistance to imperial domination, is essential to building the movement for Palestine.

A call to the workers’ movements of the world

On International Workers’ Day, we once again amplify the words of Kamil Abu Hanish, speaking from Israeli prison, urging the escalation of the boycott movement: “Today, we call upon you, the fighters for freedom and justice in the world, the workers’ movements, the strugglers for socialism, the movements of revolution, to escalate your support for our struggle, for the Palestinian people and for the Palestinian prisoners. We urge you to act to isolate the occupation state, to hold it accountable for 70 years of crimes against the Palestinian people…The workers’ movements, the movements of the popular classes, the movements of the oppressed, can and must take part in this battle around the world, as part and parcel of the struggle against racism, imperialism and capitalism.”

International workers’ solidarity with Palestine has a long and proud history, including in the heart of the imperial core. See, for example, in the United States — the leading sponsor of the Zionist regime, together with its imperialist partners in Britain, France, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and elsewhere — the important role of Black and Arab autoworkers who struck in 1973 in Detroit against their union’s purchase of “Israel Bonds.” Today, amid the ongoing genocide in Palestine, as the bombs create belts of fire, as dozens of Palestinian workers are martyred daily, this moment is perhaps more urgent than ever.

We also express our solidarity with the struggling workers of the world, including the imprisoned labor union and workers’ movement leaders who are held behind bars or face death threats and repression for their role in defending oppressed workers. From India to the Philippines to France, from Colombia to Egypt and Morocco, we stand with these labor movements targeted for repression. The liberation of Palestine is fundamentally linked to the liberation of all from imperialism, exploitation and capitalism.

On International Workers’ Day, these struggles must become an occasion to escalate our work to support Palestinian workers, end the genocide, uphold the resistance, free the prisoners, and liberate Palestine, from the river to the sea.

Palestinian prisoner Haneen Jaber, the mother of heroes and martyrs, diagnosed with cancer inside Zionist prisons

On 29 April, the family of Haneen Jaber, the imprisoned Palestinian mother of martyrs Mahmoud Jaber and Mohammed Jaber (Abu Shujaa), of Nour Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem, has been diagnosed with cancer. She is currently in a critical medical condition inside Zionist occupation prisons.

Haneen Jaber was arrested on the evening of December 4, 2024, by the Zionist occupation forces at the entrance of the city of Qalgilya.

The arrest and targeting of the mothers — and fellow relatives — of martyrs and resistance fighters is a common practice of the occupation regime in Palestine. It is frequently used in an attempt to force people to turn themselves in, or as a form of collective punishment in an attempt to deter future resistance fighters from confronting the occupation.

Haneen’s son, the martyr Mohammed Jaber, Abu Shujaa, became a legendary resistance fighter and a leader of the Tulkarem Brigades with Saraya al-Quds of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, martyred at the age of 26. He was abducted for the first time by the Zionist regime when he was 17 years old and spent 5 years in occupation prisons through multiple arrests, where he was imprisoned alongside leaders of the resistance. He repeatedly confronted not only the attacks of the occupation but also of the collaborationist Palestinian Authority, which sought to arrest or even assassinate him under the policy of “security coordination” with the Zionist regime.

He was assassinated by the occupation regime on 29 August 2024 after multiple assassination attempts, and battled with the occupation until the last moment alongside his fellow strugglers, Hamouda al-Awfi and Majd Daoud. All three of their bodies were kidnapped by the occupation as part of the ongoing policy of the abduction of the bodies of martyrs as a form of collective punishment and in order to hold them hostage. Their bodies continue to be imprisoned by the occupation today; Haneen, and the other families of the martyrs, have been denied even the right to bury their beloved and heroic sons.

Watch his interview with Al-Mayadeen before his assassination (subtitled in English):


Nine months earlier, in December 2023, his brother, Mahmoud Jaber, was martyred in the Nour Shams camp, killed by the occupation forces during one of their attacks on the camp’s people. He was one of five Palestinians martyred that day in the camp as they confronted the invading occupation forces.

Haneen sons, Ahmad and Uday are both liberated prisoners who spent years in the occupation’s prisons; her youngest son, Qusay, saw his mother arrested in front of him by the occupation forces. Their home was demolished by the occupation during their ongoing invasion and attack on Nour Shams camp and the other refugee camps of the West Bank, which have displaced tens of thousands. Her husband, Samer Jaber, spoke about her imprisonment with Free Palestine TV:

Haneen Jaber’s cancer diagnosis behind bars is particularly worrisome and her release urgent, because the Zionist regime practices a clear policy of medical neglect and mistreatment against the Palestinian prisoners. For years, medical neglect and negligence has been the standard official operating policy of the Zionist prison administration. However, amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza and since 7 October 2023, the practice of medical abuse has dramatically escalated. Over 65 Palestinian prisoners have been martyred in Zionist jails since that date, including multiple Palestinians killed by torture and others by starvation, malnutrition, medical neglect and mistreatment. Walid Daqqah, the Palestinian intellectual, writer and freedom fighter, was martyred on 4 April 2024 after he was repeatedly denied appropriate treatment for his rare blood cancer as well as being denied early release on multiple occasions.

Palestinian prisoners’ associations appealed today to the World Health Organization (WHO) over the urgent crisis for Palestinian health, noting “the outbreak of a number of diseases including scabies skin disease and amoebic infections, chronic diarrhea, continuous vomiting, in addition to other serious skin diseases. Child detainees are also exhibiting symptoms of undiagnosed and untreated dermatological illnesses. All detainees are being denied their right to medical care, and the prison administration refuses to treat the root cause of these illnesses, which is the inhumane and unhygienic detention conditions inside the prisons.”

The occupation has denied Palestinian prisoners access to cleaning supplies, personal sanitary needs, and medical care, particularly examinations and transfers by outside or independent doctors and hospitals. This weaponization of health care parallels the ongoing assault and destruction of the hospitals of Gaza, and the assassination and imprisonment of healthcare workers, such as Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya. In short, the dire medical situation in the Zionist prisons is not only tragic, it is a policy of slow killing and assassination against the Palestinian prisoners.

We urge all to follow and participate in the Dismantle Damon campaign to join international actions and informational campaigns about Haneen Jaber and all of the women prisoners in Zionist jails.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network calls for the immediate release of Haneen Jaber and all Palestinian prisoners, particularly the thousands of sick and ill prisoners, many with serious or chronic illness, being denied medical care and subjected to a systematic policy of medical negligence. We send our warmest wishes, hopes and prayers for a speedy recovery to Haneen and all of the imprisoned patients, for their health and liberation, and for the health and liberation of Palestine, its land and people.

Stop the dissolution of Urgence Palestine: Take action now to confront France’s complicity in genocide!

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network condemns in the strongest terms the announced plans of the French state to “dissolve” — that is, effectively ban — 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. This is, of course, only the latest action of the French state against the Palestine liberation movement and a further expression of its complicity in and responsibility for the ongoing genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine, as well as its vicious repression of the Palestinian liberation movement and Palestine solidarity within France itself.

We urge all in France and around the world to stand with Urgence Palestine.

  • Sign on to the Urgence Palestine collective statement against dissolutions: https://tiny.cc/stopdissolution
  • 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!

This attack on Urgence Palestine also aims to target the Palestinian diaspora and its organizing in France around principles that challenge imperialist involvement in and support for the genocide in Palestine, confront the complicity of the Palestinian Authority, and affirm the legitimacy of the resistance. 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. As the world commemorates the defeat of fascism in World War II and the execution of Mussolini, the French state is banning antifascist movements.

Of course, this latest attack, while outrageous, comes as no surprise. It comes mere weeks after the French Conseil d’État upheld the 2022 dissolution of the Collectif Palestine Vaincra, issued by then-Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. Today, it is Retailleau issuing the dissolution order — but it is the same policy of repression, silencing and criminalization imposed upon the Palestinian people. It also comes 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. The French state has repeatedly used the weapon of dissolution to target Palestinian and Palestine solidarity organizations, anti-fascist organizations, Muslim organizations, campaigns against Islamophobia, and even local mosques. This comes after the French state was required by the European Court of Human Rights to cease its attempts to repeatedly criminally prosecute activists for organizing for the boycott of the Zionist regime and “Israeli” products in multiple cities throughout the country.

It also comes as France is arresting, imprisoning, prosecuting and interrogating hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals, writers and activists across the country for expressing their solidarity with Palestine and affirming the legitimacy, heroism and leadership of the Palestinian resistance and the forces of resistance in the region. Jean-Paul Delescaut, secretary-general of the labor union federation CGT du Nord, was sentenced to one year in prison with a suspended sentence for “apology for terrorism,” the catch-all charge being used by the state in these cases, for distributing a leaflet in solidarity with the Palestinian people and against the Zionist-imperialist genocide. François Burgat, the 75-year-old research director emeritus at the French National Center for Scientific Research, is on trial this month for “apology for terrorism” for tweeting, “I have more respect and appreciation for the leaders of Hamas than the leaders of the state of Israel. I don’t think I am the only one, quite the opposite.”

Elias d’Imzalène, a prominent community activist, was convicted and sentenced by a French court to a five-month suspended prison sentence for delivering a speech about Palestine, racism and repression in France and using the term intifada. Alex, a youth activist in Lyon, has been suspended from his job and will be put on trial on 15 May for “apology for terrorism” for delivering a speech in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance and for the liberation of Georges Abdallah. French-Palestinian Member of European Parliament Rima Hassan was interrogated by police for over 11 hours over her public advocacy for Palestine, again under the guise of investigating “apology for terrorism” and following an extended online smear campaign demanding the revocation of her citizenship.

Nurse Imane Maarifi, who volunteered in Gaza, was arrested by the police and her home searched in front of her children; an activist who has consistently documented the massacres and abuses of the Zionist genocidal army, as well as the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people for nearly a year was arrested and his home searched; the president of the Pessac mosque, Abdourahman Ridouane, was ordered deported to Niger and held in administrative detention. Just last week, the home of French-Iranian journalist Shahin Hazamy was raided by a squad of 10 masked security agents, arresting him for days and releasing him with charges of “apology for terrorism” for writing and speaking about Palestine.

Mahdieh Esfandiari, an Iranian linguist and French language graduate who lives in Lyon, where she works at Lumière University as a professor and interpreter, has been imprisoned at Fresnes Prison since 28 February for her public posts and statements about Palestine, the imperialist-Zionist genocide and the Palestinian resistance, again for allegations of “apology for terrorism.”

On 18 June, Anasse Kazib, labor organizer and spokesperson for Révolution Permanente, will go on trial with a comrade for his tweets in support of Palestine, a case that recently inspired a solidarity statement of over 1,000 intellectuals, political figures and academics.

All of these cases are not aberrations but reflect the reality that France is an imperialist state with a lengthy and bloody history and present of colonialism and imperial plunder and exploitation in the Arab region — from Lebanon, Syria and Egypt to Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco — and across Asia and Africa, not to mention Haiti, whose great Revolution overthrew the system of French colonial slavery over two centuries ago. In Kanaky (called New Caledonia by the French), France retains its colonial rule (enforced through a settler project) and is currently imprisoning Kanak pro-independence leaders, including Christian Tein, in French mainland prisons over 17,000 kilometers from their homes.

Like its fellow imperialist powers, France fully supports the Zionist project in occupied Palestine as an outpost of Western imperialism in the region. Indeed, 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.

On the legal level, as well as the political and moral levels, the reality is quite clear: The Palestinian people have the right to resist occupation and colonization by all means necessary, including and centrally, the right to armed struggle and armed resistance. On the other hand, genocide, such as that being carried out by the Zionist regime, is the greatest crime in international law. 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.

These attacks are carried out by the state in full alliance with an array of extreme-right, racist, Islamophobic and Zionist politicians, online smearmonger accounts, and associations, who routinely take to social media as well as the French airwaves to attack and slander those who speak out for Palestine. We are certainly aware that many of the same individuals and organizations that have repeatedly demanded the dissolution of Urgence Palestine have done the same for Samidoun Paris Banlieue, EuroPalestine, and attempted the dissolution of the Comité Action Palestine. These attacks intensified particularly following the joint demonstration of Urgence Palestine and Samidoun Paris Banlieue as part of International Women’s Day, which upheld the Palestinian resistance, urged the liberation of Palestinian prisoners and of Palestine, from the river to the sea, and defeated the attempts of racist and Zionist organizations to infiltrate and undermine the march.

It is in this context, while ordering the ban of one of the largest organizations active in the movement to defend Palestine, that French President Emmanuel Macron uttered his statements about seeking “recognition of a Palestinian state” — at nearly the same time that his government seemingly threatened a French military invasion of Gaza, ostensibly to assist with “aid,” but openly as part of a military effort to attack and disarm the Palestinian resistance. The objectives behind Macron’s proposed “recognition of the Palestinian state” (in reality, the recognition of the administration of the collaborationist Palestinian Authority over 22% of historic Palestine) are in fact aimed solely at imposing the surrender of the Palestinian resistance, guaranteeing the stability of the Zionist state, and deepening the presence of Western imperialism in the region.

The order of dissolution against Urgence Palestine and attacks on the movement for Palestinian liberation in France mirror the attacks in the other major imperialist powers, from the banning of Samidoun and multiple other organizations in Germany, accompanied by widescale police violence, arrests and persecution for merely saying, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free;” the U.S.’ series of arrests, detentions and deportations of student activists and the “terrorist” designation of Samidoun; the arrests and detentions of demonstrators in Belgium; the house raids on journalists and the persecution of the Filton 18 and other activists in Britain; and similar cases from Canada to the Netherlands and beyond. It is clear that the imperialist powers view the mass mobilization of the people against genocide in the imperial core, standing with the Palestinian people and the resistance forces of the region, as an intolerable threat to their continued ability to plunder and exploit the people of the region and the world.

We must all stand together with Urgence Palestine. 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!

We urge all in France and around the world to stand with Urgence Palestine.

  • Sign on to the Urgence Palestine collective statement against dissolutions: https://tiny.cc/stopdissolution
  • 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!

Download PDF Signs (English and French)

NON À LA DISSOLUTION

 

Nael Barghouti and fellow liberated prisoners arrive today in Turkey

Today, six Palestinian prisoners liberated in the Toufan al-Ahrar exchange traveled to Turkey from Egypt; all six had been part of the group of liberated life sentence and long sentence prisoners deported to Egypt as part of the exchange.

Among them is Nael Barghouti, the longest-held Palestinian prisoner in Zionist jails, who served 44 years in occupation prisons over 2 terms of imprisonment. Liberated in 2011 in the Wafa al-Ahrar exchange, he was re-arrested in 2014 and his prior sentence reimposed. During his liberation, he married fellow liberated prisoner Iman Nafeh, who has been barred by the occupation from traveling from Palestine to see her husband.

The six who arrived in Turkey today are:
1. Nael Barghouti
2. Rabie Shibli
3. Shadi Odeh
4. Omar Taha al-Rimawi
5. Yousri al-Joulani
6. Ismail Hijazi

Nael Barghouti, Rabie Shibli, Shadi Odeh, Yousri al-Joulani and Ismail Hijazi are all re-arrested Wafa al-Ahrar releasees, while Omar Taha al-Rimawi, who was serving a life sentence, is 23 years old; he was arrested when he was 14 for participating in a resistance operation at an illegal colonial settlement.

Turkey had previously received three groups of liberated prisoners in the exchange, as reported by the Prisoners’ Media Office:

  • First group: 15 liberated prisoners

  • Second group: 2 liberated prisoners

  • Third group: 13 liberated prisoners

Thus, the number of those who had arrived before the latest group was 30 freed prisoners, namely:

  1. Ishaq Taher Salah Arafah

  2. Bahjat Mahmoud Jamil Shqeirat

  3. Ramadan Eid Ramadan Mashahrah

  4. Sajed Ahmad Salim Abu Ghalous

  5. Ammar Sidqi Salim Abu Ghalous

  6. Fahmi Eid Ramadan Mashahrah

  7. Muhammad Odeh Ishaq Odeh

  8. Lillah Ayyoub Muhammad Abu Rjaila

  9. Saed Abd al-Samih Suleiman Zaid

  10. Muayyad Shukri Abd al-Hamid Hammad

  11. Mudhar Musa Ahmad Abudayyeh

  12. Mahmoud Hammad Mahmoud Shreiteh

  13. Musa Adam Salem Akhleil

  14. Shadi Abd al-Sameea Suleiman Zaid

  15. Mahmoud Asaad Mahmoud Issa

  16. Murad Barghouthi

  17. Jihad al-Najjar

  18. Ahmad Aref Khalil al-Asafrah

  19. Ahmad Qasem Jamil Abu Awad

  20. Ragheb Ahmad Muhammad Aleiwi

  21. Raed Issa Muhammad al-Hroub

  22. Raafat Raji Mahmoud al-Battat

  23. Abdel-Nasser Atallah Shaker Issa

  24. Othman Said Ahmad Said

  25. Alaa Rateb Abd al-Latif Qabaha

  26. Imad Naeem Saleh al-Sharif

  27. Muhammad Khalil Adnan Dawoud Abu Sneineh

  28. Haitham Ismail Abd al-Fattah al-Battat

  29. Youssef Hassan Ahmad Qaisiya

  30. Youssef Khaled Mustafa Kamil

It is worth noting that the first phase of the ceasefire agreement went into effect on January 19, during which the occupation forces released 1,777 Palestinian prisoners in the Toufan al-Ahrar exchange, including:

  • Prisoners serving life sentences and long-term sentences

  • Re-arrested prisoners from the “Wafa al-Ahrar” deal

  • Prisoners from Gaza detained after October 7

  • Women and children

Malaysia had received 15 freed prisoners over the past two weeks under the framework of the Toufan al-Ahrar deal, and arrangements are currently underway to receive additional groups of freed prisoners in other countries soon.

Efforts to receive the liberated prisoners in other countries have been reportedly hindered by the interference of the Palestinian Authority, which has imposed delays on issuing passports, especially for the Fateh liberated prisoners, the veterans of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of the Second, Al-Aqsa Intifada.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes all of the liberated prisoners on their freedom and urges all to welcome and salute the freed prisoners and to work for the liberation of the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners behind Zionist bars.

Palestinian Prisoners’ Day: The Experience of Struggle Inside the Prisons by Wael Jaghoub

The following article, by Wael Jaghoub, liberated Palestinian prisoner freed in the Toufan al-Ahrar prisoner exchange, was originally published in Arabic in Al-Akhbar on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, 17 April 2025. 

Born on 23 May 1967, Wael Jaghoub was active in the Palestinian struggle from an early age. Amid the great popular Intifada of the Stones, he was arrested by the occupation in 1992 and sentenced to six years in occupation prisons. With the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, he became one of the active leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Nablus. He was arrested on 1 May 2001 and sentenced to life imprisonment. During his years in prison, he was subjected to solitary confinement and denied family visits; he became a writer behind bars and published several books as well as many articles and studies, including this 2016 article. When he was released, he said: “I did not lose hope for 24 hours that the resistance would liberate me…and I continue to have hope that the resistance will liberate those left behind.” 

The Palestinian Prisoners’ National Movement, First and Always! 

Palestinian Prisoners’ Day: On the Experience of Struggle Inside the Prisons

Wael Jaghoub

It is inevitable that the experience of struggle of Palestinian prisoners inside the Zionist prisons—a natural extension of the overall Palestinian condition—must take into account the particularity of this arena, and accordingly, the importance of the concepts produced by this specific experience, which carry and represent this dimension.

The experience of struggle inside the prison is a daily and direct engagement with the colonial system in all of its components—political, security, judicial, and medical. At the same time, it is a confrontation and a defense of the moral and intellectual system that the imprisoned human being represents, which the colonial system works to control in a specific and stereotypical manner, stripped of its human and moral dimensions. The act of engagement emerges at this level when the prisoner confronts the jailer and defends these essential human and moral dimensions, making this a fierce confrontation at the level of consciousness.

It is worth noting that the concepts governing the struggle were produced by the specific experience inside the prisons, foremost among them hope—as both a moral value and a principle—relying equally on the dimension of will and the dimension of consciousness.

Collective consciousness is a vital and central link in the struggle; achieving the  goals of the prisoners is impossible outside of its framework or isolated from it. One primary requirement for confrontation is an affiliated, organized and engaged leadership, alongside the practical model of work on the ground and the daily program—all of which are factors working together to translate vision and strategy into practice. The limited and defined reality inside the prison is governed by these concepts and the current reality of struggle requires them to be read and contemplated seriously.

The Experience of Struggle Between the Freedom Tunnel and October 7

Undoubtedly, the “Freedom Tunnel” represents one of the pivotal moments in the history of the prisoners’ movement and its long experience, with what it symbolizes and the repercussions and effects it has had on the broader national level, primarily in breaking down the walls of myth that had taken root in people’s minds—that we cannot overcome this enemy, nor can we defeat it or achieve victory over it. Victories of any size represent an important step in any people’s struggle: they instill hope, strengthen the will, and raise consciousness. This is exactly what this pivotal event represented, influencing also the context of the prisoners’ movement and its experience, becoming a significant and qualitative turning point. It shifted the prisoner once again from a focus on the daily, immediate, and personal to the broader strategic and national struggle, linking the prison with the entire homeland. It also correctly redefined the relationship between prisoner and jailer, removed all ambiguities, reinstated the effective presence of the prisoners’ movement, and restored the value of national unity as the true lever for every confrontation with its value, position, and impact.

It was a material translation of the collective dimension of the struggle. This is part of the Freedom Tunnel’s impact on the struggling reality of the prisoners’ movement. The prison administration considered the moment suitable to launch an assault on the prisoners’ movement, seeking to dismantle it and to thwart the anticipated impacts of the Freedom Tunnel on the prisoners’ movement internally as well as its engagement with the broader national liberation struggle. Therefore, multiple measures were taken: attempts to restrict daily living conditions, tighten oppression against prisoners, withdraw achievements, and apply repressive policies. This stemmed from a conviction that had become entrenched among the jailers—claiming that the prisoners’ movement was fragmented and could not resist or confront these policies, particularly given the Palestinian internal political division’s effects on the reality of the prisoners’ movement.

However, the prisoners’ movement possessed the necessary awareness to realize the importance of reconstituting the struggling dimension of the confrontation, rising above trivial or petty matters, and committing to a central mission: repelling the comprehensive aggression and the general offensive launched by the Zionist colonial security and political apparatus.

This must be considered the central task and the first step of struggle. This means setting aside all disputes and committing entirely to the mission, reflecting an advanced state of awareness that requires practical translation, embodied in the formation of an emergency leadership from across the political spectrum, forming an effective leading and guiding body for the entire prisoners’ movement, drafting a daily action plan for confrontation and resistance, and adopting the choice of resistance to repel the attack. This materialized through the formulation of a daily confrontation program—through daily protest steps—which reflected the unity of will and action and confounded the prison administration’s calculations. The preparation for launching an open hunger strike forced the prison administration to retreat from its measures and repressive steps.

The Stage Before October 7

For nearly two years, a crucial period in history and in the experience of the prisoners’ movement unfolded. Its main achievement was the establishment of a state of national unity and the adoption of the path of resistance. This opened the way for new ideas concerning the questions of imprisonment and its continuation, and the struggle for liberation and its possibilities. This led to the proposal of the “Freedom Strike,” aiming to seize prisoners’ freedom or embrace death, presenting a project and a plan in this regard, from which several important lessons and conclusions were drawn:

First: Confronting aggression can only be achieved through the formulation of a comprehensive united state, based on the foundation of resistance, defiance and confrontation. Unity must be founded on a clear, specific program within a clear framework and vision.

Second: Clarifying the goal of repelling aggression and focusing on what must be defined, without succumbing to the residue of disputes, divisions, and conflicting political stances, and instead formulating common ground.

Third: The condition of the leadership, providing the will to identify and comprehend the national situation and offering a model through its leadership of the confrontation.

Fourth: Collective participation by prisoners lies in formulating the unified path, supporting it, and reflecting the harmony between leadership and the grassroots bases.

Fifth: Repelling aggression is not achieved through absorbing it but through confronting and engaging it using all possible—and legitimate—tools at the moment of confrontation.

Sixth: Formulating consciousness and its changing concepts, including understanding the role and status of consciousness in the struggle.

These are some conclusions from an important phase preceding October 7, during a moment when the prisoners’ movement faced a fierce and widespread attack, during which the prisoners proved their worthiness of the challenge.

The Stage After October 7

This date marks another turning point in the form and level of the fierce assault on the prisoners’ movement. There was a transition from a stage of gradual cumulative targeting to the imposition of the so-called “Gilad Erdan Committee” decisions— named for Gilad Erdan, the Minister of Internal Security in 2017–2018, who formed the committee to study the measures to be taken against Palestinian prisoners in Zionist prisons.

At the time, the committee issued a report that included several measures, foremost among them dismantling the political presence of prisoners inside the prison, meaning ending the existence of organizations and collective representation of prisoners, targeting cultural and academic programs, and withdrawing all the achievements of the prisoners’ movement related to the conditions of daily life. These objectives, along with the plans to implement them, were already prepared by the prison administration. After October 7, they moved to the stage of comprehensive war against the prisoners’ movement, launching a savage assault based on a set of policies and procedures, summarized as follows:

First: The Policy of Deterrence

One of the components of the Israeli security doctrine, practiced against prisoners even before October 7, but its intensity drastically increased afterward. It became part of the framework of comprehensive war against the prisoners, manifested through the use of severe explosive violence against them—daily physical assaults inside the prisons, without distinction between a male or female prisoner, or between child or elder.

These violations led to thousands of injuries among prisoners, and even the loss of life for some, such as prisoner Thaer Abu Assab, who was martyred in the Negev prison as a result of beating. In addition, there were continuous raids day and night on prisoners’ rooms and sections, maintaining a constant state of fear and extreme tension, continuous transfers, and the confiscation of all belongings, including clothes, shoes, watches, electrical appliances, televisions, and radios, turning rooms into barren cells devoid of any minimum components of human life.

Additionally, the prison administration doubled or tripled the number of prisoners per room, as a form of abuse, harassment and intimidation.

This policy aimed to prevent any attempt at resistance by prisoners and to break their collective spirit by ending organizational existence, abolishing collective representation and ending the prisoners’ daily vital cultural and study programs. However, one of the main goals, as openly stated by prison officials, was revenge. This component is central to analyzing the behavior of this apparatus and understanding its effect on the prisoners.

Second: The Policy of Starvation

Starving prisoners by reducing food quantities by approximately 80% from normal levels was the first immediate step of this policy, followed by the confiscation of all foodstuffs from prisoners’ rooms and sections, forcing prisoners to rely solely on the scant daily meals provided. This resulted in severe weight loss among all prisoners, visible through the emaciation and physical weakness observed among released prisoners. A simple comparison between a prisoner’s image before October 7 and after release shows the severity of what prisoners are enduring, the horror of the prisoners’ lives and the cruelty of the prison authority’s starvation policy. The quantities of food provided to a section that housed ninety prisoners were drastically reduced, even though the section now held about 250 prisoners. Moreover, the food served was of poor quality, lacks salt, spices, or oil, and is often undercooked.

The aim of the starvation policy was to destroy the prisoner’s morale and body alike, limiting any capacity for resilience or resistance and trying to reduce prisoners’ thinking to mere survival instincts—what could be termed “hunger consciousness.” In this way, hunger governs the prisoner’s behavior and narrows his consciousness to a survival instinct. This is part of the prison administration’s vengeful assault on the prisoners.

Third: The Policy of Isolation

This policy was implemented through several measures, including the suspension of Red Cross visits to prisons, halting family visits, severely restricting lawyers’ visits, and confiscating televisions, radios, and any means of communication, isolating prisoners entirely from the outside world. The goal was to dismantle prisoners’ morale and push them to abandon options for resistance, making prison officers the sole source of information—most of which consisted of misinformation aimed at misleading and sowing confusion and tension among prisoners. This was one of the most dangerous policies employed.

Fourth: The Policy of Medical Killing

The previous policy of deliberate medical neglect was replaced by a policy of deliberate medical killing, through halting the majority of medicines provided to prisoners and stopping serious medical follow-ups that existed before October 7.
This led to the spread of skin diseases—most notably scabies—as well as respiratory illnesses, causing the martyrdom of a number of prisoners.
Available figures indicate that approximately 69 prisoners have been martyred so far due to these policies.

This policy is the most dangerous, aiming to inflict chronic diseases on prisoners, leading to death. The implementation of these practices constitutes an ongoing war crime inside the prisons, supported and endorsed by the political, judicial, and security levels in Israel, and continues to this day without interruption. Prisoners’ testimonies continue to highlight this terrifying reality within the prisons, threatening the prisoners’ lives.

What Is Urgently Needed Now?

In this context of ongoing aggressive war and genocide against our people everywhere—and foremost among those locations, inside the prisons themselves, where daily, ongoing and escalated torture has not stopped for a single day but has intensified—the urgent question “What is to be done?” reemerges. The answer remains generally confusing, regarding the forms of confrontation of this aggression, equally applied to the prisoners’ situation and to exposing it. There is disorganized, scattered effort without proper accumulation of achievements, in addition to the absence of planning, defining objectives, determining the goals of struggle and how to achieve these goals. Perhaps this stems largely from the absence of a general national strategy of confrontation, especially regarding the prisoners, based on the belief that they will eventually be freed. However, this does not negate the crimes that have occurred, nor the importance of struggle around this cause.

This responsibility places us before the urgent need to organize and plan the struggle around the prisoners’ cause, aiming at:

First: Attempting to repel the declared war and aggression against the prisoners, confronting it, and exerting pressure by all means.

Second: Highlighting the ongoing crimes, widely disseminating them, and presenting the Palestinian narrative in a broad and organized manner.

Third: Documenting the living memory of prisoners regarding this historical phase.

Fourth: Working to broaden the base of global solidarity, amplifying the voice of the prisoners, advocating for the justice of their cause, and building a serious Palestinian movement.

Achieving these goals requires broad, collective effort to achieve them, as well as a general will to strive for liberation, to achieve these and other goals. This requires expanding ties among institutions, movements, activists, and forces to build an effective international coalition as a mechanism and a bloc, based on clear objectives related to the prisoners, their freedom, the suffering they endure, and their struggle for their liberation and to repel the aggression against them.

Such a coalition necessitates a serious initiative to address several tasks within a action plan, the most prominent of which include:

First: Launching an escalating international campaign with the participation of institutions and forces at regional and international levels, organizing periodic public and mass events for the prisoners’ cause.

Second: Working to form a multi-party entity—Palestinian, regional, and international—whose primary task would be to document and register every prisoner’s experience after October 7 as a project of collective, struggle-based, authentic living memory, a real testimony to the crimes of the occupation, to be disseminated as widely as possible.

Third: Working to establish an entity, initiated by institutions, to provide support and care for released prisoners, especially those who suffered psychologically after their detention experiences post-October 7.

Fourth: Focusing on organizing media efforts on social networks, launching a “Before and After” photo campaign for each prisoner, and creating a traveling exhibition of photos both physically and electronically.

Fifth: Working within sectoral campaigns to highlight the cases of women prisoners, child prisoners, administrative detainees, the sick, and the elderly, portraying each prisoner as a story—not just a number.

There are many tasks and ideas that can contribute to repelling the aggression against prisoners, but they require thought, effort, will, and initiative.
It is not enough, on this day, to merely address the prisoners’ issue alone. Rather, we must consider Palestinian Prisoners’ Day a day for evaluating our role—what is required of us, what we can do, and what we need—so that the cause of the prisoners does not remain present only seasonally or incidentally.

Barcelona stands with Palestinian prisoners in a global day of solidarity and resistance

Each year, 17 April marks Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, an international day of solidarity and struggle for the liberation of Palestinian political prisoners. This year, for the second year in a row, the commemoration takes place in the midst of the escalating U.S.-Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and across occupied Palestine.

In Barcelona, as in many cities around the world, Samidoun Barcelona took to the streets to stand with the prisoners — not only to denounce the brutal violence and abuse they endure under occupation, but also to honor their steadfastness, sacrifice, and vital role at the heart of the Palestinian resistance.

The day’s events included conversations with liberated Palestinian prisoners Fadia Barghouti and Hadeel Shatara, solidarity discussions, letter-writing workshops, banner-making, demonstrations, and more. These events also highlighted Palestinian political prisoners in Europe, including youth detained in Germany as well as Georges Abdallah, the Lebanese struggler for Palestine imprisoned in France for the past 40 years.

Samidoun Barcelona reaffirms our collective determination to continue the struggle until the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners and the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.

Freedom for all Palestinian prisoners!
Glory to the martyrs!
Victory to the Palestinian people!

Toulouse mobilizes to free Palestinian prisoners

On Thursday, 17 April, as part of the international events for Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, the Comité de soutien à la Palestine 31 in Toulouse, France called for a rally to demand the release of all Palestinian prisoners.

The mass imprisonment and incarceration of Palestinians has been central to the Zionist entity’s colonial domination since its inception. Currently, more than 10,000 Palestinians remain detained in Zionist prisons.

But prison is also a central place of organization, mobilization, and collective struggle against the colonial state. Despite the terrible treatment they endure in Zionist prisons, prisoners continue to organize and develop their forms of resistance.

Participants in the demonstration expressed their solidarity with Palestinian prisoners, and emphasized the campaign to free Georges Abdallah, the Lebanese political prisoner and staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, imprisoned in France for over 40 years.

The demonstration also highlighted various cases in the imperial core where Palestinians and supporters of Palestine are facing repression and imprisonment for their support of the Palestinian people’s struggle, such as Anan Yaeesh in Italy and Mahmoud Khalil in the United States.

Following the rally, a dynamic procession formed, chanting slogans all the way to the Galerie al Karmel, where the opening of the exhibition “Gaza 2001 – Window on Life” by Laurent Loubet took place.

The exhibition is open from April 17 to May 8. The organizers strongly encourage all to visit and spread the word.

During the following weekend, posters in support of the prisoners were seen in public locations around Toulouse.

As part of the international day of mobilization for the release of Palestinian prisoners, banners reading “Free Palestine” and “Free Palestinian prisoners” were seen near the Toulouse ring road.

Let us continue to escalate the mobilization against the repression of support for the Palestinian people’s struggle, for the release of all prisoners, and for a free Palestine from the river to the sea! Long live the struggle of the Palestinian people, freedom for all prisoners!

Palestine in the spotlight at festival to support Revolutionary 1 May in Brussels

As part of the festival in support of Revolutionary May Day in Brussels, held this Saturday, April 26, several dozen people participated in a roundtable discussion on the Palestine solidarity movement in Europe. Several anti-Zionist activists, including a member of AJAB, as well as a member of Samidoun and anti-imperialist activist Tom Martin, spoke at the event.

The Samidoun representative highlighted the current situation of the ongoing genocide in Palestine. In this context, she strongly denounced Mahmoud Abbas’s recent statements against the Palestinian resistance and called for renewed efforts to support the resistance in its fight against more than 76 years of settler colonialism. She then addressed the criminalization of the Samidoun network in Europe, such as in Germany and North America, as well as the repression in Belgium, where Mohammed Khatib, the network’s European coordinator was recently arrested overnight. Finally, she called for continued solidarity with the Palestinian national liberation struggle, particularly by building broad campaigns in support of Palestinian prisoners who represent the vanguard of the Palestinian resistance.

An anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist activist in France, Tom Martin spoke to remind us that the ongoing genocide is being carried out jointly by the Zionist state and Western imperialism, which continues its political, economic, and military support for what must be considered its outpost in the Arab world. He also explained how Macron’s recent statements on the “recognition of the Palestinian state” were just another attempt to guarantee the stability of the Zionist project and imperialist domination in the region by attempting to impose a surrender on the Palestinian people’s resistance movement. In this context, he emphasized that the repression against the solidarity movement also aims to hinder the self-organization of Palestinian and Arab communities in Europe who challenge European colonial and imperialist policies.

The AJAB representative reiterated the importance of combating antisemitism, like all other forms of racism, and firmly denounced its exploitation by the Belgian authorities and their allies. In particular, she revisited the issues surrounding the IHRA definition of antisemitism, of which seven out of eleven examples concern Israel, as a tool aimed at criminalizing anti-Zionism.

Finally, an anti-Zionist activist from Brussels spoke about the authorities’ growing repression of pro-Palestinian protests. She noted that these protests take many forms and highlighted their Islamophobic dimension. She also called for support for upcoming initiatives, particularly the nightly protests at the Bourse, as a space for self-organization and mobilization.

Finally, the meeting ended with a call to commit, act and organize for the liberation of Georges Abdallah, an Arab communist imprisoned in France for more than 40 years for his involvement in the Palestinian resistance, as a symbol of the unity of our struggles here and there against imperialism and Zionism.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

IN THE MATTER OF AN APPLICATION FOR DEPROSCRIPTION
BETWEEN:
حركة المقاومة الاسلامية

HARAKAT AL-MUQAWAMAH AL-ISLAMIYYAH

 Applicant
-and-
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT Respondent
SUBMISSIONS IN SUPPORT OF DEPROSCRIPTION

 

——————————————————————————————————————————-

REPORT ON

THE PALESTINIAN PRISONERS’ MOVEMENT AS

CENTRAL TO THE PALESTINIAN LIBERATION STRUGGLE

BY

CHARLOTTE KATES

——————————————————————————————————————————-

  1. INSTRUCTIONS

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

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

  1. QUALIFICATIONS

  1. I give this report in my personal capacity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. INTRODUCTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. THE PALESTINIAN PRISONERS’ NATIONAL MOVEMENT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. BATTLES OF EMPTY STOMACHS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. SELF-LIBERATION AND PRISONER ESCAPES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE AND PRISONER EXCHANGES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. CONCLUSION

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

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

  1. EXPERT OBLIGATIONS

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

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

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

Charlotte Kates

Co-founder, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

Tunis

Tunisia

17 December 2024

Footnotes:

  1. The term “asra”, used to describe Palestinian prisoners, can also be translated as “captives.” It conveys a different meaning to those who are imprisoned in a criminal or social context. However, we are using the English term “prisoners” here for clarity, with the understanding that the term “prisoner” does not mean that it is just that they are imprisoned – on the contrary, that this term in English helps to evoke the carceral reality of the Israeli occupation for Palestinians.↩︎

  2. Norma Hashim, “Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israeli Jails: Stories of Resistance,” Insight Turkey, Vo. 26, No. 1, pp. 31-40; Palestinian Youth Movement, ““Prisoners are the Compass of Our Struggle”: why the release of Palestinian prisoners is central to our liberation”, Shado Magazine, 6 December 2023: https://shado-mag.com/opinion/prisoners-release-palestine-israel-war/↩︎

  3. Al-Haq, “17 April: Palestinian Prisoners Day, Marks Increase in Torture, Ill treatment and Administrative Detention”, 22 April 2015. https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/6538.html↩︎

  4. Samidoun Seattle, “Palestinian prisoners are the leaders of our liberation struggle,” 17 April 2024, Real Change News: https://www.realchangenews.org/news/2024/04/17/palestinian-prisoners-are-leaders-our-liberation-struggle↩︎

  5. Leila Khaled, My People Shall Live: Autobiography of a Revolutionary, 1973.↩︎

  6. ’Arbitrary deprivation of liberty in the occupied Palestinian territory: the Palestinian experience behind and beyond bars‘ Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, 19 June-14 July 2023, A/HRC/53/59 https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g23/116/61/pdf/g2311661.pdf↩︎

  7. Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, “Statistics.” 17 December 2024: https://www.addameer.org/statistics↩︎

  8. UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, “UN Commission finds war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israeli attacks on Gaza health facilities and treatment of detainees, hostages,” https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/10/un-commission-finds-war-crimes-and-crimes-against-humanity-israeli-attacks↩︎

  9. Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, “Mohammed Walid Ali al-Aref martyred in Zionist prisons one week after his re-arrest,” 5 December 2024: https://samidoun.net/2024/12/mohammed-walid-ali-al-aref-martyred-in-zionist-prisons-one-week-after-his-re-arrest/↩︎

  10. ’Arbitrary deprivation of liberty in the occupied Palestinian territory: the Palestinian experience behind and beyond bars‘ Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, 19 June-14 July 2023, A/HRC/53/59 https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g23/116/61/pdf/g2311661.pdf↩︎

  11. Dr. Ramzy Baroud, “‘Prisoners are heroes’: Being a Palestinian prisoner in Israel,” Middle East Monitor, 8 April 2019: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190408-prisoners-are-heroes-being-a-palestinian-prisoner-in-israel/; Middle East Eye Staff, “Israeli minister Ben Gvir calls for execution of Palestinian prisoners to ease overcrowding,” 18 April 2024: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-itamar-ben-gvir-calls-execution-palestinans-ease-overcrowding-prisons; Adalah, “Human rights organizations in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory warn of a dangerous escalation in violations of Palestinian prisoners’ rights due to the radical policies of the new Israeli government,” 3 March 2023: https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/10795↩︎

  12. Lena Meari, “Sumud: A Palestinian Philosophy of Confrontation in Colonial Prisons,” South Atlantic Quarterly (2014), 113 (3): 547-578. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-2692182↩︎

  13. Tadamon: International Organization of Solidarity with Palestinian Prisoners, “The Palestinian Prisoners Movement: History and Experiences.” 9 September 2023: https://www.solidarity-ps.org/en/The_Palestinian_Prisoners_Movement↩︎

  14. Ramzy Baroud, “Instead of Freeing Palestinian Prisoners, New Scheme Aims at Punishing Their Families,” Palestine Chronicle, 3 February 2022: https://www.palestinechronicle.com/instead-of-freeing-palestinian-prisoners-new-scheme-aims-at-punishing-their-families/↩︎

  15. Samidoun, “93 years on the execution of the heroes of al-Buraq revolution: The prisoners’ struggle against imperialism and Zionism continues!”, 17 June 2023: https://samidoun.net/2023/06/93-years-on-the-execution-of-the-heroes-of-al-buraq-revolution-the-prisoners-struggle-against-imperialism-and-zionism-continues/↩︎

  16. Ibid.↩︎

  17. Ibid.↩︎

  18. Salman Abu Sitta and Terry Rempel, “The ICRC and the Detention of Palestinian Civilians in Israel’s 1948 POW/Labor Camps,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 43 No. 4 (Summer 2014) pp. 11-38. https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2014.43.4.11↩︎

  19. Leena Dallasheh, “Political mobilization of Palestinians in Israel: The al-‘Ard movement,” January 2010: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/293241109_Political_mobilization_of_palestinians_in_Israel_The_al-‘Ard_movement↩︎

  20. Mandy Turner, “Locked-in conflict: Israel’s repressive carceral system and the criminalisation of Palestinians was one of the catalysts for October 7,” Security in Context, 26 March 2024: https://www.securityincontext.org/posts/locked-in-conflict-israels-repressive-carceral-system↩︎

  21. Khaled al-Azraq, “Israeli prisons as revolutionary universities,” Electronic Intifada, 9 December 2009: https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-prisons-revolutionary-universities/8572↩︎

  22. Basil Farraj, “How Palestinian Hunger Strikes Counter Israel’s Monopoly on Violence,” 12 May 2016, Al-Shabaka: https://al-shabaka.org/commentaries/how-palestinian-hunger-strikes-counter-israels-monopoly-on-violence/↩︎

  23. Zena Al Tahhan, “A timeline of Palestinian mass hunger strikes in Israel,” 28 May 2017, Al Jazeera English. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/5/28/a-timeline-of-palestinian-mass-hunger-strikes-in-israel↩︎

  24. Ibid.↩︎

  25. Ibid.↩︎

  26. Amnesty International, “Israel/OPT: Death of Khader Adnan highlights Israel’s cruel treatment of Palestinian prisoners,” 3 May 2023: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/05/israel-opt-death-of-khader-adnan-highlights-israels-cruel-treatment-of-palestinian-prisoners/↩︎

  27. Addameer, “Force Feeding Under International Law,” 16 November 2015. http://www.addameer.org/publications/factsheet-force-feeding-under-international-law-and-medical-standards↩︎

  28. Samidoun, “Gaza ceasefire: Palestinian prisoners at the heart of the battle and the Resistance,” 7 August 2022: https://samidoun.net/2022/08/gaza-ceasefire-palestinian-prisoners-at-the-heart-of-the-battle-and-the-resistance/↩︎

  29. Amnesty International. Id.↩︎

  30. Samidoun, “Freedom Tunnel to Al-Aqsa Flood: Prisoners, Resistance and Liberation,” 6 September 2024: https://samidoun.net/2024/09/freedom-tunnel-to-al-aqsa-flood-prisoners-resistance-and-liberation/↩︎

  31. Al Mayadeen, “Hamas Military Spokesperson: No Prisoner Exchange without the 6 Gilboa Prisoners,” 11 September 2021. https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/hamas-military-spokesperson:-no-prisoner-exchange-without-th↩︎

  32. Samidoun, “Five years on: The Wafa al-Ahrar agreement and prisoner exchange,” 19 October 2016: https://samidoun.net/2016/10/five-years-on-the-wafa-al-ahrar-agreement-and-prisoner-exchange/↩︎

  33. Addameer, “Targeting Released Prisoners in Exchange Deals,” 26 February 2024. https://www.addameer.org/news/5281↩︎

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