by Samidoun Network
Each year, the Palestinian liberation movement commemorates Palestinian Prisoners’ Day on 17 April; this date has been marked since 1974, although the inscription of the prisoners’ movement on the Palestinian cause dates back decades before, to the era of the British colonial mandate over Palestine.
Just as Theodor Herzl sought a partnership with Cecil Rhodes over “something colonial” in Palestine, and as Baron Rothschild obtained the Balfour Declaration from the notorious racist Lord Balfour, the Zionist regime, upon its replacement of the British mandate, immediately adopted its policies toward Palestinian prisoners. These include “administrative detention,” imprisonment without charge or trial, under a “secret file,” indefinitely renewable, often for years at a time, and the demolition of family homes after the assassination or imprisonment of a resistance fighter or a political prisoner.
From the prison labor camps of the Nakba, in which thousands of Palestinians were forced to toil for the Zionist project atop their stolen land – and then, in many cases, expelled with their families from their homes and lands – to the notorious interrogation cells and prison camps of the post-1967 era, to today’s ultra-surveilled prisons and torture camps, imprisonment has always been used as a colonial weapon in Palestine. It is used in an attempt to suppress the Palestinian resistance, to shatter its popular cradle, and to isolate its leadership from their people, their loved ones, and their broader movement. While these attempts have always failed, as have all of the attempts to break the resistance in Palestine and throughout the region, the Zionist regime continually pursues intensified forms of repression.
This year, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day comes amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has already claimed the lives of over 52,000 martyrs, with over 10,000 more missing under the rubble and new orders of US-made missiles and bombs dropped by the Zionist occupation forces on the Palestinian people on a daily basis. It also comes amid the continuing upsurge of the Palestinian resistance, which earlier this year freed 1,777 Palestinian political prisoners from the occupation’s dungeons in the Toufan al-Ahrar (Flood of the Free) prisoner exchange, taking its name from Toufan al-Aqsa, the Al-Aqsa Flood, the name given by the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades to its heroic and masterful military operation on October 7, 2023. The Al-Aqsa Flood had, as one of its aims from its inception, the liberation of Palestinian prisoners, alongside acting in advance to confront a planned Zionist assault on Gaza, to break the siege, and to re-center the Palestinian cause in the Arab and Islamic nations.
The liberation of Palestinian prisoners has often been central to many of the key operations of the Palestinian resistance, including the airplane hijackings carried out by fighters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the 1960s and 1970s, with the prisoner exchanges achieved over the years by multiple resistance organizations playing a significant role in releasing imprisoned leaders and strugglers. Since 1948, an estimated one million Palestinians have been detained by the Zionist regime, with around 800,000 Palestinians being detained since 1967. There are currently approximately 9,900 Palestinian prisoners inside the Zionist jails, including nearly 3,500 held without charge or trial under administrative detention. The remainder face either Zionist military courts or Zionist civil courts as “security” cases, and in all situations, there is nothing resembling a legitimate justice system or a fair trial. These numbers do not encompass all of the Palestinian prisoners from Gaza in occupation jails, which number an estimated 1,500 or more, given that Zionist prison officials refuse to release the names or status of many of those kidnapped by the invading genocidal army. One thousand Palestinians from Gaza were released as part of the prisoner exchange, but many more remain in the jails and prison camps – like the notorious Sde Teiman and Anatot – subjected to the most severe forms of torture and abuse.
The purpose of the Zionist legal system is to sustain its colonial process, rather than to provide even a modicum of judicial standards or meet international norms. Therefore, over 99% of Palestinians brought before the military courts, including 700 children each year, are convicted, often on the basis of confessions obtained through torture or the unverified testimony of Zionist occupation soldiers, whose credibility should be clear to all after the torrent of lies and misinformation unleashed upon the world in Gaza. Even Palestinians in 1948 occupied Palestine, who carry “Israeli” citizenship, are rounded up in the streets, given special “security” rules in the Zionist civil courts, and ordered to administrative detention – and when they are martyred inside Zionist jails, their bodies, like that of revolutionary intellectual, freedom fighter and thinker Walid Daqqah, continue to be held hostage alongside those of hundreds of fellow Palestinians.
Palestinian prisoners come from all sectors of the Palestinian society: they are workers and farmers, teachers and students, women and men, children and elders, community organizers and freedom fighters. They are from the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, occupied Palestine ‘48 and even Palestinians in exile and diaspora; their ranks also encompass Lebanese, Syrians, and over the decades, Arabs and internationals engaged in the liberation struggle. As is the case for the Palestinian resistance as a whole, it is the popular masses of Palestine, refugees in the camps, workers and farmers in the villages and the cities, that fill the ranks of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.
Since the beginning of Al-Aqsa Flood and the launch of the Zionist intensified genocide in Gaza, the situation within the prisons, always severely repressive, has been deliberately escalated into a daily political and humanitarian crisis. Palestinian prisoners are subjected to extreme torture under interrogation, including physical, sexual and psychological violence, and once imprisoned, they face a policy of deliberate starvation, malnutrition and denial of medical care, which has led to the martyrdom of at least 63 imprisoned Palestinians over the past 18 months. Most recently, 17-year-old Palestinian child Walid Khaled Ahmed was martyred inside occupation prisons; the results of his autopsy showed that the boy, who prior to his arrest from his family home in September 2024, was a healthy youth who loved to play football, suffered starvation, malnutrition, scabies and food poisoning caused by spoiled rations deliberately left outside during the day in Ramadan.
There are currently approximately 29 women prisoners and 400 Palestinian children inside the occupation’s jails, both sectors that experience particular forms of colonial violence at the hands of the “Israeli” prison system; these numbers come after the liberation of 73 women and dozens of children and youth (known as “cubs” and “flowers” among the Palestinian prisoners’ movement) in the Toufan al-Ahrar exchange. Palestinian women under occupation are subjected to ongoing gender-based violence atop their experience as Palestinians, from the war on women’s health in Gaza and the denial of sanitary products, to the routine experience of sexualized and gendered harassment by occupation soldiers at checkpoints. Imprisoned Palestinian women have, like their imprisoned siblings, been subjected to starvation, torture under interrogation and denial of medical care.
In contrast to the false narratives of gendered violence used as pro-genocide propaganda against the Palestinian resistance, Palestinian women abducted by occupation forces have experienced documented, systematic sexual and gendered violence, including strip searching, confiscation of their hijabs, constant monitoring under cameras by male guards, sexualized threats and harassment, sexual assault and rape. (It is important to note here that Palestinian men have also been subjected to extreme sexual violence, including deadly sexual violence and rape, by occupation soldiers.)
The imprisoned Palestinian women include Haneen Jaber, the mother of two martyrs, including the widely admired resistance leader in Tulkarem, Abu Shujaa (Mohammed Jaber) of Saraya al-Quds; Rima Balawi, a mother of two who was two months pregnant when she was seized from her home in February; Karmel Khawaja and Ruba Nasser, university students abducted after participating in student activities; Samah Hijjawi, liberated twice in prisoner exchanges by the resistance and once again arrested by the occupation; and Shatila Abu Ayada, the longest-serving Palestinian woman prisoner with a 16-year sentence, for participating in resistance in the Al-Quds Intifada of 2015, among others. The Dismantle Damon campaign, an independent campaign demanding the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners with a specific focus on the experience of women, highlights their stories and builds international support for Palestinian women confronting the daily gendered violence and oppression of Zionist colonialism.
Inside the prisons, Palestinian women led some of the first of the movement’s hunger strikes to obtain concessions regarding their living conditions, access to writing tools, access to food and healthcare, and the ongoing use of administrative detention. These hunger strikes, collective actions, and individual protests supported by fellow prisoners, have helped to constitute the Palestinian prisoners’ movement as a significant force in the Palestinian resistance. It is often said of the prisoners that they turn the dungeons of the occupier into revolutionary schools, holding study circles, group discussions, and participating in Palestinian politics. Every Palestinian political party and resistance organization has a prison branch, and Palestinian leaders – perhaps in the most well-known example, Yahya Sinwar – have emerged from the prisoners’ movement for decades, often released through prisoner exchanges achieved by the resistance.
Today, imprisoned leaders are numerous and a high priority in the next phase of any prisoner exchange of Al-Aqsa Flood. They include Marwan Barghouti, the Fateh leader serving multiple life sentences for his role in the Al-Aqsa, or second, Intifada; Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority before his abduction by Zionist forces; Ibrahim Hamed, Hassan Salameh and Abdullah Barghouti, prominent leaders of the Hamas movement and the al-Qassam Brigades, serving many life sentences; and Mahmoud al-Ardah, the architect of the Gilboa 6 prison break in 2021 and a leader in Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The history of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement is a history of prisoner exchanges as well as one of hunger strikes, carried out both by the Palestinian resistance organizations as well as by Hezbollah and the Lebanese resistance. The prisoner exchange of 1985, or the “Jibril exchange,” achieved by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), included the liberation of Japanese Red Army struggler Kozo Okamoto alongside Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the religious leader and soon-to-be founder of Hamas; Ziad Nakhaleh, now the general secretary of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement; and Misbah al-Suri, who would soon be re-imprisoned in Gaza. Al-Suri’s prison break two years later, and the return of all of these released leaders to their people, played a role in the outbreak of the great popular Intifada of 1987 (which was also preceded by a mass hunger strike and collective organizing within the prisons). The Wafa’ al-Ahrar (Loyalty to the Free) prisoner exchange of 2011, often called the “Shalit deal,” was critical in liberating leaders who developed the strong base, popular cradle and military achievements of the resistance in Gaza.
As the Palestinian people and their resistance struggle to bring an end to the genocide in Gaza – and to the Zionist regime carrying out that genocide with the full participation of its imperialist partners and backers, led by the United States and including France, Germany, Canada, Britain and fellow Western powers, they are currently facing a campaign of extreme pressure, from propaganda and psychological warfare to massive bombing campaigns, demanding the “disarmament” of the Palestinian resistance.
Given the utter refusal of the Zionist regime to free the leaders of the Palestinian liberation movement, even through multiple prisoner exchanges, not to mention its avowed commitment to continue the genocide and ethnic cleansing, it is clear that any demand to disarm the Palestinian resistance is nothing more than an effort to strip the only tool of the Palestinian people to win their freedom, including the liberation of the Palestinian prisoners. It is the weapons of the resistance alone, backed by the popular cradle of the region – and the international popular cradle of resistance – that hold the power to break open the prison doors and liberate thousands of tortured freedom fighters.
Demands to disarm the resistance, much like the labeling of Palestinian, Lebanese, Yemeni and Iranian resistance organizations and military forces as “terrorists” by Western imperialist powers, are merely another form of aiding and abetting genocide, accompanied by billions of dollars in weaponry bestowed upon the Zionist regime in its all-out assault on Gaza. This year, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day hits particularly close to home outside Palestine as well. Of course, this is not a new development; Georges Abdallah has been imprisoned for 40 years in French prisons, and Ghassan Elashi and Shukri Abu Baker of the Holy Land Five are serving 65-year sentences in US prisons for their charitable work for Palestine.
However, the imperialist states, facing a growing popular consensus that genocide is unacceptable and “Israel” must be held accountable for its crimes, as well as a developing crisis of global hegemony, have unleashed mechanisms of repression internally. From Germany’s ban on the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” to the raids on journalists in Britain, to the enforced disappearances of international students, green card holders and other non-citizens in the United States, a wider population currently faces imprisonment for Palestine organizing. While the circumstances vary from those of Palestinian prisoners in Zionist jails, this escalation of repression clearly demonstrates that the era of Al-Aqsa Flood is one of imperialist crisis, in which the imperialist powers seek to maintain their domination and exploitation of the world by all means available, from mass incarceration to fascism to genocide.
The liberation of the Palestinian prisoners remains a beacon on the road to the liberation of Palestine, so that every prison of the occupier may be turned into a museum of remembrance, as the victorious Lebanese resistance, led by Hezbollah, has done at the notorious Khiam prison once used by the occupier. On this, the 51st Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, in the 77th year of the ongoing Nakba in Palestine, the struggle against imperialist genocide and colonial incarceration continues, until every prisoner is liberated, and until Palestine is free, from the river to the sea.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network builds solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners’ movement and its struggle for freedom.
