Since the intensification of its genocidal war against Palestinians on October 7, 2023, the settler colonial state has launched a mass arrest campaign across Palestine and implemented numerous measures to further violate prisoners’ rights. Palestinian and international human rights organizations have long directed attention to the Israeli settler colonial state’s violent treatment of Palestinian prisoners as part of its broader policies against Palestinians. This has included subjecting Palestinian prisoners to severe restrictions on their rights, torture, denial of medical care, solitary confinement, and arbitrary detention, amongst other violent measures designed to fragment and break their will and the broader Palestinian prisoners’ movement. The situation in Israeli prisons and detention facilities is even more alarming today, with Israel launching a violent settler-revenge campaign against Palestinians across historic Palestine.
Indeed, multiple Palestinian human rights organizations, including the Addameer: Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, have raised the alarm with regard to prisoners’ current conditions. No concrete statistics exist yet on the number of Palestinian detainees held in Israeli detention facilities and prisons, particularly given the severe restrictions placed on lawyers’ access to prisons, but Palestinian prisoners’ rights associations estimate that 10,000 Palestinians are now being held — which would double the number of prisoners from before October 7. This estimate is likely not far from reality, given that Israel has been conducting daily arrest campaigns in Palestinian cities, with at least 97 arrested on October 19 and at least 80 on October 20 alone. This is in addition to an estimate of 900 detainees from the Gaza Strip thus far.
Starting on October 7, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) closed all prison sections, confiscated television sets from prisoners, cut off electricity for all electrical devices, restricted access to water, transferred and isolated prisoners, closed the prisons’ canteen, and limited prisoners’ access to food. The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Prisoners Affairs warned of a starvation campaign inside prisons. The IPS has also banned family visits and imposed severe restrictions on lawyers’ communication with prisoners.
According to Addameer, the IPS has shut down prison clinics and is no longer transferring prisoners to hospitals and external clinics, particularly affecting the numerous prisoners who require serious medical attention due to their critical health conditions.
These developments are set against the backdrop of a slew of extreme measures the IPS has already taken against Palestinian political prisoners. The Israeli Knesset approved an amendment to its “prison ordinance” on October 18, which allows detainees to be placed on mattresses on the floor, in addition to other measures designed to allow for the overcrowding of prisons and the reduction of prisoners’ living spaces. The amendment also allows “Israel’s National Security Minister” — the far-right fascist Itamar Ben-Gvir — to declare a state of emergency in the prisons and further exacerbate the poor conditions prisoners face.
This “state of emergency” had already been declared when the settler colonial state waged its recent episode of genocidal war against Palestinians across historic Palestine, particularly in the Gaza Strip. The beleaguered coastal strip is now subjected to around-the-clock bombings and a siege that has denied it access to water, food, medical provisions, and fuel to the 2.3 million Palestinians living there.
In a conference held on October 17 alongside Palestinian prisoners’ organizations, Qadura Fares, the head of the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs, warned of the severe conditions under which Palestinian prisoners and detainees are currently held. Fares spoke of the beatings and violence to which prisoners are subjected, specifically referencing the conditions at al-Naqab prison, which he likened to Abu-Ghraib. Fares also spoke of the presence of armed Israeli soldiers inside prisons and detention facilities and in the prisons’ courtyards. He issued a serious warning that the Israeli occupation’s army and the IPS intend to effectively kill detainees.
In addition to this, the number of detainees from territories occupied in 1948, in which the settler colonial state has intensified its arrest campaigns, remains unknown. The settler colonial state has arrested numerous Palestinians, subjecting them to the charge of incitement and “assisting an enemy during the war.” This was further facilitated by an amendment of the “anti-terrorism law” to include extensive monitoring of what people publish on their social media platforms. Several cases of people from the 1948 area being arrested due to posts on social media have been reported. Israel’s police commissioner, echoing the racist and violent rhetoric of the settler colonial state, has explicitly warned Palestinians living in 1948 areas that protesting against the war will be punished, and that he can “put them on a bus headed [to Gaza].” The Israeli authorities have also issued an order to consider Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip — who are workers in 1948 Palestine that were there on work permits — as “unlawful combatants.” Based on the 2002 “Unlawful Combatants Law,” this order allows the Israeli authorities to hold Palestinians from the Gaza Strip for an unlimited period without effective judicial review.
The entire picture of what Palestinian prisoners currently face remains unclear. What is certain, however, is that the Israeli settler-colonial state, with all its branches, has launched a war against Palestinians in all areas across historic Palestine. In addition to the genocidal war perpetrated against Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the Israeli authorities are also seeking blood-thirsty revenge against Palestinian prisoners. Over the years, the settler colonial state has turned the Gaza Strip into the world’s largest open-air prison; a prison that has constantly been revolting. It is trying to accomplish its concurrent long-sought project of eradicating the prisoners’ movement and withdrawing all rights prisoners won through decades of struggle, including disobedience, hunger strikes, and military court boycotts.
At the same time, it is important not to ignore that the freedom of Palestinian prisoners may soon finally be approaching, just as it had when six Palestinian prisoners managed to escape from Gilboa prison on September 6, 2021. Israel has constantly tried to instill the thought that freedom from captivity — whether from the physical prison or the larger prison of occupation — is distant, far-fetched, and unreal unless accompanied by the termination of prisoners’ long sentences, which in many cases reach multiple life sentences.
Israel’s attack on prisoners is part of its ongoing genocidal war against Palestinian resistance. We must ensure that it fails in isolating prisoners until we welcome them home.
The prison that is Palestine is revolting.
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