Israel holds about 4,450 Palestinians – including 160 children, 32 women and 530 administrative detainees – in prisons.
Every year on April 17, Palestinian Prisoner’s Day is celebrated to highlight the plight of those held in Israeli prisons and their struggle for freedom against the Israeli occupation.
In 2021, the Israeli military arrested nearly 8,000 Palestinians, including more than 1,300 minors and 184 women.
Israeli authorities have also issued more than 1,500 administrative detention orders – detaining Palestinians without charge or trial, according to the Addameer group of prisoners.
As of April 10, 2022, there were 4,450 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons in Israel and the Occupied Territories.
To the Palestinians, they are political prisoners fighting to end the illegal occupation of Israel. Of these:
- 530 were detained without charge or trial
- 160 are children
- 32 are women
- 549 are serving life sentences
- 499 are serving sentences of more than 20 years
Child prisoners – the case of Ahmad Manasra
Israel is the only country in the world to try children in military courts, often denying them their basic rights.
The Israeli army has detained more than 12,000 Palestinian children since 2000, according to Addameer.
Most of these children have been charged with “stone-throwing”, a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison under military law.
Currently, 160 Palestinian children remain in Israeli prisons, most are in pre-trial detention and have not been convicted of a crime.
One of the most horrific cases of child prisoners is that of Ahmad Manasra, who was arrested at the age of 13, brutally interrogated and then convicted.
After serving six years and six months in prison, he barely turned 21.
Ahmad was with his cousin Hassan, who is said to have stabbed two Israeli settlers near an Israeli settlement in occupied East Jerusalem in 2015.
Hassan, who was 15 at the time, was shot and killed by an Israeli civilian while Ahmad was brutally beaten by an Israeli mob and run over by a car.
He suffered skull fractures and internal bleeding.
At the time, Israeli law stated that children under the age of 14 could not be held criminally liable.
To circumvent this, Israeli authorities waited until Manasra turned 14 to convict him. The law was amended in August 2016 to allow for the prosecution of younger children.
Ahmad was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to 12 years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to nine years.
Ahmad has long suffered from mental health problems. At the end of 2021, a psychiatrist from Doctors Without Borders was allowed to visit him and diagnosed him with schizophrenia. This was the first time an outside doctor had given him permission to see him.
Despite Ahmad’s mental health problems and diagnoses, he has been held in isolation for the past five months.
Israeli forces have shot and killed at least eight Palestinian children since early 2022.
Administratively detained – detained without charge or trial
There are currently 530 Palestinians in “administrative detention” – held without charge or trial.
Detainees, including women and children, may be held by the military for renewable periods of six months on the basis of “secret evidence” that neither the detainee nor their lawyer has the right to see.
(Al Jazeera)
Under international law, an occupying state is prohibited from transferring and holding prisoners outside the occupied territories, but Israel does so with a number of prisons within its borders.
Over the years, many detainees have gone on hunger strike as a nonviolent protest against their detention.
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