The latest estimate for the number of Palestinians incarcerated by the Zionist state stands at over 11,000 as of September 2025 – the highest figure since the 2000-2005 Al-Aqsa Intifada. This includes 3,577 held in administrative detention without charge or trial, over 400 children, 2,662 people snatched from Gaza, Syria or Lebanon and classed as ‘unlawful combatants’ and two pregnant women. It does not include the thousands kidnapped from Gaza and held in concentration camps run by the Israel Defence Force (IDF) such as Sde Teiman. Mass incarceration continues; on 13 September around 1,500 Palestinians were rounded up in Tulkarm, West Bank, during the IDF siege of the town. Since 7 October 2023, at least 76 Palestinians have been murdered in custody. While the conditions of all Palestinian prisoners are deliberately made intolerable, those who resist the occupation through armed struggle are singled out for particularly brutal treatment and assassination.
Beneath Israel’s Ayalon Prison sits the Rakevet Wing, an underground prison for captured resistance fighters. According to Israeli public broadcaster KAN, it holds around 75 resistance fighters from Hamas and Hezbollah. The prison is essentially a black site where abuse and torture are permitted, including prisoners being:
- subjected to 24/7 camera surveillance;
- shackled and kept in dark, box-like cells for at least 23 hours a day;
- only allowed out for one hour (if that) per day, with conversation with other detainees forbidden, to shower or go to an underground courtyard where images of Gaza’s destruction are plastered along the yard walls;
- handcuffed and/or forced to kneel for long periods of time;
- starved, deprived of water and denied medical treatment;
- sexually assaulted;
- severely beaten, causing broken bones.
On 7 September, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the state was failing to provide adequate food to Palestinian prisoners, reiterating that the prison service was obliged to provide a ‘basic level’ of nutrition. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has directed the campaign of torture, openly attacked this ruling. In August he had posted a video of himself on X/Twitter taunting long-standing Palestinian political prisoner Marwan Barghouti after raiding his cell, saying ‘whoever messes with the nation of Israel, whoever murders our children and women – we will wipe them out.’
Solidarity with all Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian political prisoners is essential. Liberal human rights organisations such as Amnesty International do not count armed resistance fighters as ‘prisoners of conscience’, because they use violence, and they therefore refuse to campaign for their immediate release. In doing so they tacitly support the delegitimisation of the armed struggle. FRFI recognises the absolute necessity of standing with captured Palestinian fighters as part of our solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle.
Free all political prisoners from Zionist prisons!
Kotsai Sigauke
FRFI 308 October/November 2025
