Prisons have always been a weapon of colonial repression, and the inhumane treatment of Palestinian prisoners clearly reveals the Zionist state’s attempt to liquidate the Palestinian struggle. Israel is able flagrantly and repeatedly to disregard international human rights conventions due to the continued support it receives from the US, Britain and the EU.
Since October 2023, over 23,000 Palestinians have been arrested in the West Bank alone, including women, children, wounded people and former prisoners. Thousands more have been detained in Gaza. Reporting these figures, the Palestinian Prisoners Society said:
‘Detention has formed and continues to form one of the main pillars of the Israeli colonial project, it is used as a systematic tool to target the Palestinian presence and break the social and national structure of the Palestinian people.’
Repeated reports from the UN and other experts have described how Palestinian prisoners face widespread and systematic torture, sexual abuse, starvation and severe degradation. Nearly 100 prisoners have died in detention since October 2023. In March 2026 UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese described the Zionist prison system as a ‘laboratory of calculated cruelty’.
On 30 March, the judicial murder of Palestinian prisoners convicted by military courts of ‘acts of terrorism’ was legalised by the Knesset with the passing of the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law. These racist courts have a 99% conviction rate and Palestinians convicted of terrorism now face hanging within 90 days, with no right of appeal. According to the Palestinian prisoner solidarity network Samidoun:
‘The law specifically targets approximately 250 imprisoned Palestinian alleged resistance fighters from Gaza, labelled by the occupation as the “Nukhba” prisoners, many of whom are held in the notorious Rakevet section of Ramle prison under conditions of systematic torture, starvation, isolation and abuse. At the same time, this legislation is part of a broader campaign targeting over 1,400 Palestinians from Gaza abducted and imprisoned since October 2023, many of whom have disappeared into torture camps such as Sde Teiman and secret detention facilities where the occupation has attempted to conceal its crimes from the world.’
Israel’s use of prison and execution to crush Palestinian resistance replicates how prisons were used during the British occupation of Palestine to brutalise and destroy rebellious Palestinians. Since 7 October 2023 the Zionist state is specifically attempting to isolate Palestinian prisoners and now is moving to judicially murder the leaders of the struggle.
On 1 March 2026 Charlotte Kates from Samidoun told an international webinar in support of the SOAS 2:
‘The struggle of the prisoners represents the struggle for all of the liberation of Palestine, in which the Palestinian prisoners are a unifying cause for the Palestinian people, a mechanism of international solida-rity and representatives of the resistance. [In addition to] the thousands of Palestinian prisoners who are being held without charge, without trial, under administrative detention, the hundreds of Palestinian children locked up behind Zionist bars, there are also hundreds of leaders of the political forces and specifically of the armed resistance movement, who have developed a Palestinian political prisoners’ movement in which all of the forces for liberation in Palestine are represented… So when we talk about liberating Palestinian political prisoners we are speaking about liberating those who are the leaders of not just the Palestinian cause, but also who are part of our international anti-imperialist struggle and are part of our collective leadership.’
