Almost sixty years since Israel started its illegal occupation and colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza, two years after the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war, the mass arrests and systematic torture of Palestinians has reached unprecedented levels. Yet, the question of Palestinians detained by Israel, and the crimes committed against them, continue to go largely ignored.
While Israel was committing a live-streamed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, ongoing violations happening in Israeli prisons and military camps have remained mostly hidden and very rarely covered in Western media.
With the announcement of the ceasefire, Israel has released around 2,000 Palestinian detainees, of which 1,700 were abducted or arbitrarily arrested in Gaza during the genocide. This number represents only a small part of the more than 11,000 Palestinians that are still detained in Israeli occupation prisons and camps.
Palestinian detainees and prisoners, and the abuses they have been subjected to, have been treated as a side subject. But these practices are at the centre of the machinery of brutality, control and occupation that has governed every aspect of Palestinian life since 1967.
A growing crisis
Since 1967, over 800,000 Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt) have been detained by Israel. Between 1948 and 1967, Israeli authorities used arrests to break the Palestinian liberation movement by systematically imprisoning its political leaders.
Indeed, with the start of the occupation, Israel started massively arresting Palestinians to prevent and repress any form of opposition to its settler-colonial project. It is this very practice which has allowed Israel’s system of colonisation to sustain itself.
To this day, no Palestinian is safe.
Palestinians in the West Bank are governed by Israeli military orders, which means every single one is at risk of being arrested and tried in front of military courts with a conviction rate close to 100%. Furthermore, since 7 October 2023, Israel has abducted and arrested more than 18, 500 Palestinians, including workers, doctors, journalists and students.
Additionally, Palestinians living in occupied territories can be arrested and held indefinitely without trial. In the West Bank and East-Jerusalem, Israeli occupation forces use administrative detention to arbitrarily arrest and detain Palestinian civilians without any charges or trial. It is often claimed that the evidence used to arrest them is contained in an infamous “secret file” which cannot be accessed by detainees’ lawyers, preventing them from challenging the detention order.
Detention orders can also be renewed indefinitely, leaving Palestinian prisoners in a state of constant uncertainty, not knowing the reason - if any - for their arrest, nor when they will be released.
This regime of detention, inherited from the British mandate, has almost never been applied to Israeli settlers living in the same territory. As of September 2023, around 1,200 Palestinians were administrative detainees, in September 2025 this number had almost tripled.
Alongside Israel’s many crimes over the past two years, thousands of Palestinians from Gaza were abducted and detained during the genocide, without any information provided regarding their whereabouts and status. They have effectively been subjected to enforced disappearance.
Abusing prisoners
Another aspect of the cruelty exercised against Palestinians is the torture and mistreatment that is inflicted on them during arrest, transfer and detention. In Israeli prisons and detention camps, Palestinians are subjected to intense beatings, sexual violence, stress positions, and sleep deprivation, as well as being kept in inhumane conditions.
Just last week, it was reported that one of the most well-known Palestinian political prisoners, Marwan Barghouti, was beaten unconscious by Israeli prison guards who left him with fractures in four ribs during his transfer Rimon Prison to Megiddo Prison in mid-September.
Certainly, it is well documented that these crimes that are committed by Israel aren’t single abuses of power by individuals, but are systematic and widespread.
The infamous military camps of Sde Teiman and Anatot are de facto torture sights for Palestinian detainees from Gaza, where unimaginable acts of torture have been committed. During their entire detention, except whilst they shower or sleep, detainees are kept in stress positions, handcuffed, and blindfolded. They are also taken into interrogations for days, sometimes weeks, and endure extremely violent forms of torture, sleep deprivation and sometimes sexual torture.
In between interrogation sessions, detainees have recounted being taken into rooms with no windows and loud music blasting 24/7 while they remain blindfolded and chained. Unsurprisingly, at least 77 Palestinians have been killed or died while held in Israeli custody since October 7.
No justice
While the mountain of violations committed by Israel against Palestinian prisoners has been well documented for decades by Palestinian and international organisations, Israeli occupation soldiers, police officers, prison guards and security service interrogators committing these crimes continue to enjoy complete impunity.
According to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), while more than 1,400 complaints of torture by the ISA interrogators were submitted to the Ministry of Justice since 2001, only three criminal investigations have been opened, and all the cases were closed without any indictment.
The almost 60 years of arbitrary arrests of Palestinian men, women and children, and the international crimes committed against them, have clearly served as a foundation for Israel’s continued occupation, its settler colonial project, and the ongoing genocide. Indeed, the suffering of Palestinian prisoners exposes the depth of the occupation’s brutality, which has always been more intensely visible inside its prison.
Yet, Palestinian prisoners and detainees remain a side-subject which has been largely ignored - within diplomatic discourses, prosecutorial efforts, and by the media.
Ultimately, Palestinian prisoners are central to the liberation and independence of Palestine. The struggle for justice cannot be separated into fragments - what happens in Gaza, in the West Bank, and inside prison walls are all components of a single, unified system of colonisation, oppression, and annihilation of Palestinian life.
Disclaimer: this article was co-drafted with a Palestinian human rights activist specialised in international law who had to withhold her identity to ensure her safety in a context of growing attacks against Palestinian human rights defenders who are facing arbitrary arrests, detention, and harassment.
Zoé Paris is a French jurist whose expertise lies in international law and transitional justice. She has worked with grassroots organizations in Iraq, France, and Palestine to support survivors of mass atrocities - including political detainees and torture survivors - through advocacy, documentation, and strategic litigation.
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.