Israel is holding around 4,450 Palestinians – including 160 children, 32 women and 530 administrative detainees – in prisons.
April 17 is the annual Palestinian Prisoner’s Day to highlight the plight of those incarcerated in Israeli prisons and their struggle for freedom from Israeli occupation.
During 2021, the Israeli military arrested nearly 8,000 Palestinians, including more than 1,300 minors and 184 women.
Israeli authorities also issued more than 1,500 administrative detention orders, holding Palestinians without charge or trial, according to detainee rights group Addameer.
As of April 10, 2022, 4,450 Palestinians were in Israeli prisons in Israel and the occupied territories.
To the Palestinians, they are political prisoners fighting to end Israel’s illegal occupation. Of these:
- 530 are being held without charge or trial
- 160 are children
- 32 are women
- 549 are serving life sentences
- 499 are serving more than 20 years in prison
Child prisoners – case of Ahmad Manasra
Israel is the only country in the world that tries children before military courts, often denying them their basic rights.
According to Addameer, the Israeli army has imprisoned more than 12,000 Palestinian children since 2000.
Most of these children were charged with “stone-throwing,” a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison under military law.
There are currently 160 Palestinian children in Israeli jails, most of whom are in pre-trial detention and have never been convicted of a crime.
One of the most harrowing child prisoner cases is that of Ahmad Manasra, who was arrested at the age of 13, brutally interrogated and then convicted.
After six years of serving his sentence and six months in prison before that, he has just turned 21.
Ahmad was with his cousin Hassan who allegedly stabbed two Israeli settlers near an Israeli settlement in occupied East Jerusalem in 2015.
Hassan, then 15, was shot dead by an Israeli civilian, while Ahmad was severely beaten by an Israeli mob and run over by a car.
He suffered fractured skulls and internal bleeding.
At the time, Israeli law provided that children under the age of 14 could not be held criminally responsible.
To get around this, the Israeli authorities waited until Manasra turned 14 to try him. The law was amended in August 2016 to allow for 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 been allowed to see him.
Despite Ahmad’s mental health problems and diagnosis, he has been held in solitary confinement for five months.
Since early 2022, Israeli forces have shot dead at least eight Palestinian children.
Administrative detainees – held without charge or trial
There are currently 530 Palestinians in “administrative detention” without charge or trial.
The detainees, including women and children, can be held by the military for an extendable six months based on “secret evidence” that neither the detainee nor his lawyer are allowed to see.
(Al Jazeera)
International law prohibits an occupying state from transferring and holding prisoners outside of occupied territory, but Israel does so with a number of prisons within its borders.
Over the years, many prisoners have gone on hunger strikes in non-violent protest against their detention.