Israel has imprisoned over 9,500 Palestinians in its jails - report

The number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli Occupation prisons has reached more than 9,500 prisoners, according to recent data published by Palestinian Prisoner Rights institutions on Tuesday.

The PLO’s Commission for Prisoners’ and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs, the Prisoners’ Club and the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, released the data in a joint statement on Tuesday, on the eve of Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, which falls on 17 April.

According to the statement, the prisoners include 80 women and more than 200 children who are held in Megiddo, Ofer and Damon prisons. However, the numbers do not include detainees from the Gaza Strip, who are subject to enforced disappearance.

The statement said the number of administrative detainees who are held without charge had risen to more than 3,660, as of the beginning of this April, including 22 women and more than 40 children.

The number of detained journalists also reached 56, including 45 who had been arrested after 7 October and are still in detention, including four female journalists, according to the same source.

The statement indicated that Israel also imprisons hundreds of sick and wounded detainees and that their numbers are constantly increasing after 7 October as a result of “the crimes, policies, and systematic retaliatory measures imposed by the Occupation on the prisoners, most notably torture and medical crimes”, according to the statement.

Israel has arrested 21 prisoners since before the Oslo Accords signed between the PLO and Israel in 1993, in addition to eleven prisoners who were arrested before the agreement and released as part of the “Loyalty to the Free” deal that took place in 2011 in exchange for the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, but they were re-arrested in 2014.

Hundreds of Palestinian detainees have been imprisoned for more than 21 years; most of them are serving life sentences.

According to the Prisoners’ Club, there are 600 detainees serving life sentences (99 years according to Israeli military law) one or several times, including prisoner, Abdullah Barghouti, who had been sentenced to 67 life sentences.

The Prisoners’ Club data indicate that 252 detainees have died inside prisons since 1967, including 16 after 7 October, not including prisoners from the Gaza Strip who were forcibly disappeared by Israel.

The Israeli authorities are also holding the bodies of 27 prisoners and refusing to hand them over to their families, the oldest of whom is Anis Dawla, who died in Ashkelon prison in 1980, according to the statement.

READ: Amnesty urges Israel to return body of Palestinian who died of ‘medical negligence’ in custody