Afrasianet - Prisoners' Day is a day of solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, rallying support for their cause, and drawing the world's attention to the tragedies and suffering they are subjected to on a daily basis.
Palestinians commemorated this day inside and outside Palestine by holding events and activities, and seek to move the issue of Palestinian prisoners in occupation prisons, highlight their suffering, and emphasize their rights guaranteed by international laws, and the importance and duty of spreading and defending their cause.
The Palestinian National Council (PNC) approved this anniversary and began commemorating it for the first time on April 17, 1974.
Approval by the Arab League
In March 2008, the Arab Summit held in the Syrian capital Damascus adopted a resolution to adopt April 17 of each year as an Arab Day of Solidarity with Palestinian and Arab prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons, and called for its revival in all Arab countries.
In the same context, the League of Arab States organized an international conference in support of prisoners in 2012, emphasizing the centrality of this issue in joint Arab action.
In a statement issued by the Palestine and the occupied Arab territories on the occasion of the Palestinian Prisoners' Day in 2020, the League called on international human rights institutions, foremost of which is the International Committee of the Red Cross, to intervene urgently to save Palestinian prisoners in the occupation prisons, and to provide them with the necessary legal and humanitarian protection, especially in light of the difficult health conditions and the outbreak of the Corona virus pandemic.
Statistics & Figures
The following are some figures and data related to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons as of April 2025:
Israeli occupation authorities have carried out more than one million arrests against Palestinians since June 1967, including tens of thousands of children.
Some 9,900 Palestinian prisoners are held in Israeli prisons, distributed in 22 prisons inside the occupied territories belonging to the Prison Service and several IDF concentration camps.
There are 29 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, including a female prisoner from the Gaza Strip and a child.
The total number of arrests since the Israeli aggression on Gaza after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7, 2023 until April 2024, has reached more than 16,400 detainees, including more than 500 women and about 1,300 children.
These figures do not include arrests from Gaza, which are estimated at thousands, including women and children, and enforced disappearance constituted the most prominent crimes practiced by the occupation against Gaza detainees.
There are about 400 child prisoners under the age of 18 distributed between Megiddo and Ofer prisons.
About 3,500 prisoners are subject to administrative detention without conviction or indictment and without trial, including 27 women, and more than 400 children, most of whom are former prisoners who spent years in Israeli prisons, in addition to school and university students, journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers, engineers, doctors, academics, deputies, activists, workers, and first-degree relatives of martyrs and prisoners, including the sisters of martyrs and the wives of prisoners.
The number of detainees classified by the occupation as "illegal fighters" according to the figures of the occupation prisons administration is 1747, as of the beginning of April 2025, while the testimonies of freed prisoners confirm that the numbers are much higher.
Five members of the Palestinian Legislative Council are among those detained in Israeli prisons.
300 Palestinians have been killed inside Israeli prisons since 1967, including 63 prisoners since the start of the October 7, 2023 war, while the occupation continues to hide the identities of dozens of martyrs and detain their bodies.
The number of Palestinian journalists detained by the occupation authorities is 51.
Diseases and methods of revenge
5,000 prisoners suffer from many diseases in light of the escalation of crimes, policies and systematic retaliatory measures imposed against them, most notably physical and psychological torture and medical crimes in particular, with the continued spread of the disease (scabies-skypos), which the prison administration turned into a tool of torture for prisoners, and led to the martyrdom of a number of them.
Prisoners are also detained in cruel and inhumane conditions, denied visits under the pretext of "security reasons", held in administrative detention without charge or trial, punished with prolonged solitary confinement, deliberate medical negligence, and even killed.
The Israeli prison system deliberately deprives prisoners of hygiene items, clothing, exposure to the sun, and regular showers, in addition to unprecedented overcrowding among prisoners.
The occupation uses the crime of enforced disappearance against hundreds of prisoners from the Gaza Strip, as it does not disclose their numbers, places of detention, conditions of detention, or anything related to their fate.
The most prominent Israeli prisons and prisons
Palestinian prisoners are distributed in a number of prisons, detention centers and interrogation centers, which lack the minimum humanitarian requirements, and where the most heinous forms of torture are practiced against them.
Since October 7, 2023, the occupation has established special military camps, most notably: Sde Timan, Rakefet, Anatout, Ofer, Naftali, and Menashe, as well as many secret camps.
The following are the most prominent Israeli detention and interrogation centres and prisons where Palestinian prisoners are distributed:
Detention Centers
Detention centers are often located inside Israeli military installations or settlement land, and are used to detain prisoners until they are tried, most notably Huwara, Beit El, Etzion, Kedumim, Salem, and Kfar Yona.
Investigation Centers
The Israeli occupation authorities allocated it to interrogate Palestinian detainees before transferring them to courts, including: the Kishon Center, the Russian Compound and Petah Tikva.
Central Detention Centers and Prisons
Israel has established about 20 prisons belonging to the Israel Prison Service, where thousands of Palestinian prisoners are held annually under difficult humanitarian conditions, the most prominent of which are:
• Ashkelon Central Prison
It was inaugurated in 1970, following the escalation of Palestinian resistance and the increase in the number of security detainees. It includes several sections, including a section for the Shin Bet security service, which is dedicated to interrogating prisoners, and another called the "Shame Section" that includes collaborators with the Shin Bet and the prison administration.
Ayalon Detention Center (Ramle Prison)
It was established by Britain in 1934, and since 1953 the Israeli army began using part of it to detain Palestinian fedayeen, and then it was completely transformed into a central prison in 1967. A women's section was attached in 1968 and expanded in 1978 with the addition of a new wing, Nitzan Prison.
• Beersheba Central Prison
Established in 1970, it includes four prisons, each separate from the other, including two Ohli Kedar and Eshel for Palestinian security prisoners, and the other two with Israeli and 48 Palestinian criminal sentences.
• Nafha Prison
It was established in 1980 in the Negev desert, and consists of two buildings, one of which was newly built on the model of American prisons, and includes criminal detainees and drug dealers, and the other is old, allocated to Palestinian prisoners, especially detainees from the Palestinian leadership, so the prison is subject to tight security and detainees are subjected to isolation and violence.
• Negev Concentration Camp (Ansar 3)
It was established in 1988 in the Negev desert near the Egyptian border, and until its temporary closure in 1995, Israel threw some 50,000 Palestinians into it.
It reopened in 2000, and by the end of the 2005 intifada it was transformed into a central prison, and remained under military administration until late 2006, when it was transferred to the Israel Prison Service.
Shata Prison
It is located in the Beit She'an plain south of the Sea of Galilee, and Israel was keen to fortify it with walls more than 7 meters high, topped with barbed wire and 6 watchtowers, and it is intended for Palestinian prisoners from Jerusalem and the areas of Palestine occupied in 1948 andthe Golan, and it also includes some Israeli criminal convicts.
• Megiddo Prison
Located in Marj Bani Amer, northern Israel, it was opened to Palestinian security detainees in 1988, following the outbreak of the First Intifada, and was under military authority until 2003, when its administration was transferred to the Prisons Authority.
• Ofer Prison
It was established during the British Mandate of Palestine, west of Ramallah, and was turned into a tent camp for Palestinians by Israel following its 2002 Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank.
The prison remained under military administration until 2005, when it was transformed into the Israel Prison Service, and tents were gradually replaced by fixed buildings.
• Hadarim Prison
It is a modern prison, built on the model of American prisons, from which a section was allocated to Palestinian security detainees in 1999, and is under an independent administration from other sections. Damon Prison
Located in the Carmel Bush in Haifa, it was a British army warehouse during the Mandate for Palestine, and was converted into a prison in 2000, for the purpose of accommodating Palestinian prisoners captured by Israel during the Second Intifada.
• Sde Timan Detention Center
Located in the Negev desert north of the city of Beersheba, it is called the "Gaza War Prison" and is used by the Israeli army to detain Gazan prisoners during its wars on the Strip and during the Israeli aggression on Gaza that began in October 2023.
The prison emerged from the testimonies of the prisoners who were arrested there, as Gazan prisoners are held without the basic necessities of life, and are subjected to violence and humiliation, including murder, torture and sexual assault.
Secret Prison No. 1391
A secret prison that Israel keeps secret, does not provide official data related to it, and places it on aerial maps fields and hills, and is surrounded by heavy security, high walls, two watchtowers, and electronic doors. International institutions and human rights organizations are not allowed to visit it, and the number of detainees and the conditions of their detention are unknown.
• Gilboa Prison
It was opened in 2004 in the Bisan area in northern Israel, and is characterized by high security, and dozens of Palestinian prisoners are held, whom Israel classifies as "the most dangerous security" and accuses them of responsibility for carrying out commando operations inside the territories occupied in 1948, and is famous for a successful escape carried out by 6 detainees in 2021.
Dignity strikes
The Palestinian prisoner movement fought about 30 strikes, some lasting dozens of days, as well as dozens of individual strikes. Most of them were directed against administrative detention, and their perpetrators achieved several achievements.
During the strike, prisoners abstain from food and continue to drink only water and sometimes salt, and refuse to take subsidies or undergo medical examinations in order to pressure their jailers to respond to their demands.
The prisoner movement carried out the Ashkelon prison strike in 1970, in which prisoner Abdul Qader Abu al-Fahm was martyred, the Nafha strike in 1980, in which three prisoners were killed, the 1992 strike, and the May 2012 strike, which led to the release of isolated prisoners and the return of visits to the families of Gaza prisoners.
The 15-day strike of 27 September 1992 marked a milestone in the history of the Palestinian prisoner movement, as all prisons participated for the first time in an open-ended hunger strike.
In late 2011 and 2012, the scope of individual strikes expanded, thanks to the strikes of prisoner Adnan Khader, who is famous as the "bomber of the battle of the empty intestines" against the occupation, as he fought 8 hunger strikes, highlighting administrative detention, the last of which was in 2023 when he went on strike since his arrest on February 5, 2023, and continued until his death in the occupation prisons on May 2, 2023.
Prisoner Samer al-Issawi also recorded the longest individual hunger strike in Israeli prisons, lasting 265 days, which he carried out between August 2012 and April 2013 to protest his administrative detention, and was released, but re-arrested and reinstated the sentence he had served before his release in the 2011 Wafaa al-Ahrar deal.
Despite the intransigence of the Israeli occupation, the struggle of the prisoner movement has extracted important gains for Palestinian prisoners and imposed a Palestinian reality on international public opinion.
Exchange Deals
In its history, the prisoner movement has witnessed several exchange deals, under which thousands of Palestinian prisoners were released, in addition to releases within the political process or so-called "goodwill gestures" from Israel towards the Palestinian National Authority.
The deals began in 1968 between Israel and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), under which 37 Palestinian prisoners were released, followed by other deals, including the release of thousands of prisoners in exchange for 6 soldiers captured by the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) in southern Lebanon.
In 1985, 1,150 Palestinian prisoners and a number of Arab prisoners were released, while 3 Israeli soldiers captured by the Popular Front in Lebanon were released.
In addition to Lebanese Hezbollah deals under which hundreds of prisoners have been released, since the 1993 Oslo accords , Israel has released thousands more as part of the peace process.
On October 11, 2011, the Islamist group Hamas and Israel, brokered by Egypt, reached an agreement to release 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who had been held captive in Gaza since 2006, known as the Wafa al-Ahrar deal.
The deals of the Al-Aqsa Flood battle, which the Palestinian resistance fought on October 7, 2023, are the most prominent in the history of the prisoner movement, as after about 46 days of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, Israel ratified on November 22, 2023, Israel ratified an agreement with Hamas to exchange prisoners with a temporary truce for 6 days, in which 240 were released, including 71 women prisoners and 169 children, and implementation began on November 24, 2023.
In 2025, after more than a year of war on the Gaza Strip, and after months of arduous indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel, a ceasefire agreement was announced on January 15, 2025 in the Qatari capital, Doha, that included three phases of implementation.
The first phase included the release of 30 Palestinian prisoners for every Israeli civilian detainee, and included the 47 prisoners included in the exchange agreement in 2011 and later re-arrested by Israel. For every Israeli soldier, the parties agreed to release 50 Palestinian prisoners, including 30 sentenced to life imprisonment and 20 high-level sentences.
In the first phase, the Palestinian resistance released 33 Israeli prisoners known as "humanitarian cases", namely women, children under 19, the elderly over 50, wounded civilians and sick non-soldiers.
On the other hand, Israel released about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, including 250 sentenced to life imprisonment, and about a thousand prisoners detained after October 7, 2023.