Utolsó frissítés: 2026.09.09. — Szerző: Anti-Propaganda News Blog
Since the beginning of the Gaza genocide, more than 700 have been arrested, experiencing brutal conditions, starvation, isolation and humiliation.
Once we imagine schoolgirls, university students, mothers, aunts and grandmothers lying on their stomachs in prison pajamas – their hands tied behind their backs, soldiers pressed above them, who would beat them if they moved even a little – we cannot forget the image.
When we hear a female prisoner say, „All she has is her heart,” we immediately understand how prison can destroy lives.
Palestinian Prisoners’ Day is celebrated every year on April 17 to highlight ongoing human rights violations – and today, conditions are worse than ever. Since the beginning of the Gaza genocide, starvation, isolation, humiliation, stripping, torture and immense fear have become a constant reality for Palestinian women in Israeli prisons.
Rights groups say more than 700 Palestinian women have been arrested in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza since the start of the crackdown in late 2023. Most of them have been subjected to physical and psychological abuse during and after their arrests, either through nightly raids on their homes or detention at military checkpoints.
„Everything is different from the prisons of the 1990s. Everything changed with the genocide,” said Ramallah-based lawyer Sahar Francis, who is also the former director of the prisoner rights group Addameer, during a recent webinar titled Women, Prison Sumoud.
„It was very, very shocking to see people who, after five months of being held in Gaza and the level of abuse, starvation and physical attacks, were unable to speak out,” he said. „We were disappointed in the prisoners. We couldn’t protect them.”
According to the Palestinian Prisoners' Association, approximately 90 Palestinians have died in Israeli captivity since October 2023. Among them was Walid Khalid Abdullah Ahmed, a 17-year-old boy.
„The international system is simply not working… the hypocrisy is everywhere,” Francis said. „We, the lawyers, are the only window for detainees. People feel like they are losing hope.”
Tools of control
Addameer has documented and highlighted abuses in Israeli prisons for decades, and its reports are a key reference for global rights organizations. This work has made it a repeated target of the Israeli military, which has raided its facilities several times since 2002.
2021-ben az izraeli kormány az Addameert és öt másik palesztin jogvédő csoportot „terrorista” szervezetnek minősítette, ami heves nemzetközi kritikát váltott ki. Tavaly az Addameer az Egyesült Államok pénzügyminisztériumának szankciói alá került állítólagos „terrorizmussal” kapcsolatos kapcsolatai miatt.
This is all part of a broader Israeli campaign of violent domination. According to Dr. Samah Saleh, a sociologist at An-Najah National University in Nablus and a visiting professor at UCLA, Israel has long used starvation and dehumanization as powerful tools of control.
The world must not allow the dehumanization of women, from schoolgirls to grandmothers, to become normalized in Israeli prisons.
For women in Israeli detention, Saleh said in the webinar, health problems persist even after their release. Prisoners are denied access to showers and clean clothes, they don’t sleep, and they are malnourished, often getting little more than a few slices of bread and a few spoonfuls of fruit or yogurt a day, while scabies mites burrow into their skin.
Dalal Bajes, a visiting scholar at the University of California (UC Berkeley) and an expert on Palestinian women’s experiences in prison, told the webinar that detention „takes everything away.” Her work highlights the dramatic deterioration of conditions since the start of the genocide, amid the normalization of „prolonged incommunicado detention, denial of legal access [and] threats of rape.”.
In one case documented by Bajes, writer Lama Khatir – also imprisoned in 2018-19 – described „a completely different regime” during her imprisonment after October 7, 2023.
„We were no longer living in time; we were just staring into emptiness,” Khatir said in a report published by the Al Jazeera Media Institute. In summarizing the case, Bajes noted that the lack of books, newspapers, news, or a familiar routine „turned time into an oppressive force.”.
Digital surveillance
According to Bajes, an estimated 100,000 Palestinians were arrested by Israeli authorities between 1948 and 1967. The pace of arrests accelerated dramatically in the following decades, with approximately one million people reportedly arrested between 1967 and 2021, including more than 16,000 women.
Addameer and other prisoner rights groups reported that 72 Palestinian women were being held in Israeli prisons last month, mostly in Damon prison in the north. Most of them were arrested from the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
The report said that among these prisoners were three minors and 32 mothers, with a total of 130 children. In addition, 17 women were held in administrative detention without charge or trial. Five prisons…
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
