This article was first published in the People’s Dispatch on November 22, 2024.
Over 10,000 Palestinians are currently imprisoned in Israel. The issue of Palestinian prisoners has come to the fore amid the ongoing genocidal violence in Gaza, becoming both a central demand in the on-and-off ceasefire talks and a tool for Israeli forces in their attempts to suppress resistance in Gaza and the West Bank. Hand in hand with this history of repression stands the vibrant Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement, which has mobilized the masses, shaped public opinion, and contributed to pivotal political, cultural, and social events, including Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023.
Over the past year, reports from Palestinian political prisoners have highlighted ongoing abuse and torture by Israeli soldiers. Despite this, the prisoners’ movement remains resilient, drawing strength from its long history in the liberation struggle. This article explores the movement’s history, the repression it has faced, and Israel’s decades-long efforts to dismantle it.
History and achievements
According to Palestinian historian, writer, and former-prisoner Raafat Hamdouna, the roots of the movement go back to the British Mandate of Palestine. In June 1930, the British military executed Palestinian prisoners Fouad Hijazi, Atta al-Zeer, and Mohammed Jamjoum, prominent revolutionary figures fighting against the British mandate. Palestinians consider Hijazi, Al-Zeer, and Jamjoum as the earliest prisoner martyrs, who sacrificed their lives for the Palestinian struggle against imperialism and Zionism.
In the 1950s, Palestinian resistance fighters, known as Al-Fedayeen, operated from Gaza and neighboring countries after being displaced by the occupation in 1948. They launched attacks by infiltrating occupied areas. By 1965, they began organizing national resistance movements, including the launch of Fatah as an armed resistance group. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) followed in 1967, along with other movements in successive years. After Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, thousands of resistance members were imprisoned, with Israeli authorities using British mandate emergency laws, violence, and torture to extract confessions.
Today, it is considered that the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement started in 1967, and that it encompasses all male and female detainees who have been imprisoned by Israel ever since.
The case of Khalida Jarrar
In an effort to undermine leadership among Palestinian female prisoners, Israel has placed Khalida Jarrar–a prominent prisoners’ leader, feminist activist, and former member of the Palestinian Legislative Council–in solitary confinement. Arrested in December 2023, Jarrar was transferred from Damon prison to Neve Tirza prison for female criminal detainees, despite not being charged since her arrest. According to Addameer’s monitoring and documentation department, Jarrar has experienced miserable conditions. Israeli occupation authorities have confiscated all her personal belongings, including personal care items.
“Even her hair brush was confiscated, and she is not allowed to have a paper and a pen in her 2.5 by 1.5-meter cell that lacks hygiene and ventilation,” Addameer’s monitoring and documentation department stated. “Jarrar has not been allowed to spend a brief time in the open air outside of her cell.”
Her husband, Ghassan Jarrar, shared with the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor that Israeli authorities are delaying food deliveries endangering her health, as she manages chronic health conditions and requires five types of medication.
The prisoners’ movement gained momentum in the late 1970s and early 1980s, marked by uprising against humiliating detention conditions in Israeli jails. During this time, the movement laid down rules, spread awareness, educated, united collective action, and organized hunger strikes known as the “battle of empty stomachs”. The hunger strikes led to improvements to detention conditions, which was considered a triumph for the movement.
For decades, the movement has turned prisons into academic and cultural education spaces. With the support of Al-Quds Open University, hundreds of prisoners obtained high school diplomas, bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, and doctorates. Many prisoners managed to publish studies, novels, books, and poetry about their experiences inside Israeli jails, creating a captivating genre known as the “Prison Literature” or the “Captive Literature”.
To separate Palestinian prisoners from their social circles, Israel has imposed severe restrictions on visits and prohibited conjugal visits. Hundreds of Palestinians were sentenced to long-term or life in prison, essentially depriving them from conceiving children.
In response to these restrictions, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement has created another form of resistance by smuggling prisoners’ sperm out of prisons, so that their wives can undergo in vitro fertilization. Palestinian prisoners first tried to smuggle sperm out of Israeli jails in 2004. According to reports published in 2023, 110 Palestinian babies were born through the use of smuggled seminal fluids of 76 prisoners. Babies born through this process are known as the “liberated semen”.
The case of Walid Daqqah
Walid Daqqah was one of the movement’s leaders, whose intellectual influence in the Palestinian liberation struggle made him a key target for Israel’s systematic repressive policies inside the prisons.
He died in April 2024, at the age of 62, due to intentional medical negligence after spending 38 years in Israeli prisons. Daqqah, who suffered from cancer, was expected to be released on March 24, 2023, but the Israeli Central Court unjustly sentenced him to two more years in prison. He passed away before being able to hug his four-year-old daughter Milad, who was born through “liberated semen”.
Israel’s attempts to dismantle the movement
Since October 7, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement has faced its worst situation since it was founded. Detention conditions have drastically deteriorated, while more violations of human rights and crimes against humanity have been documented. Israel has also become more determined than ever to dismantle the movement, recognizing its vital role in supporting the Palestinian struggle and uniting prisoners against the Israeli occupation.
Addameer’s monitoring and documentation department told Peoples Dispatch that Israel has tried to dismantle the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement by isolating its leaders in solitary confinement, brutally assaulting them, and mixing prisoners from different factions or ideologies to disrupt unity.
“The policy of mixing up prisoners of different ideologies and affiliations at the same cell, aims at undermining the organizational structure of the movement, disheartening the prisoners, and making communication harder for them,” Addameer’s monitoring and documentation department said.
The case of Marwan Barghouti
For over a year, prominent Palestinian political and prisoner leader Marwan Barghouthi, who has spent more than 23 years in prison, has been repeatedly transferred between facilities, enduring solitary confinement in each of them. Since October 7, he has also faced physical abuse and torture. In this regard the Executive Director of the Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI) Tal Steiner said: “What Barghouti has endured amounts to torture, but that has become standard across all detention facilities since 7 October.” Steiner’s statement was quoted in different media and official reports in May 2024.
The repressive measures against Barghouthi did not stop there. The Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said in a joint statement on October 28 that Barghouti, along with several other prisoners, were subjected to brutal assaults by the special units of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) the previous month. As a result, Bargouthi sustained numerous injuries including to his ribs and limbs, bleeding in his right ear, a wound on his right arm, and back pain.
For Palestinians, Barghouthi is seen as their “Nelson Mandela”, a unifying revolutionary leader and a strong presidential candidate. Israel, as such, has sought to repress him, aiming at debilitating his influence on the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement and the struggle for liberation.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement remains a powerful symbol of resistance against the occupation, especially after the intensification of violence and mass arrests by Israeli Occupation Forces after October 7, 2023. The movement endures despite the occupation’s use of solitary confinement and torture, while efforts like the “liberated semen” testify to the determination of the Palestinian prisoners to resist further.
Featured image: Illustration of Palestinian prisoners. Credit: Midhun Puthupattu
