Life Beneath the Zionist Carceral State
Occupied West Bank & East Jerusalem – April 17, 2025: At dawn, a familiar dread grips a family in a small West Bank village. The thud of boots on their doorstep means another night raid. Soldiers drag a 15-year-old boy from his bed, blindfold and zip-tie him. His crime is unknown – perhaps no crime at all, just the routine of an occupying army asserting control. This daily oppression, from military incursions in homes to sudden arrests at checkpoints, forms the lived reality for Palestinians under occupation.
In the Occupied West Bank, Israeli forces maintain hundreds of checkpoints, roadblocks, and “flying” checkpoints that can appear without warning (The Nakba did not start or end in 1948 | Features | Al Jazeera). Each one is a chokepoint on Palestinian life – a place where any person, at any time, can be stopped, searched, or detained without cause. At Jerusalem’s sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, even prayer is no sanctuary: in April 2023, Israeli police stormed the holy site during Ramadan, firing stun grenades and beating worshippers, arresting 400 Palestinians in one night (Israeli forces carry out violent raid at Al-Aqsa Mosque | Religion News | Al Jazeera). These scenes of violence – rifles in a place of worship, children terrorized at checkpoints, families separated by concrete walls and barbed wire – are not isolated incidents. They are part of a system of control designed to break the spirit and resistance of an entire people.
An Apartheid Legal System
Once seized by soldiers, a Palestinian enters an entirely different legal universe than their Israeli settler counterparts. Israel operates a dual legal system in occupied territory: Jewish settlers are subject to civilian law, but Palestinians fall under Israeli military law. A person’s ethnicity determines the law – a hallmark of apartheid (Al Jazeera). In these military courts, conviction is virtually guaranteed. The conviction rate exceeds 99% for Palestinians. Trials often last mere minutes, with secret evidence and coerced confessions the norm. Military judges and prosecutors are Israeli army officers, standing in judgment of the occupied. As historian Ilan Pappé notes, the courts are a “humiliating charade” – a façade to legitimize what is fundamentally unjust. Under this system, Palestinians are often presumed guilty by default, while settlers who commit violent crimes frequently go unpunished or face lenient civil courts.
Children are not spared. In fact, Israel is the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes children in military courts (Defense for Children Palestine). About 500–700 Palestinian children are arrested and tried in these courts each year. Military law considers Palestinian youths as adults at age 16, unlike Israeli youths who are minors until 18. Since 2000, an estimated 13,000 Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli forces. During arrest and interrogation, abuse is rampant. UNICEF has reported that ill-treatment of Palestinian child detainees is “widespread, systematic, and institutionalized”. Children are often seized in night-time raids, taken from their parents at gunpoint. They typically arrive at interrogation bound, blindfolded, frightened, and sleep-deprived. Denied access to lawyers or family, they are subjected to verbal threats, physical and psychological violence, sometimes rising to the level of torture. Under duress, children frequently sign confessions in Hebrew – a language many do not understand. These “confessions” then become the basis for conviction. It is a cruel ritual of injustice that Palestinians have endured for generations.
One stark example is the story of Ahmad Manasra. In 2015, 13-year-old Ahmad from East Jerusalem was chased down, beaten unconscious, and nearly killed by an Israeli mob – all caught on a shocking video. He had been accused of involvement in a stabbing attack in a settler neighborhood, though he never harmed anyone. After surviving his beating, Ahmad was interrogated without a guardian, tried in an Israeli civil court (after Israel lowered the age of culpability), and sentenced to 9½ years in prison. He entered detention as a boy and spent his teenage years behind bars – much of it in solitary confinement. Deprived of normal human contact, Ahmad’s mental health collapsed. By 2021, at barely 20 years old, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, paranoid and delusional after years in an isolation cell. His family’s pleas for early release on psychiatric grounds were repeatedly denied – because even as a minor, he had been convicted of a “terrorism” offense. Only last week, in April 2025, Ahmad was finally released after serving his full term. He walked out a profoundly changed young man, eyes vacant and spirit scarred, having lost his youth to the occupation’s machinery. Nothing can undo the trauma he and countless other children have endured. And still, hundreds of Palestinian minors remain imprisoned today – some as young as 12 years old – growing up behind bars instead of in classrooms or playgrounds.
Administrative Detention: Imprisoned Without Charge
For thousands of Palestinians, there isn’t even a pretense of a trial. Israel wields a draconian practice called administrative detention – essentially imprisonment without charge, indefinitely. Under military regulations, Palestinians can be held for renewable periods (often 6 months) on secret evidence that neither they nor their lawyers are allowed to see (Israel frees hunger-striking Gaza footballer | News | Al Jazeera). These orders can be renewed again and again, meaning a person can spend years in prison without ever being convicted of a crime. It is incarceration based solely on the whim of military commanders or Shin Bet intelligence officers, with no due process. As of early 2025, over 3,300 Palestinians are held in administrative detention (Palestine: Thousands of Prisoners — The Spark #1220) – 3,300 people with zero formal charges.
Consider Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya, a 57-year-old physician from Gaza. He is the director of a major hospital who tended to wounded civilians during Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2023. In December, Israeli forces abducted Dr. Hossam from his hospital as tanks rolled in (Peoples Dispatch). They destroyed the building where he worked, then detained him under the vague label of an “unlawful combatant,” a status that offers no trial and no release date (The Spark #1220). For months now, Dr. Hossam has languished in Israel’s notorious Ofer military prison. He has not been charged with anything; instead, an Israeli court rubber-stamped a six-month administrative detention order against him, which can be renewed arbitrarily. During his detention, Dr. Hossam has been brutally tortured (Middle East Monitor). A lawyer from Al-Mezan Center who visited him reported that Hossam was held in solitary confinement for 24 days, beaten severely, electro-shocked, and left chained in stress positions. He lost 15 kg of weight and developed an enlarged heart muscle due to the abuse and medical neglect in custody. At one point, soldiers forced him to strip naked and sit on sharp gravel for hours. Fellow detainees say Dr. Hossam repeatedly fainted during marathon interrogations. This respected doctor – who spent decades saving lives in Gaza – has been reduced to prisoner #24 in Ofer, fighting to stay alive and sane. His family has no idea when or if they will see him again. Dr. Hossam’s torment is a window into Israel’s use of detention as a tool of domination: to snatch community leaders, scholars, and activists off the street and disappear them into prisons for months or years without any legal recourse.
Administrative detention is not an aberration; it is a pillar of the occupation’s control. Since 1967, Israel has issued over 50,000 such orders. Nearly every Palestinian community has felt this trauma – the father or mother suddenly taken, the student or farmer locked away without explanation, the endless limbo of hope and despair each time the detention order comes up for “review” only to be extended. Families live in anguish, wondering why their loved one was taken and when they might return. Many detainees resort to the only form of protest their captors cannot ignore – hunger strikes – to demand freedom or at least a charge to defend. (We will return to the hunger strikes of Palestinian prisoners – acts of resistance writ on their very bodies – in a moment.)
Torture and Death Behind Bars
Inside Israel’s prisons, torture and ill-treatment are systemic – carried out with impunity by interrogators and guards. Every Palestinian who passes through these cells has stories of abuse: beatings, stress positions, sleep deprivation, threats against their families, humiliation, and worse. Human rights groups have documented electric shocks, simulated drowning, sexual violence, and medical neglect as tools used to break detainees. Israeli military and intelligence agencies have effectively a free hand to brutalize Palestinian prisoners, including children, under the cloak of “security” – and they do so habitually. Between physical torture and the psychological torture of isolation or threats, the goal is to extract confessions or simply to punish and intimidate an entire population. According to testimonies compiled by rights groups, over 95% of Palestinian detainees experience some form of torture or degrading treatment during their imprisonment. Israel’s own agencies have admitted that since 2001, tens of thousands of torture complaints have resulted in zero criminal indictments of interrogators. The abuse is institutionalized – part of the very architecture of the occupation’s prison system.
Tragically, the ultimate price many Palestinians pay for their defiance is their life. Prisoners have died in Israeli custody due to torture, medical neglect, and mistreatment. In the past year alone, several high-profile cases have highlighted this brutal reality:
1.) Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, a prominent orthopedic surgeon from Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, was captured by Israeli forces in late 2023 as he tended to the wounded (Peoples Dispatch). Detained first in a makeshift camp and then moved to Ofer Prison, Dr. al-Bursh endured unspeakable abuse. Fellow prisoners recount that he was severely beaten, with broken ribs, and left partially naked during interrogations. There are credible reports that he was sexually assaulted and tortured to death by his captors. In April 2024, after four months in detention, Dr. al-Bursh died in an Israeli prison. He was 48 years old. Israeli authorities quietly noted heart failure, but his family and cellmates know the truth: he was killed in custody. The UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine was “horrified” and noted that Dr. al-Bursh – a healer and “the embodiment of Palestinian ethics” – was “likely raped to death” by his Israeli interrogators. To compound the horror, Israel has refused to release his body. As of today – one year after his death – Dr. al-Bursh’s remains are still being held by the Israeli authorities, denied to his grieving family (UN). In death, as in life, he is used as a pawn by the occupier, his humanity disrespected to the very end.
2.) Walid Daqqa, a Palestinian intellectual and freedom fighter, has spent 37 years behind bars – a lifetime. He was supposed to be released in March 2023 after completing his sentence (Amnesty), but Israeli authorities arbitrarily extended his imprisonment. Walid, now in his 60s, is suffering from a rare bone marrow cancer (myelofibrosis). He is terminally ill, his body ravaged by cancer and years of incarceration. In early 2023, Walid had a stroke in prison, on top of his cancer (Al Jazeera). Rather than show compassion, Israeli prison officials delayed his transfer to a hospital for 11 days (Addameer). Even after doctors urged urgent treatment, he has been consistently denied the specialist care he needs. Walid’s family and international groups have pleaded for his release to allow him to live his last days in dignity, but Israel’s response has been cruel obstinance. Keeping him detained until his final breath is meant to send a message – a cold assertion of power over life and death. “It is cruelty for cruelty’s sake,” one Amnesty report noted, as Walid’s prognosis is poor and he poses no conceivable security threat. As of this writing, Walid Daqqa remains in a prison hospital, struggling to survive. He may not have much time left. The Israeli state appears intent on ensuring that if he dies, it will be as a prisoner, under its watch, rather than allow a moment of mercy. Walid’s story is one of steadfastness: despite the physical deterioration, he continues to write and inspire from his hospital bed, a symbol of the unbroken Palestinian spirit even in the face of death. His looming fate weighs heavily on Prisoners’ Day this year.
3.) Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmad, a 17-year-old Palestinian youth, became the first known Palestinian child to die in Israeli custody. He was arrested in late 2024 amid the mass detentions sweeping the West Bank and Gaza. This teenage boy – who loved playing football and hoped to one day attend university – ended up in Israel’s notorious Megiddo Prison, held without charge. On March 22, 2025, Walid collapsed in the prison yard and died before help arrived (Defense for Children Palestine). An autopsy later revealed the harrowing cause: Walid had been systematically starved and neglected to death. He was severely malnourished, with signs of prolonged starvation, dehydration, and untreated infections. There were bruises and blunt trauma injuries on his body, indicating frequent beatings by guards. In effect, this child was tortured, starved, and left to die slowly over months. “Walid’s death was not an accident – it is a crime,” said Defense for Children International-Palestine, noting that his treatment amounts to genocidal brutality against Palestinian children. The imagery is haunting: a boy’s body wasted to skin and bone, covered in scabies and sores, organs failing – all within the walls of an Israeli prison where no cameras can see. Walid’s family received his body in a shroud. Instead of celebrating his 18th birthday, they are left with an autopsy report itemizing his torture. He was 17 years old. His only “offense” was being Palestinian under an occupation that views every Palestinian body as expendable.
These are but a few names from a long, gruesome list. Over 250 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since 1967. Some were killed during interrogations; others were executed by lethal gunfire or medical neglect; many succumbed to illnesses made terminal by lack of treatment. In the past year, 2023 was one of the deadliest years for Palestinian detainees – by some counts, at least half a dozen prisoners died from Israel’s deliberate medical neglect or use of force during detentions (The Spark #1220). Israel is even holding the bodies of numerous deceased prisoners, refusing to return them to families as an added punishment. Beyond Dr. al-Bursh, the body of veteran prisoner Nasser Abu Hmeid – who died of cancer in custody in 2022 – is still withheld, as are others. This morbid policy of withholding bodies extends to hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, whose bodies remain captive in morgues or secret cemeteries. For Palestinian families, closure is denied even in death – mothers cannot bury their sons, wives cannot mourn at their husbands’ graves, children grow up without ever having a funeral to say goodbye. The cruelty is unrelenting and calculated.
Resistance Behind Bars
Yet, in the bleakness of these prison cells, resistance lives on. Palestinian prisoners have long been at the forefront of the national struggle, using hunger strikes, smuggled messages, and steadfast unity as weapons against their jailers. Hunger striking – refusing food to demand freedom or better conditions – has a storied legacy in Palestinian history, a powerful act of non-violent defiance that has often forced Israeli authorities to relent.
We remember Khader Adnan, a baker from Jenin who became a symbol of resistance. Over the past decade, Adnan launched multiple hunger strikes to protest being held without charge. In 2012, his 66-day hunger strike ignited global outrage and led to his release, inspiring hundreds of other administrative detainees to strike. He would be re-arrested and strike again – embodying the slogan “freedom or death”. Finally, in May 2023, after an 87-day hunger strike, Khader Adnan paid the ultimate price – he died in his cell. Israeli authorities had ignored repeated warnings that he was near death, refusing to transfer him to a civilian hospital. They found him unconscious on the floor of his cell and by then it was too late. Adnan, a 44-year-old father of nine, became the first Palestinian in decades to die by hunger strike in Israeli custody. His death was mourned as that of a martyr. Amnesty International said it “highlights Israel’s cruel treatment” of detainees and the extreme desperation that drives Palestinians to starve themselves for justice. Through his sacrifice, Adnan shone a light on the injustice of administrative detention and inspired a new generation to keep resisting, even with their bodies as the only battleground.
Years earlier, in 2012, Mahmoud Sarsak, a talented young football player from Gaza, similarly waged a hunger strike for his freedom. Sarsak had been imprisoned for three years without trial under Israel’s “Unlawful Combatants” law (a Gaza equivalent of administrative detention) (Al Jazeera). Determined to not be forgotten, he refused food for 92 days, shedding nearly half his body weight. The global sports community took up his cause – FIFA and UEFA pressed for his release. Ultimately, Israel relented. Sarsak was freed in July 2012 as part of a deal, his life saved by his own act of will and international solidarity. When he finally emerged from an ambulance in Gaza City, bones protruding under his skin, he kissed the ground and embraced his family. “I resisted with my empty stomach,” he said, and he urged the world to remember those still inside. His case highlighted the plight of hundreds of administrative detainees (at the time, over 300 were in prison without charge). His victory was rare but momentous – proof that even in darkness, perseverance could bring a sliver of light.
Collective hunger strikes have also erupted periodically. In 2017, over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners joined a mass strike demanding basic rights like longer family visits and better medical care. Many nearly died before Israel negotiated a compromise after 40 days. Such strikes are met with harsh retaliation – force-feeding laws, punitive measures – yet they remain one of the few ways prisoners can assert their dignity.
Palestinian prisoners are not passive victims. They organize reading groups, write poetry and letters, and educate each other in the cramped cells. Some secretly obtain university degrees from behind bars. Legendary figures like Marwan Barghouti or Ahmed Sa’adat continue to issue political statements from prison, guiding the resistance outside. When news of any prisoner’s death or mistreatment reaches the streets, Palestinians mobilize in protests, for they see the prisoners as the moral vanguard of their struggle. Every Palestinian family either has experienced imprisonment or knows someone who has – it is a shared burden and a badge of honor in the fight for freedom.
On this Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, the stories of suffering are gut-wrenching, but they are also stories of unyielding resilience. The Israeli prison system is a cornerstone of an apartheid regime designed to quash a people’s aspiration for liberty. It inflicts daily terror and lifelong trauma. But it has not succeeded in breaking the Palestinian desire for freedom. If anything, it has steeled it. From the child in a crowded cell to the elder statesman serving life, from the mother separated from her baby to the doctor tortured for healing his people – each prisoner’s heartbeat is a drumbeat for justice that refuses to fade.
What do we do now?
It is not enough to empathize with Palestinian prisoners; we must act. Global civil society has a responsibility to hold Israel accountable for these crimes. Governments, media, and international institutions can no longer look away or excuse these blatant abuses of human rights. Apartheid, torture, and arbitrary detention have no place in the 21st century – and yet they persist, funded by billions in U.S. and EU military aid and shielded by diplomatic silence. This must end.
What can be done? Raise these prisoners’ names and stories at every opportunity. Share Ahmad Manasra’s ordeal, Dr. Hossam’s torment, and Walid Daqqa’s plight so that their voices echo worldwide. Demand your lawmakers sanction Israel for violating international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention’s ban on transferring prisoners from occupied territory into the occupier’s land (Israel routinely does this (The Guardian)). Insist on conditioning aid on human rights. Support campaigns to boycott and divest from companies complicit in the prison system. For example, the British security firm G4S has provided security systems and services to Israeli prisons and checkpoints, directly enabling the abuse of Palestinian detainees. Global pressure already forced G4S to sell some of its Israel operations – proof that activism works. But other corporations like HP (Hewlett-Packard) supply the technology that tracks and controls prisoners, and they must face similar pressure (Corporate Watch). Challenge the institutions in your own countries that are complicit – whether it’s research partnerships with Israeli security firms, police exchange programs that train in Israeli tactics, or investment funds that profit from Israel’s military-industrial complex. Each of us, in our communities, can organize teach-ins, protests, and letter-writing campaigns to make sure our societies stop enabling this brutal occupation.
Finally, amplify the call to free all Palestinian political prisoners. Nearly 10,000 Palestinians are behind bars for resisting a system recognized as apartheid by leading human rights organizations (he Spark #1220). They are prisoners of conscience and struggle. We must insist on their freedom as a non-negotiable pillar of any just peace. The International Criminal Court should investigate Israel’s prison abuses as possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. UN committees must act, not just lament. The world showed with apartheid South Africa that sustained global pressure can bring down even the mightiest walls of injustice. It is time to summon that same solidarity for Palestine.
In conclusion, the story of the Palestinian prisoners is the story of Palestine itself: a story of pain, yes, but also of perseverance. On this Prisoners’ Day, we honor their sacrifice and courage. Let us not only weep for them – let us fight for them. The bars of a prison cell cannot extinguish their hope, and our actions, however small, can help keep that hope alive. As they hold on behind locked doors, we on the outside must unlock our own fear and apathy. Speak their names. Share their stories. Protest, boycott, and demand justice. For the freedom of the prisoners is intertwined with the freedom of Palestine.
If you cannot physically free them, as the saying goes, scream their names. Scream until the sound shatters the indifference of those in power. Scream until every chained hand is free, every stolen body is returned, and this unjust prison empire collapses under the weight of global moral outrage. Free Palestine – free them all.
Sources: Al Jazeera (Israeli forces carry out violent raid at Al-Aqsa Mosque | Religion News | Al Jazeera) (Israel’s military courts ‘humiliating charade’ for Palestinians | Occupied West Bank | Al Jazeera); Defense for Children International – Palestine (Military Detention | Defense for Children Palestine) (17-year-old Palestinian child prisoner starved to death by Israeli prison guards | Defense for Children Palestine); Addameer Prisoner Support (Immediate Release of Palestinian Political Prisoner Walid Daqqa Diagnosed with Bone Marrow Cancer and Facing Imminent Deteriorating Health Conditions due to Israeli Prison Services Policy of Deliberate Medical Neglect | Addameer); Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics via Maan (The Nakba did not start or end in 1948 | Features | Al Jazeera); Middle East Eye; IMEMC; Palestinian Ministry of Health (Gaza’s Dr Hussam Abu Safiya tortured in Israeli detention – Middle East Monitor); Arab News; Middle East Monitor (Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh's death by torture underscores brutal targeting of Palestinian health workers by Israel : Peoples Dispatch); Reuters; Amnesty International (Khader Adnan's death highlights Israel's cruel treatment of ...); and others.