How many Palestinian prisoners are there in Israel’s prisons and why their number has doubled since the start of the war in Gaza

The next exchange is expected to take place on Saturday, January 25.

Hamas captured 251 hostages on October 7, 2023, mostly civilians, when it attacked Israel by surprise, killing about 1,200 people. Of them, about 90 remain in the hands of the Islamist militia, although it is not clear how many have died.

The Israeli retaliation on Gaza has left almost 47,000 Palestinians dead in 15 months of war, many of them women and children.

It is not the first time that Israel agrees to release detainees and prisoners in exchange for hostages.

In a truce agreed to in November 2023, the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to release 240 prisoners, mostly teenagers detained without charge, while Hamas released 105 hostages.

In the past, the price that Palestinian militias have placed on kidnapped people has been much higher. In 2011, for example, Israel agreed to release more than 1,000 prisoners in exchange for a soldier who had been held captive by Hamas in Gaza for 5 years, Gilad Shalit.

The numbers are high and, on occasion, Israel has agreed to release prisoners who were serving long sentences for organizing terrorist attacks that caused numerous deaths.

But many others of those released in the exchanges are people who are in what is known as “administrative detention”, for which they have not been accused of any specific crime and who are in prison without a trial date.

These detentions, which can last for months or even years, add to the lists of the Palestinian prison population in Israel, which has doubled since the beginning of the war, according to various human rights organizations.

Currently, some 10,200 Palestinians are imprisoned in Israeli prisons, according to data from the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Former Detainees Affairs. More than a third of them have not been tried and almost all have been subjected to the authority of military courts.

Over the years, the UN has been highly critical of Israel for its treatment of Palestinian prisoners, stating that entire generations have endured “arbitrary, widespread and systematic deprivations of liberty under Israeli occupation.”

Before the start of the war, the UN put the number of Palestinian prisoners at around 5,000, including 160 children, according to the report presented in June 2023 by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967. , Francesca Albanese.

Of those 5,000, about 1,100 were detained without charge or without having been tried.

However, since October 7, these numbers grew exponentially to exceed 10,000, according to human rights organizations.

Addameer, an organization that supports Palestinian prisoners and their families, puts the number of Palestinian prisoners at 10,221 “following the extensive arrest campaigns carried out by the occupation authorities against various segments of the Palestinian population.”

Among them there are 88 women and 320 children.

Israel assures that these arrests are part of anti-terrorist operations that target members of Hamas in the West Bank.

Of the total figure, “the current number of administrative detainees exceeds 3,400, along with more than 3,464 detainees from the Gaza Strip, among whom there are more than 1,886 detainees under the law on ‘unlawful combatants’,” adds Addameer. , which means “consciousness” in Arabic. The NGO uses data from the Israeli Prison Service, which manages Israeli prisons, and from prisoners’ families.

These statistics do not include all Gaza detainees who have been subjected to forced disappearance, lawyer Tala Nasir, who works with the organization, tells BBC Mundo.

The law on illegal combatants was passed in Israel in 2002 and defines this figure as “any person who has participated directly or indirectly in hostile activities against the State of Israel, or who is a member of a force that perpetrates hostile acts against the State of Israel.” “, but that he is not entitled to the status of prisoner of war contemplated in international humanitarian law.

For Addameer and other human rights organizations, the fact that the number of prisoners has doubled since the start of the war shows that Israel “uses detention as a tool of repression and control against Palestinians, as well as a form of collective punishment.” aimed at putting pressure on Palestinian political parties during prisoner exchange negotiations,” the organization says.

Israel classified Addameer as a “terrorist” organization in 2021 along with five other Palestinian human rights groups, a designation that both the UN and other international human rights bodies rejected.

Administrative detention is a procedure that allows the Israeli army to hold prisoners “without charge, without trial, indefinitely, under a secret summary, so there is no fair trial, no guarantee and sometimes no trial at all.” explains the Palestinian lawyer.

Israel relies on three different laws to carry out these types of arrests, which can last up to two years, according to human rights associations.

“It is supposedly intended for extreme situations in which there is, for example, a bomb and you have to stop someone from doing something specific, but Israel uses it in a much more free way, and this is clearly a violation of human rights,” explained Roy Yellin, from the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem), in an interview with BBC Mundo after the first prisoner exchange that occurred in November 2023.

Children are also found in this situation.

As the West Bank and East Jerusalem are under Israeli occupation and the jurisdiction of its Army, Palestinians who are arrested in these territories are subjected to military trials.

“They are courts in which the judge is a soldier and the prosecutor too. It is a system that is not considered very fair,” Yellin denounces.

The expert explains that, in many cases, the accused prefer to accept the charges to try to achieve their freedom more quickly.

“Israel keeps Palestinians detained until the end of the process and some, if they have been arrested for things like throwing stones, something for which no one would ever be charged in Israel, prefer to accept a few months in prison rather than undergo a process that can be much longer and in which they will spend all that time in prison,” he assures.

According to the data considered by B’Tselem and other organizations, the majority of offenses committed by Palestinians “are not crimes such as murder or rape, but rather crimes such as throwing stones at soldiers or even participating in a protest, because Palestinians have no right to participate in demonstrations against the occupation,” says Yellin.

According to Save the Children, Palestinians are the only children in the world who are “systematically prosecuted by military courts.” The organization estimates that, in the last 20 years, some 10,000 Palestinian minors have been held in the Israeli Military Detention System.

The establishment of these military courts, according to what the Israeli army told BBC Mundo, “is recognized by the Fourth Geneva Convention and their operation complies with all relevant obligations under international law.”

According to this legislation, which is regulated, among others, by the “Order on Security Provisions” (Military Order 1651), children up to 12 years old can be tried and imprisoned. In Israel, the minimum age of criminal responsibility is also 12 years old.

Subscribe here to our new newsletter to receive a selection of the best content of the week every Friday.

And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.