Palestinians in Israeli custody
Based on Wikipedia: Palestinians in Israeli custody
Every third Palestinian. That's the statistic that stops you cold. According to Red Cross data from the first two decades of Israeli occupation, between 1967 and 1987, approximately one in three Palestinians—about 500,000 people—were detained by Israeli forces at some point. By 2005, the cumulative total had reached 650,000. In 2012, the Palestinian Authority estimated that 800,000 Palestinians had been imprisoned since 1967, representing roughly 20 percent of the entire population and 40 percent of all Palestinian males.
These aren't just numbers. They represent an entire society reshaped by the experience of incarceration.
A Legal System Unlike Any Other
To understand Palestinian imprisonment, you first need to understand the court system that governs it. In 1967, following the Six-Day War, Israel established a military court system for the occupied territories. It wasn't created from scratch—it was partially modeled on the British military courts that had operated in Mandatory Palestine starting in 1937.
What makes this system distinctive is its scope. It doesn't just handle violent offenses. It covers non-violent protests. Political statements. Cultural expression. Even how Palestinians are allowed to move around or associate with one another. Within this system, West Bank Palestinians are treated as what legal scholars call "foreign civilians"—a category that places them outside the normal protections of either Israeli civil law or international humanitarian law's provisions for prisoners of war.
The conviction rate tells part of the story: somewhere between 90 and 95 percent of cases result in conviction. But dig deeper and you find that 97 percent of those convictions come through plea bargains. Lisa Hajjar, a sociology professor who has studied the system extensively, identifies several practices that critics find troubling: suspects held for extended periods without any contact with the outside world, lawyers blocked from seeing their clients, interrogation techniques designed to extract confessions through pressure, and the use of "secret evidence" that neither the defendant nor their attorney can examine.
Administrative Detention: Imprisonment Without Trial
Perhaps no aspect of Palestinian imprisonment generates more controversy than administrative detention—the practice of holding someone indefinitely without charge or trial.
The irony runs deep. This practice was originally introduced by the British during the Mandate period specifically to control Palestinian resistance. But as tensions rose in the 1930s and 1940s, British authorities increasingly applied it to Jewish political activists and suspected members of Jewish paramilitary organizations like the Irgun and Lehi.
Jewish community leaders were outraged. In July 1936, Jewish lawyers argued publicly that the practice should be repealed. Dov Yosef, who would later become a minister in the Israeli government, argued in 1948 that administrative detention had abolished the writ of habeas corpus—that fundamental protection against arbitrary imprisonment dating back to medieval England—and had led to the improper incarceration of numerous Jewish activists.
Yet when Israel achieved independence, it kept these regulations on the books. Article 111 of the Defence (Emergency) Regulations allows military commanders to arrest and detain anyone, without public explanation or formal charges, for periods of up to one year. A provision exists for extending detention indefinitely.
The numbers have fluctuated dramatically over the decades. During a five-month stretch of the First Intifada—the Palestinian uprising that began in 1987—Israel placed 1,900 Palestinians under administrative detention. The practice declined in the late 1990s, with fewer than 20 people held under administrative detention from 1999 to October 2001. Then came the Second Intifada and Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, and the numbers climbed again. By 2007, about 830 Palestinians per month were being held in administrative detention, including women and minors. By July 2024, that number had reached 4,781.
The Children
The detention of minors represents one of the most contentious aspects of this system. Between 2000 and 2009, according to Defence for Children International's Palestine Section, 6,700 Palestinians between the ages of 12 and 18 were arrested by Israeli authorities. Al Jazeera reported that between 2000 and 2023, approximately 12,000 children in total were detained.
In April 2022, 160 children were among the 4,450 Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli prisons. The Economist reported that nearly all minors brought before military courts appeared "in leg shackles and handcuffs."
Individual cases occasionally break through into international awareness. In February 2025, Israeli authorities detained Mohammed Zaher Ibrahim, a 15-year-old, during a nighttime raid on his family's home in the West Bank. The accusation: stone-throwing. His family denied the allegations. During his pre-trial detention, reports emerged of significant weight loss, a skin infection, limited medical care, and restricted contact with his family. Over 100 American civil rights, human rights, and faith organizations called for his release. Ibrahim was eventually freed in November 2025 following a plea agreement.
The Political Prisoners
Among the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli custody are dozens of political figures—47 Hamas members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, several ministers, mayors, and municipal council members from towns across the West Bank.
Two cases illustrate the complexity of these imprisonments.
Marwan Barghouti was a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militia that emerged during the Second Intifada, and of the al-Mustaqbal political party. He was arrested and, unusually, tried before an Israeli civilian court rather than a military tribunal. On May 20, 2004, he was convicted on five counts of murder and sentenced to five life terms plus forty years. To Palestinians, he remains one of the most popular political figures, sometimes called their "Nelson Mandela." To Israelis, he is a terrorist responsible for deadly attacks on civilians.
Ahmad Sa'adat, secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, presents an even more tangled legal history. In 2002, he was tried and imprisoned in Jericho—not by Israel, but by the Palestinian National Authority—for his role in the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi. The Palestinian Supreme Court later declared his imprisonment unconstitutional. His detention in Jericho rather than extradition to Israel had been negotiated between the Palestinian Authority, Israel, the United States, and Britain, with American and British observers monitoring his imprisonment. Then, in March 2006, after both the American and British monitors and the Palestinian guards abandoned their posts, Israeli forces surrounded the Jericho prison and took Sa'adat into custody, where he has remained under administrative detention ever since.
The Economics of Imprisonment
The Palestinian Authority pays monthly salaries to Palestinians imprisoned in Israel—a practice that has generated enormous controversy internationally.
The system works roughly like this: as of 2003, Palestinian law mandated $250 per month to security detainees serving sentences of up to five years, with higher payments for longer sentences. Those serving life sentences received $1,000 monthly. In 2011, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad increased these payments by 300 percent.
The amounts vary by affiliation. Prisoners connected to Palestine Liberation Organization factions receive $238 per month, plus $71 if married and $12 for each child. Abdullah Barghouti, a Hamas member sentenced to 67 life terms for attacks that killed 67 Israelis, receives about $1,100 monthly. Prisoners who have been incarcerated for over 30 years receive approximately $3,000 per month.
As of May 2011, the Palestinian Authority was spending $4.5 million monthly on prisoner salaries and $6.5 million on payments to families of those killed in the conflict, including suicide bombers. These payments comprised about 6 percent of the PA's budget.
Palestinians defend these payments as support for political prisoners and their families. Critics, particularly in Israel and the United States, call them rewards for terrorism that incentivize violence. This dispute has become a recurring flashpoint in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and American debates over aid to the Palestinian Authority.
Prison Exchanges
Periodically, Israel has released large numbers of Palestinian prisoners through negotiated exchanges. In 1985, Israel released 1,150 prisoners—including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who would go on to found Hamas—in exchange for just three Israeli prisoners of war being held by Ahmed Jibril's faction.
These exchanges have continued over the decades, trading hundreds or thousands of Palestinian prisoners for small numbers of captured Israeli soldiers or the remains of soldiers killed in action. Each exchange provokes intense debate within Israeli society: relief at bringing soldiers home, anguish at releasing those convicted of deadly attacks.
After October 7, 2023
The Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, transformed the landscape of Palestinian detention in ways that are still unfolding.
Israel immediately revoked work permits for residents of Gaza. Between 4,000 and 5,000 Palestinians who had been working in Israel when the attack occurred and were attempting to flee have gone missing, detained by Israeli authorities. Those who have been released describe being blindfolded, having their hands and feet bound, being beaten, and being denied food, water, and medical supplies.
By July 2024, the total number of Palestinians incarcerated by Israel had reached 9,623—more than double the figure from April 2022. Of these, 4,781 were held in administrative detention without charge.
B'tselem, the Israeli human rights organization, reported that since October 7, Palestinian prisoners with Israeli citizenship have been stripped of many rights they previously held. The organization went further, stating that abuse of detainees had become so systematic that Israeli prisons holding Palestinians should be called "torture camps."
In November 2025, Physicians for Human Rights–Israel reported that at least 98 Palestinians had died in custody since October 2023—52 under military custody and 46 in Israel Prison Service facilities.
The Weight of Numbers
Step back from the individual cases and the statistics reveal something striking about Palestinian society. By Palestinian estimates, 70 percent of Palestinian families have had at least one member imprisoned by Israel for activities related to the occupation. That's not an incarceration rate—it's a shared national experience.
On any given day during the first two decades of the occupation, according to Red Cross observers, Israeli military courts would be crowded with "children in handcuffs, women pleading with soldiers, anxious people thronging lawyers for information."
The geography of imprisonment has shifted over time. After the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, military courts in Palestinian towns were relocated to Area C—the zones under full Israeli control. This made it harder for lawyers and family members to attend proceedings because of the permit system governing Palestinian movement.
Most Palestinian prisoners today are held in a handful of facilities: Ofer Prison in the West Bank, and Megiddo and Ketziot prisons inside Israel proper. Moving prisoners into Israel raises questions under international law—the Fourth Geneva Convention restricts an occupying power from transferring detainees out of occupied territory—but the practice has continued for decades.
Two Narratives, One Reality
The Israeli narrative frames these imprisonments as security measures—necessary responses to terrorism and violence in an ongoing conflict. The military court system exists because Israel faces genuine threats. Administrative detention allows authorities to act on intelligence that cannot be revealed without compromising sources. The high incarceration numbers reflect the high level of Palestinian participation in armed resistance.
The Palestinian narrative sees a different picture: collective punishment, political repression, and a system designed not just to stop violence but to suppress any form of resistance to occupation. When raising a Palestinian flag or attending a political meeting can lead to imprisonment, the line between security prisoner and political prisoner becomes impossible to draw.
Organizations like Amnesty International have identified specific individuals—like Khalida Jarrar and Ahmad Qatamesh—as "prisoners of conscience," people imprisoned for their peaceful political activities rather than any violence. Israel rejects such characterizations.
What remains beyond dispute is the scale. Hundreds of thousands of people have passed through this system. Tens of thousands have experienced administrative detention. The families left behind number in the millions. Whether you call it a security apparatus or a system of control, its reach extends into nearly every corner of Palestinian life.
When a society has had 40 percent of its men imprisoned at some point, imprisonment stops being an exceptional experience. It becomes, in a sense, normal—which may be the most troubling statistic of all.