Every year on April 17, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day is celebrated to highlight the plight of Israeli detainees and their struggle for freedom against the Israeli occupation. During 2021, the Israeli army captured nearly 8,000 Palestinians, including more than 1,300 minors and 184 women. Israeli authorities have also issued more than 1,500 arrest warrants – detaining Palestinians without charge or trial, according to the Addameer detainee rights group. As of April 10, 2022, there were 4,450 Palestinians being held in Israeli jails in Israel and in the occupied territories. For the Palestinians, they are political prisoners fighting to end the illegal occupation of Israel. From those:
530 are being held without charge or trial 160 are children 32 are women 549 are serving life sentences 499 serve a prison sentence of more than 20 years
Children prisoners – The case of Ahmad Manasra
Israel is the only country in the world to try children in military courts, often denying them basic rights. The Israeli army has imprisoned more than 12,000 Palestinian children since 2000, according to Addameer. Most of these children were charged with “throwing stones”, a crime punishable by martial law and up to 20 years in prison. Currently, 160 Palestinian children remain in Israeli jails, most of whom are in custody and have not been convicted of any crime. One of the most painful cases of child detainees is that of Ahmad Manasra, who was arrested at the age of 13, brutally interrogated and then convicted. Six years after serving his sentence and six months in custody, he has just turned 21. Ahmad was with Hassan’s cousin, who allegedly stabbed two Israeli settlers near an Israeli settlement in occupied East Jerusalem in 2015. Hassan, then 15, was shot and killed by an Israeli citizen, while Ahmad was brutally beaten by an Israeli mob and hit by a car. Suffered skull fractures and internal bleeding. At the time, Israeli law stipulated that children under the age of 14 could not be held criminally liable. To circumvent this, the Israeli authorities waited until Manasra was 14 years old to convict him. The law was changed in August 2016 to allow the prosecution of younger children. Ahmad was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to 12 years in prison. The sentence was later reduced to nine years. Ahmad has long suffered from mental health problems. At the end of 2021, a psychiatrist from Médecins Sans Frontières was allowed to visit him and diagnose him with schizophrenia. This was the first time an outside doctor had been allowed to see him. Despite Ahmad’s mental health problems and diagnoses, he has been held in solitary confinement for the past five months. Israeli forces have shot and killed at least eight Palestinian children since early 2022.
Administrative detainees – detained without charge or trial
Currently 530 Palestinians are in “administrative detention” – they are being held without charge or trial. Detainees, including women and children, may be detained by the military for renewable periods of six months on the basis of “confidential information” which neither the detainee nor their lawyer is allowed to see. (Al Jazeera) Under international law, an occupying state is prohibited from transporting and holding detainees outside the occupied territories, but Israel does so with a number of prisons within its borders. Over the years, many detainees have gone on hunger strike as a non-violent protest against their detention.
