RAMALLAH, September 27, 2025 (WAFA) - Abdullah Al-Zighari, head of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS), said the prisoners’ cause is undergoing unprecedented and seismic shifts marked by a surge in severe brutality against Palestinian political detainees and a record-breaking rise in detainees— now over 11,000 — with hundreds more held in the Israeli occupation’s military camps.
In a statement released Saturday on the occasion of the 32nd anniversary of the founding of the PPS, al-Zighari said that Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations today face unprecedented challenges amid the genocide, especially in light of attempts by the Israeli occupation and the U.S. administration to obstruct their work. A series of destructive orders were issued this year targeting several Palestinian human rights and civil institutions, including those specializing in prisoners’ affairs.
This current phase — the bloodiest in the history of our people and the prisoners’ movement— represents a true test of the international community, which has remained silent for decades in the face of the occupation’s crimes, including those committed against prisoners inside Israeli prisons, added the statement. “The martyrdom of dozens of prisoners since the war began is merely an extension of the ongoing policy of extermination and erasure.”
Despite the harshness and complexity of this phase, al-Zighari emphasized that the PPS will continue its mission — the one it was founded to serve — in defending the rights of male and female political prisoners and minors in the occupation’s prisons, and in amplifying their voices, which the occupation seeks by all means to silence and suppress.
He also renewed the PPS’s commitment to the prisoners and their families, pledging that it will remain a voice for the free, a pillar of support, and a mirror reflecting their steadfastness and sacrifices.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society was founded on September 27, 1993, on the campus of Birzeit University — one year after the general hunger strike launched by the prisoners’ movement on September 27, 1992, known as the “Battle of the September Volcano.” This strike marked a pivotal moment in the history of the prisoners’ movement due to the significant achievements it produced. The idea of founding the PPS originated from leaders of the prisoners’ movement in “Junaid” prison, aiming to establish a national and popular framework for the prisoners’ cause. Over the years, many leaders and martyrs of the prisoners’ movement, who gave their lives on the path to freedom, contributed to building this institution.
T.R.
