RAMALLAH, May 15, 2026 (WAFA) – The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said on Friday that Israeli authorities have detained nearly 23,000 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank since the start of the genocidal war on the Palestinian people in October 2023, in addition to thousands detained from the Gaza Strip.
In a statement marking the 78th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, the organization said the figure includes women, children, wounded individuals, and former prisoners, but does not include thousands of detainees from Gaza, where Israel continues to practice the crime of enforced disappearance against hundreds of detainees by refusing to disclose their whereabouts or conditions.
The Prisoner’s Society said the ongoing war has not only expanded the scale of detentions but also intensified abuses inside prisons and military camps, which have become organized spaces of torture, starvation, humiliation, and systematic medical neglect aimed at breaking prisoners physically and psychologically.
According to the statement, the current period is the bloodiest in the history of the Palestinian prisoner movement since 1967, citing escalating cases of torture, sexual assault, starvation, and denial of medical care.
The organization said that 89 prisoners whose identities have been confirmed have died in Israeli custody since the beginning of the war, including detainees who died as a result of torture, starvation, or deliberate medical crimes. It added that the number of known Palestinian prisoner deaths since 1967 has risen to 326, while Israel continues to withhold information about dozens of detainees from Gaza.
The Prisoner’s Society linked current detention policies to the broader history of the ongoing Nakba, arguing that mass imprisonment has long been used as a colonial tool of control dating back to the British Mandate period and later expanded under Israeli rule.
It stated that more than one million Palestinians have been detained over the decades in attempts to undermine Palestinian national and social structures. Despite this, the statement said Palestinian prisoners had transformed prisons into spaces of resistance, organization, and national awareness.
The Prisoner’s Society stressed that attempts to target the leadership of the prisoner movement and dismantle organizational structures inside prisons would not succeed in breaking prisoners’ resolve.
According to the organization, Israel is currently holding more than 9,400 Palestinian prisoners, including 86 women, 3,376 administrative detainees held without charge or trial, and 1,283 detainees classified by Israeli authorities as “unlawful combatants.”
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