RAMALLAH, October 6, 2026 (WAFA) – Prisoner advocacy groups stated on Tuesday—during a press conference and a solidarity rally for prisoners in the city of Al-Bireh—that 92 prisoners (whose identities are known) have died in custody over the past three years, while enforced disappearance continues to obscure the fate of dozens of detainees from Gaza who have also died.
The groups noted that approximately 28% of the total number of prisoners who have died in custody since 1967 lost their lives during the last three years.
They reported that approximately 9,300 detainees were held in occupation prisons as of the beginning of October. This figure includes 118 detainees serving life sentences, 91 female prisoners, 350 children, 3,101 administrative detainees, and 1,419 detainees classified by the occupation as "unlawful combatants"—a category that includes detainees from Syria and Lebanon.
Since the start of the genocide, the Israeli occupation has escalated its policies of detention and persecution, transforming them into tools for collective retribution, subjugation, and the targeting of various segments of Palestinian society.
According to available data, more than 26,000 detentions have been recorded in the West Bank—including occupied Jerusalem—while the number of detentions in the Gaza Strip is estimated to be in the thousands, documenting these cases remains extremely difficult due to ongoing military operations, information blackouts, and enforced disappearances
Those detained include women, children, the elderly, the sick, journalists, and human rights workers; the number of detained women has exceeded 800, while more than 2,000 children have been arrested in the West Bank since the genocide began.
The impact of these detentions extends beyond mere detention to encompass raids, searches, vandalism, threats, and mistreatment, as well as psychological, social, and economic repercussions for the detainees and their families. Consequently, human rights organizations view arrest as an ongoing tool for pressure and collective subjugation.
Speakers called for intensified international pressure on the occupation to halt and abolish the death penalty, and to ensure that neither military nor civilian judicial systems are used to impose this punishment in a discriminatory manner.
They also emphasized that protecting the lives of Palestinian prisoners and detainees is an international responsibility; it cannot be treated as an internal matter or left at the mercy of retaliatory policies.
K.T
