Marking Palestinian Prisoner’s Day on Monday, prisoners’ advocacy groups said around 5000 Palestinians are currently incarcerated in Israel, the official news agency WAFA reported.
The Commission for Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, Addameer Association for Prisoner Support and Human Rights, and Wadi Hilweh Information Center – Jerusalem, said in their joint report that an estimated 4,900 political prisoners are currently incarcerated in Israel.
Facts
- Israel currently detains 31 Palestinian women.
- Israel currently detains 160 Palestinian children, including a girl.
- 1000 Palestinian prisoners – including six minors and two women – are currently held under administrative detention, with no charge nor trial.
- 23 of the prisoners have been held since before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993,
- The oldest Palestinian prisoner is Mohammad al-Tous, who was arrested in 1985.
- 11 Palestinian prisoners were released in a prisoners’ exchange in 2011 and then re-arrested in 2014. Among them, Nael Barghouti is considered the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner with 43 years behind bars.
- Some 400 Palestinian prisoners have been detained for over 20 years
- 554 Palestinian prisoners are serving multiple life terms. One of them, Abdullah Barghouti, was sentenced to 67 life sentences.
- The Israeli occupation authorities are still holding the bodies of 12 Palestinians who died while in prison, one of them held since 1980.
- 700 Palestinian prisoners are ill, including 24 suffering from cancer. The most severe case among them is that of Walid Daqqa, who has been in an Israeli prison for 37 years.
Several rallies are planned for Monday in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza, in support of the Palestinian prisoners.
(PC, WAFA)
