Why has Israel imprisoned 10,000 Palestinians?

Al Jazeera

17-04-2025

On April 17 every year, Palestinian Prisoner's Day is commemorated to highlight the plight of those held in Israeli jails and their struggle for freedom against Israel's continued occupation of their land.
The day marks the 1974 release of Mahmoud Bakr Hijazi, the first Palestinian freed in a prisoner swap with Israel. It was later designated to honour all Palestinian prisoners and highlight Israel's ongoing detention of Palestinians and violation of their rights.
There are currently nearly 10,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails in Israel and the occupied territory, according to prisoners' rights group Addameer. To Palestinians, they are political prisoners who must be freed.
Of those in detention:
Administrative detainees, including women and children, can be held by the military for renewable six-month periods based on 'secret evidence' that neither the detainee nor their lawyer is allowed to see.
Israel is the only country in the world that tries children in military courts, often denying them their basic rights.
According to Defense for Children Palestine, about 500 to 700 Palestinian children are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system each year – some as young as 12.
The most common charge is throwing stones, a crime punishable under military law by up to 20 years in prison.
Currently, 400 Palestinian children remain in Israeli prisons, most are in pre-trial detention and have not been convicted of any offence.
One of the most harrowing child prisoner cases is that of Ahmad Manasra, who was arrested at the age of 13, brutally interrogated and then sentenced.
Ahmad was with his cousin Hassan, who allegedly stabbed two Israeli settlers near an illegal Israeli settlement in occupied East Jerusalem in 2015.
Hassan, who was 15 at the time, was shot and killed by an Israeli civilian, while Ahmad was severely beaten by an Israeli mob and run over by a car.
He suffered fractures to his skull and internal bleeding.
At the time, Israeli law stated that children under 14 could not be held criminally responsible.
To circumvent this, Israeli authorities waited until Manasra turned 14 to sentence 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 9.5 years.
Ahmad has long suffered from mental health issues. At the end of 2021, a psychiatrist from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) was allowed to visit him and diagnosed him with schizophrenia. This was the first time an external doctor was allowed to see him.
On April 10, 2025, after spending more than nine years behind bars, Ahmad was finally released.
From October 2023, when Hamas led an attack on southern Israel and Israel then began its war on Gaza, to April 2025, the number of Palestinian political prisoners doubled, rising from 5,250 to nearly 10,000.
Since October 7, Israel has detained about 30,000 Palestinians. During the prisoner-captive exchanges with Hamas, Israel has released just more than 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
That means, for every person released, 15 others were apprehended.
During the most recent ceasefire exchange earlier this year, 739 Palestinians from Gaza were freed, that's out of 15,000 that had been detained. While in the occupied West Bank, 652 were released, but nearly 14,500 have been detained.
During the nearly two-month ceasefire earlier this year, Israel released 1,793 Palestinian political prisoners, while Hamas freed 38 Israeli captives, including eight bodies.
The majority of those released were from Gaza, with 739 freed – 337 from North Gaza, 227 from Gaza City, and 151 from Khan Younis, some of the war's hardest-hit areas. In the occupied West Bank, at least 652 prisoners were released, with most coming from Ramallah (118), Hebron (111), and Nablus (79).
Israel's detention policies have deeply affected Palestinian life for decades. According to the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, since 1967, Israeli forces have detained an estimated one million Palestinians, or approximately 20 percent of the Palestinian population. Statistically, this means one out of every five Palestinians has been imprisoned at some point in their life.
For many families, arrest has become an inevitability. This systemic practice has fragmented communities, perpetuated cycles of trauma, and generated widespread resentment.
As Israel's arrest campaign continues, many Palestinians fear that mass imprisonment is not just a byproduct of occupation but a deliberate tool of control. For the thousands currently behind bars, freedom remains uncertain, just as it has for generations before them.