Ramallah, March 19, 2026 (WAFA) – The Palestinian Prisoners Club said that the Israeli occupation authorities continue to detain thousands of Palestinian and Arab prisoners in their prisons, with the number of detainees reaching more than 9,500 by the beginning of March 2026. The largest group of them are detainees without “charges,” including children and women .
The Prisoners Club added in a press statement on Thursday that since the genocide, the occupation continues to deprive the families of detainees of visiting them, in addition to the fact that hundreds of detainees have been deprived of participating with their families in any of the occasions for decades, and the period of detention of some of them has approached 40 years, and most of them have lost many of their family members without being able to say goodbye to them.
He pointed out that the policies of deprivation and isolation have expanded unprecedentedly in the aftermath of the genocide, and have multiplied even more since the occupation announced the cessation of visits by legal teams during the ongoing war, as lawyers’ visits constitute the only window for detainees to communicate with the outside world .
The Prisoners Club explained that during the month of Ramadan, the repressive forces carried out several systematic raids against the detainees as one of the systematic policies against them, noting that platforms affiliated with the occupation published one of these operations, one of which was led by the extremist minister “Ben Gafir”, while the so-called “Prison Service” published a large-scale repression operation in the “Negev” prison, in addition to several repression operations that were spoken about by detainees who were recently released.
Ben-Gvir had recently appeared in a video clip standing in front of a guillotine prepared for the execution of Palestinian detainees.
The Palestinian Prisoners Club affirmed that Israeli prisons have become sites of extermination, where torture, starvation, and deprivation of all kinds are practiced daily, along with sexual assaults, including rape, and systematic repression. These crimes have led to the deaths of more than one hundred prisoners, 88 of whom have been identified, while dozens of Gazan detainees remain forcibly disappeared, and their bodies are still being held.
It is worth noting that the occupation announced the renewal of the state of emergency in its prisons until next May, and under this renewal, the measures imposed on detainees in the aftermath of the war of extermination will remain in place, especially with regard to non-compliance with the space allocated to them under the pretext of “security reasons”.
The Prisoners Club presented the most prominent data on Palestinian and Arab detainees, as follows:
– The number of detainees in Israeli occupation prisons reached more than 9,500 until the beginning of March 2026, including 79 female detainees to date .
– The number of detained children has reached 350, who are being held by the occupation in the “Megiddo” and “Ofer” prisons .
– The number of administrative detainees reached 3442, which is the highest percentage compared to those convicted, detained, and classified as “illegal fighters,” as their percentage constitutes about 36%.
– The number of those classified by the occupation as “illegal combatants” reached 1249 detainees, noting that this number does not include all Gaza detainees held in camps belonging to the occupation army and classified within this category.
It is worth noting that this classification also includes Arab detainees from Lebanon and Syria.
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W.A.
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