About Detainees

Documenting prisoners and detainees in occupation jails
Currently in captivity
9,600
Total prisoners
84
Female prisoners
350
Children
3,532
Administrative detention
Arrests in 2026
1,670
Total
67
Women
124
Children
Sources:Shireen Observatory Last update: 2026-03-31
Systematic violations in treatment Throughout the years of detention, occupation authorities have committed grave violations against Palestinian prisoners:
  • Failure to provide even the minimum standard of healthcare
  • Degradation of dignity and violation of religious practice
  • Denial of physical activity and contact with the outside world
  • Restricted, irregular family visits
  • Denial of communication with lawyers during interrogation
  • Use of torture methods that violate every humanitarian norm
Since 1967 the Israeli occupation has made arrests a permanent policy and a daily phenomenon — an inescapable reality forced upon Palestinian life, with hundreds of thousands suffering arrests and their grave consequences.
~1M Arrests since 1967
17,000+ Girls, women, mothers
50,000+ Children

In the past decade, an average of between 5,000 and 10,000 Palestinians have been held in occupation prisons at any given time, with the figure occasionally reaching close to 11,000 prisoners simultaneously according to data from organizations specialized in tracking the prisoners' file.

"Unlawful Combatants"
The General Assembly of the United Nations affirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples under colonial and alien domination, recognized as having the right to self-determination, to restore that right by any means at their disposal. UN General Assembly Resolution 2649 — 1970

Although resistance to foreign occupation is a right guaranteed by international conventions, the occupation describes Palestinian prisoners as "unlawful combatants" or "security prisoners" during their trials — a deliberate effort to deny them the legal and human rights guaranteed by international humanitarian law and human-rights conventions.

Children in the Darkness of Prisons
Palestinian child detainee
The Palestinian child Wadi' Maswada — held by occupation forces in 2013 on the claim that he had thrown a stone

Data from the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees indicates that the number of Palestinian children arrested since 1967 has reached 50,000 children, some as young as five years old.

A practice that continues today The arrest of children remains a systematic occupation policy. In recent years the number of children held in occupation prisons has at times exceeded 500 at one time, despite the lasting harm these practices inflict on their physical and psychological health.
Astronomical Sentences
Life sentences

Among the Palestinian prisoners held by the occupation, more than 600 are sentenced to so-called "life terms". Each life sentence is set at 99 years, and some prisoners have been sentenced to 40, 50, even 60 consecutive life sentences — meaning they are sentenced to thousands of years in prison.

Withholding of bodies The occupation also withholds the bodies of prisoners who die in detention, using these bodies as a tool of collective punishment against their families and as bargaining chips in prisoner-exchange negotiations.

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