RAMALLAH (Palestine Foundation Information Center) Israeli prison forces have launched a violent crackdown on Palestinian prisoners across several detention centers over the past few days, storming prison cells and beating detainees under the pretext that they were celebrating Iran’s retaliation attacks on Israel, according to the Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS).
Amjad al-Najjar, head of the PPS, said in a press statement that Israeli suppression units, accompanied by police dogs, raided prisoner sections, brutally assaulting detainees with batons and tear gas after handcuffing them. He described the scenes as devoid of any basic standards of human dignity.
A video clip circulated on Sunday appears to confirm the abuse, documenting what al-Najjar described as a “systematic campaign of repression” inside Israeli occupation prisons. He warned that prisoners are enduring increasingly harsh conditions as the prison administration intensifies its punitive measures.
“The Israeli occupation authority is exploiting the world’s focus on the Iran-Israel escalation to exact revenge on Palestinian prisoners, away from international scrutiny,” al-Najjar said. “The risk to their lives grows with each passing day,” he underscored.
In response to the ongoing abuses, Palestinian institutions have sent urgent letters to the United Nations and various human rights organizations, urging immediate action to halt the violations and to hold Israeli authorities accountable.
Al-Najjar cited alarming statistics: 72 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli custody since the beginning of the genocidal war on Gaza nearly 19 months ago—compared to just nine deaths in Guantanamo Bay over a 20-year period—highlighting what he called the sheer brutality of the Israeli prison system.
He called on international bodies and human rights defenders to intervene, stressing that these crackdowns are not isolated incidents but part of a broader policy driven by top Israeli political leadership.
Since the start of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Israeli occupation forces have arrested more than 17,500 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including 545 women and 1,400 children. At least 10,400 Palestinians are currently being held, among them 49 women, 440 children, and 3,562 administrative detainees, who are held without charge or trial.
