Mahmoud Bakr Hijazi was considered the first prisoner in the history of the modern Palestinian revolution. He was arrested after carrying out, along with other resistance fighters, the Beit Jibrin Fedayeen operation. Initially sentenced to death, his sentence was later commuted to 30 years in prison. He was released in 1971 as part of the first prisoner exchange deal conducted on Palestinian soil, known as the “prisoner for prisoner” exchange.

The Israeli Prison Service refers to Palestinians it arrests as “security prisoners,” restricting their freedom and labeling them as “terrorists” for carrying out hostile and sabotage acts against Israel. However, they see themselves as resistance fighters against an occupation seeking to displace them from their land and strip them of their dignity.

Israel has resorted to individual and collective arrests as punishment for Palestinians, with more than a million cases of detention carried out since its occupation of the West Bank in 1967. The most significant of these detentions were post the latest war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, followed by over 8,000 arrests within just six months thereafter.

Nevertheless, the occupation has not dampened the determination of the prisoners nor has it been able to deter them or the Palestinian people as a whole. Instead, they have turned the ordeal of imprisonment into an opportunity, producing scholars, intellectuals, and writers who continue their struggle both inside and outside the prisons even after their release.

Their numbers are multiplying

Before the seventh of October last year, the number of prisoners reached around 5,000, including 160 children and 30 female prisoners, as well as 22 veteran prisoners (pre-Oslo prisoners), the oldest of whom is the prisoner Mohammed Al-Tous. Additionally, there were 11 prisoners who were released in the Wafa Al-Ahrar deal (Shalit deal) in 2011 but were re-arrested by Israel in 2014.

After the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, more than 8,000 arrests were recorded in the West Bank and Jerusalem, including 272 women (detainees from the occupied territories in 1948, Gaza, and the West Bank), and 500 children, with hundreds more arrested from Gaza.

Currently, there are over 9,400 prisoners in Israeli prisons, including 71 female prisoners, 200 children, and 700 prisoners suffering from various illnesses.

The Israeli authorities have employed all means to torture and punish Palestinian prisoners, from chasing and arresting them to transferring them to prisons, interrogation centers, and courts, accompanied by various violations. This includes the notorious “Bosta” prison bus with iron seats, where prisoners are transported bound and blindfolded for up to 12 hours in a journey that would normally take no more than two hours under normal conditions.

The courts and laws

Israel enacted unjust laws against prisoners, especially the law allowing the trial of children under 14 years old, another law depriving them of education, and a third law enabling the confiscation of their financial entitlements.

Perhaps the most dangerous is the law of force-feeding for hunger-striking prisoners to obtain their rights. Israel also legalized the detention of their bodies and currently holds 496 bodies (excluding martyrs’ bodies in Gaza post-war) in numbered graves and refrigerators, including 27 prisoners.

Furthermore, a bill proposing the execution of prisoners was introduced in 2015 but has not been approved by the Knesset yet, despite public calls by Itamar Ben Gvir, the Minister of National Security, in November of last year.

However, Israel has not dropped its high sentences from its agenda (561 prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment). More than 500 prisoners who have spent over 20 years in prison are described as “generals of patience,” in addition to prisoners with open-ended life sentences like Abdullah Barghouti, sentenced to 67 life sentences, and Nael Barghouti, described as the world’s oldest prisoner with 44 years served.

Even more concerning is Israel’s use of administrative detention policy (where the charges are kept secret), which over 3,660 prisoners currently face. The prisoner remains at the mercy of the occupation intelligence, which governs and renews their detention without cause.

Detention multiple times

Experiences have shown that nothing has deterred Palestinians, due to their belief in the legitimacy of their struggle and their right to live freely and peacefully on their land. Fuad Al-Khafsh, a researcher on prisoners for Al Jazeera, states that 75% of Palestinian prisoners have been re-arrested more than once because they continued their struggle even after their release.

He added that some prisoners are currently being detained for the 30th time, like Sheikh Hassan Yousef, and others for the 15th time, like prisoner Nazeih Abu Aoun. Many from various Palestinian factions and their leaders, such as Marwan Barghouti, Ahmed Saadat, and Abbas Al-Sayed, have been arrested multiple times by Israel.

Prisoners have not been devoid of means to obtain their rights within prisons or even to free themselves. They have resorted to hunger strikes and have engaged in 26 collective hunger strikes since 1967, along with hundreds of individual strikes.

Among these was the Ashkelon Prison hunger strike in 1976, which lasted for 65 days, and the Nafha Prison strike in 1980, where four prisoners were martyred. The “Mother of Battles” strike in 1992 was also notable, involving 7,000 prisoners, with one of them martyred. More recent strikes include the “Dignity Will Live” strike in 2012 and the “Dignity” strike in 2017.

The late martyr Sheikh Khader Adnan initiated his hunger strike in 2011-2012, which lasted for 65 days, paving the way for modern individual strikes, with dozens of prisoners following suit, some striking for over 100 days.

Israel arrested hundreds in Gaza after October 7th and deemed them “unlawful combatants,” with around 850 prisoners remaining detained, their whereabouts concealed by Israel, held in military camps near Gaza and secret prisons in the Negev like Sedeh Teiman and Eitanim.

An Israeli military doctor revealed that some prisoners, due to their continued restraint for days and weeks, had their limbs amputated. Israel also admitted to killing 27 Palestinians from Gaza prisoners.

One of the most alarming things faced by prisoners after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation were sexual assaults, including rape of female prisoners.

The Path to Liberation

According to the families of prisoners and also resistance factions, only through force can prisoners be liberated. Neither politics nor peace negotiations with Israel have succeeded in freeing any of them.

This force is manifested in Israeli capture operations, especially targeting soldiers, and in making exchange deals. Palestinian resistance has succeeded in achieving this in ten exchange deals from 1968 to 2011. These deals have been and remain the sole hope for prisoners to regain their freedom.

The most famous exchange agreements were the first “Jalil Deal” in 1983, the second known as the “Ahmed Jibril-Popular Front-General Command” deal in 1985, and the “Wafa al-Ahrar” (Shalit) deal in 2011. In these deals, the Palestinian negotiator imposed his conditions, leading to the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including those with high sentences or life imprisonment, in exchange for three Israelis in the first deal and Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by the resistance in Gaza in 2006, in the second.

The “Al-Aqsa Flood” came to raise the hopes of prisoners despite their suffering due to the occupation’s crimes in Gaza and its devastation of its people. Despite the pain, over 150 Palestinian prisoners, including children and women, regained their freedom in a phased deal that included the release of 50 Israelis held by the resistance during the Al-Aqsa Flood. For the remaining Israeli prisoners, the resistance’s negotiations are forceful, and Palestinians, especially prisoners, cling to hope.

Fuad Al-Khafsh, a researcher on prisoners, says that negotiations and the peace process have not freed a single prisoner. Those released by Israel after the Oslo Agreement were categorized as having “good intentions” from Israel towards the Palestinian Authority to return to negotiations. In 2013, Israel released 75 prisoners out of 104 prisoners from before Oslo, while some were released and others martyred, leaving 22 prisoners known as the “Fourth Batch Prisoners” mostly from inside the occupied territories since 1948.

“Escape” from occupation prisons became another hope for prisoners to regain their freedom, and they succeeded in many cases. The latest was in September 2021 when six prisoners from the Gilboa prison in the north managed to escape through a tunnel dug from beneath the prison to outside.

Israeli analyses and assessments have unanimously agreed that the Iranian drone attacks deep into Israeli territory should serve as a red alert for decision-makers in the Israeli security establishment, despite what they described as an “impressive achievement” by the Israeli defense system in collaboration with the United States.

Israeli analyses have also concurred that Iran has surpassed and broken the fear barrier by launching an attack on Israel from Iranian territory for the first time since the Islamic Revolution. This reflects the collapse of Israeli deterrence, with Tehran daring to challenge Tel Aviv and escalate tensions into a state of emergency and psychological warfare since targeting the Iranian consulate in Damascus and assassinating leaders of the Revolutionary Guard, notably Hassan Mahdavi, commander of the “Quds Force” in Syria and Lebanon.

Despite the diminishing deterrence capability and Iran’s audacity in attacking Israel, Israeli analysts’ readings indicate that the unprecedented Iranian attack, intercepted by Israeli defense systems in collaboration with the United States and regional countries, represents “operational success,” potentially paving the way for forming a US-Israeli-Arab alliance against Iran.

According to analysts’ estimates, the Israeli military is not in a rush to respond to the Iranian attack at the moment, although this could harm deterrence capabilities. Analysts agree that the attack in Iran could exacerbate the situation and drag the region into a regional war, especially after Tehran succeeded in attacking Israel and establishing a concerning precedent.

Deterrence Collapse

Under the headline “Netanyahu waited amid victory celebrations… A dismal failure of deterrence against Iran,” Ariel Shemidberg, the newsroom editor at “Walla” website, wrote an article heavily criticizing Netanyahu’s handling of the Iranian threat, saying: “Despite the achievement of the defense system, Iran managed to unsettle us for two weeks and strike deep into Israeli territory.”

On the other hand, Shemidberg says, “There has also been a monumental failure regarding Israel and the United States’ ability to create deterrence against Iran, which has demonstrated immense strength and unprecedented courage, a sign of the collapse of the terror balance. The balance of terror against Hezbollah in Lebanon was also not entirely balanced, which Israel fears.”

The article’s author recommended that the Israeli elites wait and postpone expressions of joy and victory celebrations, saying: “We have not won yet. Israel is still far from achieving its goals and victory, as evidenced by the families of the abducted, and tens of thousands of residents of the north and south who are still displaced from their homes and are moving around as refugees in their own country for the past 6 months.”

Response Options

Regarding the military side and anticipation of the Israeli response, military analyst Amir Bouhbout believes Israel faces a dilemma of “containing the attack or responding with a strike in Iran, risking escalation and dragging the region into a regional war?”

As a result, the military analyst says, “Senior officials in the Israeli General Staff will be asked to assess Iran’s potential responses. They will also need to receive a series of recommendations on whether to respond forcefully and exact a price from the military bases of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and its locations or choose to assassinate Iranian security personnel.”

Bouhbout also believes that it will be incumbent upon the leaders of the General Staff to consider whether they will settle for a limited operation, where Israeli Air Force pilots carry out a mission at a distance of 1500 kilometers to strike a symbolic Iranian target, such as a government building, weapon depots, oil wells, and even Iranian ships sailing in the sea.

As for the third option, based on statements from the Israeli army spokesman and Defense Minister Yuval Galant, the military analyst estimates that Israel will not rush into a response. It will carefully consider the degree of response at the appropriate time, indicating that Israeli assessments agree that Iran aims to destroy air bases and surpass the Israeli army in the Middle East.

Netanyahu’s Approach

As part of the criticism of Netanyahu’s performance during the Iranian threats and drone attacks that reached deep into Israeli territory, Israeli writer Carmela Cohen Shlomi described Netanyahu as “cowardly” for neglecting Israel during the Iranian attack, which was handled by US President Joe Biden, who took charge and returned it to its senses.

“After difficult hours during which Israeli citizens were searching for someone to explain to them what was happening,” Cohen wrote in an article on the “Zman Yisrael” website, “an elderly, pale, and sweaty man appeared on the screen wandering near the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, asking, ‘Is there 7 shekels (2 dollars) here? I need to go to a friend’s shelter.'”

“With these words, the Israeli writer described Netanyahu and summarized his approach in managing Israel’s affairs during emergencies, saying: ‘He destroyed everything and still holds onto a draft speech ending with the phrase ‘Together we will prevail,’ using Iranian attacks to divert attention from protests and promote the idea that Israel is in danger.’

Writer and political analyst Ben Caspit seemed more explicit when he wrote in an article for Ma’ariv newspaper that the Iranian drone and missile attacks on Israel were the lowest point reached by Netanyahu’s government, which continues to experience failure and shortcomings even in the realm of national security.

According to Ben Caspit’s perspective, Israel suffered a heavy and unprecedented public humiliation from Iran, stating, ‘Israeli deterrence, which prevented Iran from directly attacking us, has collapsed, as have joint international deterrence efforts. The Iranians have broken the fear barrier. From now on, Iran is openly against Israel.’

Referring to the delayed and potentially undisclosed nature of the response, Ben Caspit says, ‘As expected, Biden tried to pull Netanyahu down from the tree and avoid a quick and harsh reaction, and it seems he has succeeded in doing so, at least for now.’

The political analyst believes that Israel reopening its airspace and resuming flights at Ben Gurion Airport ‘means that the likelihood of an immediate Israeli response, promised by Netanyahu’s close associates, has become slim, and the natural need to teach the Iranians a harsh lesson and make them pay a heavy price now confronts the complex strategic reality in the Middle East.'”