{"id":315555,"date":"2026-05-04T12:00:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T11:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=315555"},"modified":"2026-04-28T19:03:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T18:03:22","slug":"all-changed-with-the-genocide-palestinian-women-and-girls-face-brutal-abuse-in-israeli-jails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/05\/all-changed-with-the-genocide-palestinian-women-and-girls-face-brutal-abuse-in-israeli-jails\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018All Changed with the Genocide\u2019: Palestinian Women and Girls Face Brutal Abuse in Israeli Jails"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Israeli soldiers keep watch as Palestinians gather at the Qalandia checkpoint in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, on 20 Feb 2026.
(Jaafar Ashtiyeh\/AFP)<\/p><\/div>\n

More Than 700 Have Been Arrested Since the Gaza Genocide Began, Enduring Brutal Conditions of Starvation, Isolation and Humiliation<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

17 Apr 2026\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0Once you picture schoolgirls, university students, mothers, aunts and grandmothers lying on their stomachs in prison pyjamas – their hands tied behind their backs, and soldiers looming over them, beating them if they move even slightly – you cannot forget the image.<\/p>\n

When you hear a female prisoner say she has “nothing but her heart”, you immediately grasp how prison can dismantle lives.<\/p>\n

Palestinian Prisoners\u2019 Day<\/a> is marked every year on 17 April to spotlight ongoing human rights violations – and today, conditions are worse than ever. Since the launch of the Gaza genocide<\/a>, starvation, isolation, humiliation, strip searches, torture and overwhelming fear have become constant realities for Palestinian<\/a> women in Israeli<\/a> prisons.<\/p>\n

More than 700 Palestinian women<\/a> have been arrested in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza since the genocide<\/a> began in late 2023, according to rights groups. Enduring night raids on their homes or detention at military checkpoints, most have been subjected to physical and psychological abuse both during and after their arrest.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is different from the prisons of the 1990s. All changed with the genocide,\u201d Ramallah-based lawyer Sahar Francis, who is also the former director of the prisoners\u2019 rights group Addameer, told\u00a0a recent webinar entitled Women, Prison Sumoud.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing people with no words, after five months detained from Gaza, and a level of abuse, starvation and physical attacks, was very, very shocking,\u201d she said. \u201cWe failed the prisoners. We were not able to protect them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around 90 Palestinians<\/a> have died in Israeli custody since October 2023, according to the Palestinian Prisoners\u2019 Society. Among them was Walid Khalid Abdullah Ahmed, a\u00a017-year-old boy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe international system is simply not working \u2026 hypocrisy is everywhere,\u201d Francis said. \u201cWe lawyers are the only window for detainees. People feel [they are] losing hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tools of control<\/h3>\n

For decades, Addameer<\/a> has documented and called attention to violations in Israeli jails, its reports forming a key reference for global rights organisations. This work has made it a repeated target of the Israeli military, which has raided its premises<\/a> several times since 2002.<\/p>\n

In 2021, the Israeli government designated Addameer<\/a> and five other Palestinian rights groups as \u201cterrorist\u201d organisations, a move that drew heavy international criticism. Last year, Addameer came under US<\/a> Treasury sanctions on the basis of alleged \u201cterrorism\u201d links.<\/p>\n

This is all part of a broader Israeli campaign of violent domination. According to Dr Samah Saleh, a sociologist at An-Najah National University in Nablus and a visiting professor at UCLA, Israel has long used starvation and dehumanisation as powerful tools of control.<\/p>\n

The world must not enable the normalisation of this dehumanisation of women, from schoolgirls to grandmothers, in Israel’s prisons.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For women subjected to Israeli detention, Saleh told the webinar, health problems continue even after they are released. Prisoners are denied showers and clean clothes, deprived of sleep, and underfed, often receiving little more than a few pieces of bread and a few spoonfuls of fruit or yogurt each day, while scabies mites burrow into their skin.<\/p>\n

Researcher Dalal Bajes, a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley with expertise in Palestinian women\u2019s prison experiences, told the webinar that detention \u201cstrips away everything\u201d. Her work underscores the dramatic decline in conditions since the start of the genocide, amid the normalisation of \u201cprolonged incommunicado detention, denial of legal access [and] threats of rape<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

In one case documented by Bajes<\/a>, writer Lama Khatir – who was also imprisoned in 2018-19 – described \u201ca completely different regime\u201d during her later imprisonment after 7 October 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were no longer living time; we were merely staring into emptiness,\u201d Khatir said in an account published by Al Jazeera Media Institute. In her summary of the case, Bajes noted that the absence of books, papers, news or routine \u201ctransformed time into an oppressive force\u201d.<\/p>\n

Digital surveillance<\/h3>\n

According to Bajes, between 1948 and 1967, an estimated 100,000 Palestinians<\/a> were arrested by Israeli authorities. The pace ramped up dramatically in subsequent decades, with around one million reportedly arrested between 1967 and 2021, including more than 16,000 women.<\/p>\n

As of last month, 72 Palestinian women<\/a> were being held in Israeli prisons, mostly Damon Prison in the north, according to a report from Addameer and other prisoners\u2019 rights groups. Most were arrested from the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Of these prisoners, three were minors and 32 were mothers, who collectively had 130 children, the report noted. In addition, 17 women were being held under administrative detention, with no charge or trial. Five prisoners were serving sentences, the longest of which was 16 years, while many others were awaiting trial.<\/p>\n

The report noted that 18 prisoners were sick, including three with cancer. More than a dozen of those awaiting trial were arrested over \u201cincitement\u201d, a charge that includes online activity such as re-posting content or sharing personal opinions. The digital world has thus become a tightly policed space of surveillance and prosecution, with Israeli authorities targeting journalists, activists and human rights defenders.<\/p>\n

Testimonies from the report highlight grim conditions, with one prisoner describing her transfer to Hasharon Prison: \u201cA female soldier \u2026 took me to a small, filthy solitary cell that had nothing but a mattress on the floor without a blanket or pillow and a very small bathroom. I stayed there alone for four days without anyone speaking to me. They brought me cold, bad food, and during those four days I didn\u2019t eat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some women are arrested to pressure male relatives. One told researchers that she was \u201cinterrogated continuously for 18 days\u201d and then taken to see her father, who she found sitting on an interrogation chair with his hands tied behind his back.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I entered, they removed the cover from my eyes, and my hands were tied in front of me. My father started crying a lot when he saw me,\u201d she said. \u201cI ran toward him and hugged him while I was still tied up. He kept kissing me and saying reassuring words to comfort me \u2026 He looked extremely exhausted.\u201d<\/p>\n

With family visits denied since the start of the genocide, only rare lawyers\u2019 visits<\/a> serve as a link to the outside world for these prisoners.<\/p>\n

This situation demands an urgent public outcry. The world must not enable the normalisation of this dehumanisation of women, from schoolgirls to grandmothers, in Israel\u2019s prisons.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Victoria Brittain worked at <\/em>The Guardian for many years and has lived and worked in Washington, Saigon, Algiers, Nairobi, and reported from many African, Asian and Middle Eastern countries. She is the author of a number of books on Africa and was co-author of Moazzam Begg\u2019s Guantanamo memoir, <\/em>Enemy Combatant, author and co-author of two Guantanamo verbatim plays, and of <\/em>Shadow Lives–<\/em>the forgotten women of the war on terror. Her most recent book is <\/em>Love and Resistance-the films of Mai Masri.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – middleeasteye.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

17 Apr 2026\u00a0–\u00a0More Than 700 Have Been Arrested Since the Gaza Genocide Began, Enduring Brutal Conditions of Starvation, Isolation and Humiliation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":315556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[3287,554,1559,532,405,1854,101,100,1199,865,88,2416,427,3534,2418,2897,880,99,70,965,1025,2629,878],"class_list":["post-315555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-anti-zionism","tag-children","tag-collective-punishment","tag-colonialism","tag-colonization","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-cultural-violence","tag-direct-violence","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-israeli-occupation","tag-palestine","tag-palestinian-holocaust","tag-palestinian-rights","tag-sociocide","tag-state-terrorism","tag-structural-violence","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes","tag-west-bank","tag-women-in-war","tag-women-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315558,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315555\/revisions\/315558"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}