The reality inside Israeli prisons today is radically different from how it was before the genocide began. This sentiment is frequently echoed in the testimonies of released Palestinian prisoners, particularly those who witnessed conditions both before and after October 2023. Their accounts point to a stark transformation, describing an environment in which carceral violence and torture have escalated to unprecedented levels. They narrate conditions of near-total isolation, systematic starvation, denial of medical care, suspension of family visits, brutal violence, torture and the revocation of even the minimal rights that had been wrested through decades of struggle with the carceral authorities.

Over the past two and a half years, Israel has significantly intensified its detention campaigns. Estimates suggest that over 23,000 Palestinians have been detained since 7 October 2023, with approximately 9,400 still held in Israeli prisons as of mid-May 2026. At least 89 Palestinian prisoners were martyred in custody amid escalating violence and abuse, while dozens – particularly from the Gaza Strip – remain missing, with Israeli authorities refusing to disclose information about their whereabouts or conditions.

Understanding this reality requires situating it within the broader history of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement as well as the central role it has played in the struggle for decolonisation and self-determination. The current escalation is not only part of a wider campaign of violence but also an attempt to dismantle the prisoners’ movement, undermining its longstanding political influence both inside and outside prisons. By waging war on the prisoners’ movement, the Israeli regime has sought to diminish resistance outside the physical space of the prison, and extend that violence to what Palestinians refer to as the “larger prison”: the military structures and violence perpetuated across historic Palestine by the Israeli state.

Since the establishment of Israel’s carceral system, Palestinian prisoners have consistently developed forms of resistance from within confinement. These efforts have aimed both to secure basic rights and to assert the political nature of their imprisonment in the face of attempts to criminalise and depoliticise their struggle, and thus the broader project of liberation.

Hunger strikes have been a key tactic since as early as 1968. One of the most notable early examples is the Asqalan prison hunger strike of 1970, which lasted five days, during which prisoners demanded basic rights such as access to pens and notebooks, as well as an end to the degrading policy of forcing them to address the guards with honorifics. During the strike, Abdul Qader Abu Al-Fahem, who had been wounded by several bullets during a military operation prior to his detainment, became the Palestinian prisoners’ movement’s first martyr. Abu Al-Fahem had refused his comrades’ call for him not to join the hunger strike due to his health condition. While he was on hunger strike he was force-fed by the Israeli carceral authorities, which led to his martyrdom.

Resistance continued in the decades that followed through collective and individual hunger strikes. Prisoners organised the strikes to protest administrative detention, solitary confinement and restrictions on family visits. They also launched campaigns to boycott Israeli military courts, which function as a central mechanism of control. These courts operate through various military orders that regulate nearly all aspects of Palestinian life. They carry a conviction rate of approximately 99%, effectively criminalizing Palestinian political and social existence.

The escalation of repression within prisons appears as the implementation of a longstanding strategy to dismantle the organisational and political foundations of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement

Boycott efforts included individual refusals to recognise the courts’ legitimacy and collective campaigning, particularly against administrative detention. One prominent example is that of Ahmad Sa’adat, the Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) since 2001, and a long-term political prisoner, who rejected the authority of the court during his sentencing. In his statement addressing the court, he declared:

To start, I do not stand to defend myself in front of your court. I have already confirmed that I do not recognise the legitimacy of this court as it is an extension of the illegal occupation under international law, and as well as the legitimacy of our people’s right to resist occupation, and that this court is based on the British emergency laws of 1945.

I stand before this court again today, as a mechanism for the suppression of our people and a tool of oppression, that is unable to end the resistance and is an example of the inability of the occupation and its policies imposed on the people to do so.

Finally, I have already stressed in my previous statements from the so-called indictment, to the trial that has been formulated, and now reiterate the same position after your court concluded, that this is a one-sided and farcical way to achieve its resolution under a mere image of a “court”. The convictions were known in advance, and they were predetermined by the terms of the political and security mechanism which is made “legitimate” by the court.

Sa’adat’s words – and those of other prisoners – are an assertion of the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to resist the colonial regime, and a declaration that military courts are an extension of the illegal occupation and a tool of political repression. Such statements reflect a broader insistence among Palestinian prisoners on their political identity and their right to resist colonial structures. This same logic is evident in other forms of resistance, including the extensive body of literature produced by prisoners. Through letters, essays and smuggled writings, prisoners have documented their experiences, analysed the carceral system and contributed to wider political thought and strategy.

Another notable figure is Walid Daqqa, who was martyred on April 7, 2024 inside Israeli prisons after spending 38 years in captivity. Daqqa’s writing interrogated the carceral condition, and continuously informed political projects outside prisons. His writings, and those of his comrades, were not mere dispatches from captivity, but political acts of theorisation and analysis, rooted in resistance, which broke the isolation imposed on prisoners. Importantly, they informed emancipatory projects in the making, both within and outside the prison. Daqqa’s life exemplified other forms of resistance, including the smuggling of sperm from the confines of his cell and becoming a father to his daughter Milad, contributing to another practice through which prisoners sought to form families in the face of lengthy prison sentences – even multiple life sentences – and the denial of family visitation rights.

Botfraj (Relief will come) (2025), Mahdi Baraghithi

These examples illustrate the persistent efforts of Palestinian prisoners to resist dehumanisation, to assert the political nature of their incarceration, and to stand in defiance of Israeli tactics of control and subjugation. They reject the framing of “criminal” or “security prisoners”, instead positioning themselves as political actors engaged in and informing the Palestinian struggle for liberation. These practices, and the formations produced inside prisons, help explain the high levels of political organisation, cultural production and educational activity that existed within prisons prior to October 2023.

It is precisely this collective structure and political project-making that Israeli authorities sought to dismantle. According to a prisoner released during a prisoners’ exchange in October 2025 after 22 years of imprisonment, weakening the prisoners’ movement has long been an objective of Israeli prison authorities. However, past attempts were constrained by the risk of organised resistance within prisons.

The current moment, marked by widespread violence and torture within and outside prisons, provides an opportunity to intensify these efforts. The escalation of repression within prisons appears not only as part of a broader campaign but also as the implementation of a longstanding strategy to dismantle the organisational and political foundations of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.

In an interview I conducted with a recently released political prisoner, he described the brutal, degrading violence and sexual assault he endured and witnessed. Despite this, he told me the carceral regime did not break him. He offered many examples, but one stands out: for his birthday, his comrades made him a cake. To do so, they saved their meager weekly portions of jam – just a small spoonful each – and a few slices of bread, despite living through a systematic campaign of severe starvation that led to the martyrdom of numerous prisoners. The result was what he described as the most precious gift he has ever received: a “cake” made of bread and jam. He shared it with his comrades in their overcrowded cell.

The carceral regime has not succeeded in dismantling the prisoners’ movement nor in breaking their collective spirit. As is the case of the “cake” collectively produced away from the jailers’ constant gaze, Palestinian prisoners continue to inform the contours of a Palestinian political project directed towards freedom and justice. This is a project long held by the Palestinian prisoners’ movement which rejects defeat and submission to Israel’s ever escalating genocide, violence, and torture both within and outside prisons. Yet, the current situation is not a cause for despair, nor does it mean that the Zionist regime accomplished its goals. What the Palestinian prisoners’ movement has always taught us is that our collective struggle never ends. Much like the context in the early years of Israeli prisons, prisoners were able not only to transform their reality, but to effectively direct the struggle for liberation. Today is no different. .

This essay is co-published with Palestine is everywhere, a book and digital art project commissioned by TBA21. Every month, a new artwork, film, essay or sound piece goes live, follow on: palestineiseverywhere.tba21.org.