Israel Is Holding Thousands of Palestinians Captive — Including Children

In October 2023, Fadiah Barghouti’s home in Ramallah was raided by Israeli forces. Soldiers broke down her door and smashed everything that they could get their hands on. They were searching for her son Basel, whom they beat along with her other son, saying they would all “pay the price for supporting Hamas.” It was a claim Barghouti was familiar with: Her husband Mahmoud is currently being held in an Israeli prison for the same unsubstantiated charge, as he has been on and off for 10 of the last 30 years.

Still, Barghouti was unwilling to lose Basel, a computer engineering student at Birzeit University, to the abyss of the Israeli prison system. She began advocating for his release, along with other Palestinian detainees like her husband, on social media, in interviews and at public demonstrations. So, in February, Israeli forces arrested her too.

“I experienced the meaning of the stories that we have heard about Guantánamo,” Barghouti told Truthout.

Barghouti and her son are among the more than 10,000 Palestinian men, women and children who have been arrested by Israeli forces since October 7. Taken into custody in violent raids and held indefinitely without charge under conditions that include hunger, torture and even death, many Palestinian detainees are essentially held hostage by the Israeli prison system.

“Detain Them for an Indefinite Period of Time”

Due to the churn of the Israeli prison system, in which detainees can be apprehended and released following a few months’ detention, not all of the 10,000 Palestinians arrested by Israeli forces since October 7 are still being held. Some, like Fadiah Barghouti, were released after a few months’ detention, while others, like her son Basel, are still being detained.

Those who are still held joined the thousands incarcerated prior to October, like Barghouti’s husband, bringing the current number of Palestinian detainees up to 12,000, according to Addameer, a Palestinian human rights organization dedicated to advocating for prisoners. Jenna Abuhasna, Addameer’s international advocacy officer, estimates that of the current Palestinian detainees, 9,700 are from the occupied West Bank and 2,300 are from Gaza. The vast majority are men, although there may be up to 84 women and 250 children, who face conditions indistinguishable from the men except in extremity, including overcrowding, hunger and violence.

As Hsana explains, more than a third of Palestinian detainees are held by Israeli authorities under what they call “administrative detention.” Many are apprehended in what have become near-nightly raids by Israeli forces in the West Bank, which, along with Gaza and East Jerusalem, is internationally recognized as Palestinian territory. During these raids, Israeli forces destroy public and private property with bulldozers, bomb buildings, kill bystanders and even take hostages, threatening the family members of the suspect in order to force their surrender.

“One of the cases of excessive use of force after October 7 was when the [Israeli] occupation forces raided a home and they attached a bomb to the door,” Hsana told Truthout. “The same time that the bomb had gone off, the brother of the Palestinian who was being targeted for arrest had gone to open the door. The door exploded and, in that, he was killed. … All of this happened in front of the other family members in the house, in front of the mother as well.”

Outside of the detainees held at Ofer Prison — which is situated near Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital of the West Bank — all Palestinian detainees are held in Israel, a contravention of international law prohibiting the transfer of prisoners from occupied territories, according to Hsana. Under an aspect of apartheid so egregious that even the U.S. State Department has acknowledged the inconsistency, Israeli authorities try all Palestinians from the West Bank in military courts — even while Israeli settlers living illegally in the territory face only civilian courts back in Israel. Under administrative detention in Israeli military courts, Palestinians face Kafkaesque trials without access to their charges nor the evidence against them, if either exists.

“The so-called ‘evidence’ that the Israeli prosecutor in military court claims that they do have is kept in a secret file that the detainee or their lawyer don’t have access to,” said Hsana. “So ultimately, [administrative detention] is just an order given to only Palestinians that allows the occupation to withhold and detain them for an indefinite period of time. Their order can be from three to six months. Then, once the initial time period of the first order was given, a review will take place in military court in which their order can either be renewed or the detainee can be released. However, most commonly, the order is renewed and then the detainee is given another three to six months of detention.”

“Every Boy Old Enough to Grow a Mustache”

Of particular concern to Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP), the local section of an international organization dedicated to protecting children’s rights, are the Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces. According to Miranda Cleland, advocacy officer for DCIP, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) most recently reported 226 Palestinian children in custody — but that number does not include children from the Gaza Strip being held in Israeli military bases, rather than IPS prisons.

“The fact that Israeli authorities won’t allow any sort of international observers to visit the military bases where they’re keeping seemingly several hundred, if not more, Palestinians from Gaza is pretty alarming,” Cleland told Truthout. “We can’t say how many children are being held there, because that information is not available. We know that they treat every boy old enough to grow a mustache as a potential combatant or militant. And because of the way that they target children in the West Bank, we can say pretty confidently that there are children from Gaza being held in these military bases and they are most likely experiencing torture at the hands of Israeli forces with no due process, in terms of when they might be released or get to see their families again.”

Israeli forces subject Palestinian children to the same treatment as adults, according to Cleland and DCIP. Prior to October, DCIP estimated that Israeli forces arrested 500 to 700 Palestinian children aged 12 to 17 every year, the vast majority for throwing stones. In contravention of international law defining adulthood as beginning at age 18 — including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is a signatory — Israeli authorities charge children 12 and older as adults, and their cases are adjudicated in military courts, making Israel the only country in the world where children automatically face military trials. According to DCIP, 75 percent of those children experience physical violence from Israeli forces and 80 percent are strip-searched. They are then typically placed in solitary confinement for an average of 16 days to extract a confession establishing their guilt, for which their families are often forced to pay a fine of several hundred dollars — in a region where the average daily wage is $37, according to the U.S. Department of State.

Like Palestinian adults, Palestinian children have also faced greater threats from Israeli forces since October. According to Cleland, near-nightly raids by Israeli forces into the West Bank have resulted in a record number of Palestinian children, 75, currently being held by IPS under administrative detention. IPS has also cut off nearly all prison visitation for adults and children alike, curtailing the ability of advocates like DCIP to reach children, to say nothing of their families. Despite such challenges, DCIP continues to collect testimony on prison conditions for children through those recently released, who report overcrowding, hunger, denial of bathrooms, showers and time outside their cells, as well as physical violence from Israeli soldiers and even canine units.

Since October, Israeli forces have also been acting in contravention of Israeli law defining children as younger than age 12. According to Cleland, Israeli forces would occasionally harass and detain younger children for a short period of time prior to October 7, but even that has worsened. Recently, DCIP documented the case of Bahaa, a 7-year-old Palestinian boy detained and beaten by Israeli soldiers in June. The soldiers responded to Bahaa throwing stones at their heavily armored military vehicles by firing back with live ammunition before catching, cuffing and beating the boy. Altogether, the soldiers held Bahaa for more than three hours, eventually releasing him half a mile away to make his way home.

“I have not left the house since the incident because I am scared of the Israeli soldiers,” Bahaa told DCIP, “and I do not want to get arrested again.”

“Look What I Have Done”

By such accounts, Barghouti’s experience is representative of those faced by other Palestinian detainees. After being arrested in February, Barghouti was beaten by Israeli forces while being transferred to one interrogation center, then another. Blindfolded and handcuffed, she was verbally abused by a dozen male and female soldiers for hours, before being strip-searched by one of the female soldiers, who threatened to expose her, naked, to the others if she did not repeat the words she was told. She was forced to say “Am Yisrael Chai” — Hebrew for “the People of Israel Live” — over and over again, as she realized that the soldier was recording her.

“I heard her standing in front of me, sending a voice message,” Barghouti told Truthout, “telling her mom: ‘Mom, listen to what the terrorist said. Look what I have done.’”

Altogether, Barghouti was held under administrative detention for three months. Prior to October 7, detainees were able to have visitors, as well as access to television and radio. But Barghouti, like other detainees held since October, had no contact with the outside world, no visits from family and no access to a lawyer until her trial. The amount of food provided was so small and of such poor quality that she lost 20 pounds. With only two sets of clothes, she and the other female prisoners did their laundry by hand in the shower for the 15 minutes to hour that they were let out of their cells each day.

Still, they considered themselves lucky: The men had only one set of clothes, and the food they received was so much worse that her husband has lost 70 pounds, as Barghouti eventually learned after he received a rare visit from a lawyer. Outside of her arrest and interrogation, Barghouti also says she wasn’t beaten. Meanwhile, she learned from detainees recently released from the same prison where her son is being held that torture there is rampant.

Barghouti faced trial in March, via video conference in an office at the prison where she was being held. The judge and prosecutor were both soldiers, and the proceedings were conducted in Hebrew, which her lawyer translated for her. The prosecutor accused her of being involved in activities that threatened the security of the state and requested her administrative detention be renewed for three months. When her lawyer asked if she wanted to defend herself, she took the opportunity.

“The streets of Tel Aviv are full of families of Israeli prisoners,” she told the judge. “You feel that they have the right to ask for the freedom of their family members — but I was arrested for asking for the freedom of my family members.”

No verdict was announced to her, but following an appeal in May, Barghouti was released. After being freed, she learned that her husband, Mahmoud, is scheduled to be released later this month, following two consecutive years of administrative detention, the renewal of which was finally curtailed by an appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court. Coincidentally, her son, Basel, was scheduled to be released the same week, but his detention was renewed until December.

“It is not easy for me as a mother and a wife to know that my husband and my son, my most beloved family members, are being tortured and are hungry,” Barghouti told Truthout. “When breaking news comes, reading that one Palestinian prisoner passed away — do you know the feeling of being frozen? Afraid of knowing the name? Or knowing the name of the prison where this detainee has passed away? Expecting that you will see the name of your husband or the name of your son? This is how thousands of Palestinian families are living these days.”