Rights groups report 90 Palestinian women imprisoned, including minors, as detention conditions worsen amid mass arrests and abuse allegations.
Key Developments
- The number of Palestinian women prisoners rises to 90, including two minors and a pregnant detainee.
- More than 700 women arrested since October, many under “incitement” allegations.
- Total Palestinian prisoners exceed 9,600, with Gaza detainees’ fate largely unknown.
Detention Numbers Climb
The number of Palestinian women held in Israeli prisons has risen to 90 in April, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS), marking one of the highest recorded figures since the start of the war.
In a statement released on Wednesday, PPS said the detainees include two children and a pregnant woman in her third month.
The group noted that 25 of the women are held under administrative detention without charge or trial, alongside three journalists, two cancer patients, and two prisoners detained since before October 2023.
Most of the detainees are held in Damon prison, which Palestinian organizations have repeatedly identified as a central site for the detention of women prisoners.
Harsh Conditions
PPS said the women are being held under “harsh and degrading conditions,” including starvation, medical neglect, solitary confinement, and repeated strip searches.
The organization added that many arrests are carried out under allegations of “incitement,” particularly targeting women across the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, and within the 1948 territories.
According to the group, more than 700 women have been detained since the start of the war. It also reported ongoing physical and psychological abuse, as well as the use of detention as a means of pressure on family members.
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Broader Prisoner Context
The rise in women detainees comes amid a wider surge in Palestinian imprisonment.
According to joint data released earlier this month by the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, PPS, and Addameer, more than 9,600 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons.
The figure includes approximately 350 children and over 3,500 administrative detainees.
The data also lists at least 1,251 detainees classified by Israel as “unlawful combatants,” many of them from Gaza.
Palestinian institutions say this number does not fully reflect the total, citing the continued lack of transparency surrounding detainees held in military facilities.
Rights groups have emphasized that the fate of many Palestinians from Gaza remains unknown, with reports of enforced disappearance and limited access for legal and humanitarian oversight.
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International Concerns
International human rights officials have also raised an alarm over prison conditions.
In March, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese warned that torture against Palestinians had become widespread, describing Israeli detention facilities as spaces of systemic abuse and calling for independent investigations and immediate international access.
Palestinian prisoner groups say the current escalation reflects a broader pattern of intensified detention policies since the Gaza Genocide in October 2023, with prisons increasingly used as instruments of collective punishment.
(PPS, QNN, PC)
