As part of the Diploma Program, ICSPR issues a fact sheet titled “The Reality of Palestinian Female Prisoners in Israeli Occupation Prisons”
Date: 8 June 2026
Press Release
As part of the Youth Civil Society Activists Diploma Program
ICSPR issues a fact sheet titled: “The Reality of Palestinian Female Prisoners in Israeli Occupation Prisons”
The International Commission to Support Palestinian People’s Rights (ICSPR), in partnership with The Shaikh Group (TSG), and as part of the Youth Civil Society Activists Diploma Program, has issued a fact sheet titled: “The Reality of Palestinian Female Prisoners in Israeli Occupation Prisons,” presenting key facts and figures on the conditions of Palestinian female prisoners and shedding light on the patterns of violations and systematic policies they are subjected to inside Israeli prisons from a legal and human rights perspective.
The fact sheet explains that Palestinian women have, for decades, been subjected to systematic policies of arrest, torture, and deprivation of basic rights within the broader system of repression practiced by the Israeli occupation against Palestinians, and that these policies escalated unprecedentedly after 7 October 2023 with the intensification of mass arrest campaigns across the occupied Palestinian territory, including against housewives, university students, activists, workers, and women from the Gaza Strip.
The paper indicates that more than one million arrests have been recorded in the occupied Palestinian territory since 1967, including more than 17,000 arrests of Palestinian women, including minors and elderly women. According to the data cited in the fact sheet, the number of prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons had exceeded 9,400 by May 2024, including 88 female prisoners, most of whom were held in Damon Prison under harsh conditions, and this figure includes 32 mothers of 130 children and 3 minors.
The fact sheet notes that the legal classification of the female prisoners, according to available documentation, includes 17 held under administrative detention without charge, 5 serving sentences, and 50 detainees awaiting trial, including 16 accused of “incitement”. It adds that most documented female prisoners are from the West Bank and Jerusalem, totaling 69 women, while 3 are from the territories occupied in 1948, as the occupation continues to commit the crime of enforced disappearance against female detainees from the Gaza Strip.
The paper further explains that October 2023 witnessed the highest arrest rates, with 2,070 arrests recorded, including 66 women, and that this period was accompanied by an escalation in punitive and retaliatory measures against prisoners, including reducing privileges, intensifying isolation, banning family visits and lawyer meetings, denying the International Committee of the Red Cross access to prisoners, and conducting court sessions via video conference, which made documentation of violations inside prisons more difficult.
The fact sheet shows that Palestinian female prisoners are subjected to systematic psychological and physical abuses, including solitary confinement, degrading searches, denial of communication with their families, and shortages of food, clothing, and hygiene supplies. It also documents sexual assaults, strip searches, threats of rape, repeated raids accompanied by beatings, sound bombs, gas, police dogs, and the imposition of degrading conditions under threat and filming. The paper also points to the growing use of women as hostages to pressure their family members, including the detention of mothers, elderly women, and wives of prisoners, along with threats, physical assault, the terrorizing of children, and confiscation of money and gold jewelry as part of a policy of collective punishment.
The fact sheet adds that since 7 October 2023, the prison administration has imposed policies of starvation and water deprivation by reducing meal quantities, worsening food quality, and preventing prisoners from obtaining sufficient water, leading to the spread of illnesses and health problems. It further states that female detainees from Gaza are subjected to enforced disappearance under harsh detention conditions that include torture, shackling, blindfolding, and deprivation of food and water. The paper stresses that the suffering of female prisoners does not end upon release, as many continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress, depression, isolation, and difficulty reintegrating into normal life, especially mothers who were separated from their children during detention.
In reviewing indicators of the latest escalation in Damon Prison during spring 2024, the paper documents at least 10 direct repression raids carried out by prison special units during March and April 2024, accompanied by severe beatings, forcing female prisoners to lie face down on the ground, and painfully tying their hands behind their backs, causing injuries and bruises to many of them. It also records a serious development in the detention of three pregnant female prisoners in the early months of pregnancy, worsening overcrowding and sleeping on the floor, confiscation of hijab and religious clothing, strip searches at transfer points, sudden transfers between rooms to create psychological instability, and an escalation in starvation and malnutrition policies.
On the legal side, the fact sheet stresses that these practices are not isolated incidents but constitute systematic violations of international humanitarian law, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners, known as the Bangkok Rules. It adds that these practices reflect a pattern of collective punishment and abuses that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute.
The paper concludes with a set of recommendations, most notably urging the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations to increase oversight of the conditions of Palestinian female prisoners and ensure legal and humanitarian visits inside prisons, while calling on the International Criminal Court to investigate the violations committed against them, including torture, enforced disappearance, and sexual assaults. It also calls for revealing the fate of female detainees from Gaza, working toward the release of Palestinian female prisoners, especially the sick, minors, and those held in administrative detention, ending starvation and collective punishment policies, and activating Palestinian political and diplomatic tools in international and Arab forums to highlight the cause of male and female prisoners.
ICSPR affirms that this fact sheet comes within the framework of efforts aimed at strengthening legal and human rights awareness regarding the issue of Palestinian female prisoners and exposing the systematic policies and violations they face inside Israeli prisons, in a way that contributes to broadening international pressure and accountability.
It should be noted that this fact sheet does not necessarily reflect the views of ICSPR or The Shaikh Group (TSG).
