Resources · Interactive timeline

The Prisoners' Movement

A century of resistance behind bars — from the labour camps of the British Mandate to the hunger strikes, prisoner exchanges, and escapes that turned cells into "schools of national liberation." Filter by era, and tap any moment to read more.

1. 1934 Ramleh Prison established A former British-built palace becomes a prison for Palestinians — and the cradle of the hunger-strike tactic. +

   Built as Ramleh Palace in 1934 under the British Mandate, the site was converted into a military centre after 1948 and into a central prison by 1967. It still serves as a transit point between all other prisons.

   Prisoners at Ramleh were forerunners of the open hunger strike. In 1968 they struck to end physical abuse and to move out of barracks exposed to rain and sewage; a second strike that year won the right to keep notebooks and pens in their cells.

2. 1936–1939 The Arab Revolts & mass detention A civil uprising against colonization escalates into armed revolt — met with mass incarceration and forced-labour camps. +

   As Palestinians rose against land seizure and mass immigration, colonial authorities answered with collective punishment: sieges, home demolitions, collective fines, and the mass detention of men and boys aged 16 to 60 for "questioning."

   Camps such as Nur al-Shams super-exploited Palestinian forced labour for railroads and roadworks. At the revolt's 1939 peak, roughly 9,000 Palestinians were held at once.

   The first executions were carried out at Akka prison: Fuad Hijazi, Ata al-Zir and Mohammed Jamjoum — hanged for their role in the 1929 Al-Buraq uprising — became the movement's earliest martyrs.

3. 1945 British Emergency Regulations Colonial powers codify arrest without warrant and detention without charge — the legal backbone Israel inherits in 1948. +

   The 1945 Defence (Emergency) Regulations permitted arrest without warrant, detention without charge, military tribunals, deportation, and collective punishment.

   Adopted, amended and extended by the Israeli state from 1948, they became the backbone of the military occupation regime imposed on the West Bank and Gaza after 1967.

4. 1948 The Nakba Between 7,000 and 12,000 Palestinians are captured during the 1948 war — many detained solely for their age or as a prelude to expulsion. +

   As Zionist forces took Palestinian cities and towns, they captured between 7,000 and 12,000 Palestinians and other Arabs — mostly civilians, including men and children aged fifteen to sixty-five.

   In 1949 the Israeli Prison Service was established, building permanent prisons while closing the temporary field camps inherited from 1948.

5. 1967 The Naksa & military detention Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza transforms incarceration into a system of military governance. +

   The 1967 war replaced civil administration with military rule overnight. Palestinians were designated "security prisoners" — a bureaucratic label meant to deny them prisoner-of-war protections under the Geneva Conventions.

   Israel retrofitted British Mandate-era infrastructure: Ashkelon, Ramla (with the Neve Tirza women's section added in 1968) and a former tobacco warehouse turned into Damon Prison. Between 1967 and 2012, some 800,000 Palestinians were imprisoned.

6. 1968 First mass hunger strikes In Nablus prison, a three-day strike against routine beatings lays the foundation of the prisoners' movement. +

   A year into the occupation, prisoners in Nablus held the first documented hunger strike — three days, demanding an end to routine beatings.

   It laid the foundation for what would become one of the world's most sustained and organized prison-resistance movements, turning cells into "schools of national liberation."

7. 1968–1971 First prisoner exchanges From a 1968 plane hijacking to the 1971 release of Mahmoud Hijazi, the exchange becomes a tool to free prisoners. +

   In July 1968 the PFLP hijacked an Israeli plane and exchanged passengers for 37 Palestinian detainees, putting the prisoners' cause on the world stage.

   In 1971 Mahmoud Bakr Hijazi — the first prisoner of the contemporary Palestinian revolution — was freed in exchange for a captured Israeli soldier. His release would later be commemorated as Palestinian Prisoners' Day.

8. 1974 Palestinian Prisoners' Day The Palestinian National Council designates an annual day of solidarity that becomes international. +

   Marking Hijazi's release, the day has grown into an international day of solidarity — a yearly focal point to spotlight detention conditions, medical neglect, and the demand to free political detainees.

9. 1980 The Nafha hunger strike A 33-day strike in the desert prison of Nafha; three prisoners are martyred under force-feeding. +

   Beginning 14 July, prisoners struck for 33 days against the brutal conditions of the desert prison — overcrowding, no ventilation, soil mixed into the food. Rasem Halaweh, Ishak Maragheh and Ali al-Jaafri died while being force-fed.

   Their sacrifice won concrete gains: beds for the first time, enlarged cells, mesh windows, and family photo albums and stationery allowed inside.

10. 1984 The Jneid strike — a turning point Over 800 prisoners strike for 13 days in Nablus; remembered as a turning point in hunger-strike history. +

    At Jneid prison in Nablus, more than 800 prisoners held a 13-day strike, with a general strike in East Jerusalem in solidarity. It won access to radio, television, clothes and better food.

    A parallel strike was organized by women prisoners in Neve Tirza. Al Jazeera later called Jneid "a turning point in the history of hunger strikes."

11. 1987 The First Intifada 3,000 prisoners strike; mass arrests give Palestine the highest incarceration rate in the world. +

    A spring strike by 3,000 prisoners — against overcrowding, lack of ventilation, and the refusal to recognize their elected committees — sparked unrest across the occupied territories.

    When the Intifada erupted that December, the occupation answered nonviolent protest with mass arrests and a systematic bone-breaking policy. Over 29,000 Palestinians were arrested in the first year alone, and 170,000 over six years — the highest incarceration rate in the world at the time.

12. 1993–1995 The Oslo period Prisoners strike to force their release into the negotiations — winning partial, often-unkept releases. +

    Several thousand prisoners struck to demand that their release be written into the Oslo negotiations, backed by a West Bank-wide general strike.

    The strike ended with agreement on a gradual release under Israeli supervision — but partial releases followed by renewed detention defined the whole Oslo and post-Oslo period.

13. 2000 The Second Intifada Strikes against isolation and strip-searches; the Khiam torture prison in Lebanon is liberated. +

    After 80 prisoners in Hadarim were placed in solitary, at least 650 joined a strike across multiple prisons, demanding phone calls, an end to strip searches, and release from isolation. Some demands were met before conditions worsened with the Intifada.

    That May, as Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon, the notorious Khiam torture prison was liberated and 144 prisoners freed — a lasting symbol that "freedom will arrive at the gates of every prison."

14. 2011 The Wafa al-Ahrar (Shalit) exchange Israel frees 1,027 Palestinian prisoners for a single captured soldier. +

    In October 2011 Israel released 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one captured soldier, Gilad Shalit — among them Marwan Barghouti, Ahmad Saadat and Yahya Sinwar.

    The exchange emboldened the resistance and humiliated Israeli leadership, which has since tried to foreclose such deals — most notoriously through the "Hannibal Directive."

15. 2021 The Gilboa prison break Six prisoners tunnel out of a "maximum-security" prison with little more than a spoon. +

    Six political detainees — Zakaria Zubeidi, Munadel Nfeiat, Yacoub Qadri, Mahmoud Ardah, Ayham Kamamji and Mohammad Ardah — dug beneath their cell with an old spoon, hiding the earth under a concrete tile to escape a prison under 24/7 surveillance.

    The occupation answered with collective punishment against entire communities and the escapees' families. However brief, the escape became an iconic act of defiance — proof that liberation is always on the prisoners' minds.

16. 2023– After 7 October 2023 Decades of hard-won gains are stripped away; numbers surge past 9,300 and deaths in custody mount. +

    Since October 2023 the gains won over half a century of strikes have been drastically reversed: food cut, family and legal visits suspended, medical care withheld, and torture escalated.

    The prison population has surged past 9,300, and deaths in custody — documented by Palestinian human-rights bodies — have mounted. The struggle behind bars continues.