Press Release Issued by the League of Parliamentarians for Al-Quds and Palestine on Palestinian Prisoners' Day

Press Release

Issued by the League of Parliamentarians for Al-Quds and Palestine on Palestinian Prisoners' Day

April 17 of each year marks Palestinian Prisoners' Day, serving as a national and international occasion to highlight one of the most just humanitarian causes. It stands as a reminder to the international community of the ongoing suffering of thousands of prisoners and detainees held in Israeli occupation prisons.

This year’s commemoration comes amid catastrophic and exceptional circumstances. Prisoners are facing an unprecedented campaign of repression and retaliation, coinciding with the systematic war of genocide being waged against the Palestinian people. This reality makes solidarity with them an urgent legal and moral obligation.

The League sounds the alarm regarding the horrific and escalating statistics that reflect the brutality of the occupation system. Thousands of prisoners are held in repressive facilities under inhumane conditions, including hundreds of women, children, and the sick. There has been a frightening rise in the number of martyrs within the prisoners' movement—those who have passed away due to systematic physical and psychological torture, deliberate medical negligence, and the continued withholding of the bodies of dozens of martyrs.

The League further emphasizes the brutality of the apartheid state apparatus. As of early April 2026, the number of "disclosed" prisoners and detainees in Israeli occupation prisons has exceeded 9,600. This figure includes:

• 84 female prisoners.

• Approximately 350 children.

• 3,532 administrative detainees held without charge or trial.

• 1,251 detainees classified by the occupation as "unlawful combatants" (a figure that excludes many detainees from Gaza held in secret camps).

To date, 323 identified martyrs of the prisoners' movement have died as a result of torture, starvation, deliberate medical neglect, and total isolation.

The League specifically highlights the crime of "Enforced Disappearance," which has become an official policy of the occupation, particularly against thousands of detainees abducted recently from the Gaza Strip. The occupation deliberately isolates them from the outside world in secret camps, denying families, lawyers, and international institutions any information regarding their fate, location, or health status. This practice leaves them vulnerable to extrajudicial killing and torture unto death, in flagrant violation of the Rome Statute, which classifies enforced disappearance as a crime against humanity.

Furthermore, the League asserts that the secrecy surrounding the fate of the forcibly disappeared is dangerously complemented by the fascist legislative escalation within the Israeli Knesset. Most notable is the "Prisoner Execution Law," which exclusively targets Palestinians. This law aims to legitimize field executions and physical liquidations under a false legal cover, transforming the prison system into a mass killing machine devoid of any civil or humanitarian oversight.

The League of Parliamentarians for Al-Quds and Palestine calls upon the international community, the UN Security Council, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to:

1. Intervene immediately to compel the occupation to disclose the names and locations of all detainees and the forcibly disappeared.

2. Ensure immediate access for medical and legal teams to visit the detainees.

3. Urge world parliaments to take firm, practical steps to form a legal pressure front to force the occupying power to repeal the "Execution Law."

4. Establish a serious international track to hold occupation leaders accountable as war criminals.

The League pledges to the prisoners and their families to continue the diplomatic and parliamentary struggle in all forums until the chains are broken and full freedom is achieved.

League of Parliamentarians for Al-Quds and Palestine

Friday, April 17, 2026