Watan – The Palestinian agency, “Safa”, unveils the heart-wrenching tales of Palestinian women, their resilience echoing through the cold walls of Israeli detention centers. Over 5,200 souls find themselves confined within these facilities, with 36 women and approximately 170 under-age among them. As the Israel-Palestine saga unfolds, Israeli jails have become an unwilling home to a staggering 16,000 Palestinian women.
Palestinian female prisoners in Israeli jails
A snapshot from a particular period reveals 37 women in chains. Among them are the young “Nafuz Hammad” and “Maysun Musa”, a mere 15-year-old, imprisoned since 2015. “Shuroq Dwayat” bears the weight of a 16-year sentence, the harshest any female detainee has received. “Shatila Abu Ayada” from Kafr Qasim, captured on 3/4/2016, now counts her days in Damon jail, burdened with a 16-year sentence and a staggering fine of 100,000 shekels. Meanwhile, “Aisha Yusuf Al-Afghani” from Jerusalem, detained on 25/12/2016, faces a 15-year term in the same jail.
In a twist of fate, authorities placed four Palestinian women, including “Raghd Al-Fani”, “Samah Awad”, “Hanan Al-Barghouti”, and “Fatima Abu Shalal” from the Al-Ain camp in Nablus, under administrative detention on 29/8/2023. As the leaves turned gold in September, the count of administrative detainees in Israeli jails was about 1,319, with 20 children and 4 women among them.
Injured women behind rails
The documentation pointed out that 9 injured women are held in Israeli jails, the most severely injured among them being “Israa Jaabis” from Jerusalem, who was arrested on 10/10/2015 and is currently in Damon jail. Additionally, “Fatima Shaheen” from Bethlehem, Al-Dheisheh camp, was arrested on 17/4/2023 and is now in Ramla clinic jail.
Ataf Jaradat’ from Hanin, and the latest detained activist is ‘Aya Al-Khatib’, sentenced to 4 years. She is from the town of ‘Arara’ within the territories occupied in 1948. She was arrested on 17/2/2020 and was placed under house arrest on 24/6/2021. Aya was sentenced to 4 years in jail on 15/8/2023, and on 18/9/2023, she was arrested to serve her actual sentence
Inhumane conditions in Israeli jails
Since they were arrested, these Palestinian women have endured a storm of human rights abuses, from physical blows to soul-crushing words. Yet, their spirit remains unbroken, even in the bleak surroundings of Damon’s jail, a place where basic human comforts are a distant dream.