Tel Aviv has jailed Palestinians at an average of 47 per day, says a new study, adding US “bankrolled this oppression” against Palestinians for nearly 700 months.
On February 24, Israeli occupation troops abducted Fidaa Assaf from the village of Kafr Laqif in Palestine’s Qalqilya governorate. She was returning from Ramallah Medical Complex after undergoing medical examinations.
Palestinian officials later revealed that the female prisoner, who is married and a mother, was subjected to multiple strip searches and verbal abuse.
They also noted that she was detained in a cell described as unhygienic and infested with insects, and was deprived of water and food for several days.
Despite battling cancer, the Israeli regime is holding Assaf in the notorious Damon Prison, where approximately 42 female prisoners, including pregnant prisoners such as Zahraa Kawazbeh and Doaa Kawazbeh, are subjected to extreme torture and deliberate medical neglect.
Abductees such as Assaf, Kawazbeh, and Kawazbeh have one thing in common — they are part of a huge army of 1,000,000 Palestinians who have been jailed and tortured by Israel since 1967, a policy, which according to a new study, serves as the “backbone” of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
The report, released by non-profit American Muslims for Palestine on Thursday, said that Israel’s carceral system remains the “backbone of its occupation” of Palestine, with Tel Aviv jailing about one million Palestinians at an average of 47 per day for 58 years.
“Israel has historically kept prison head-count near 6,000 at any one time, fluctuating during escalations, but reverting to the mean quickly,” according to the study titled “The Carceral History of Occupied Palestine”.
As of May 2025, the study said, Israel holds in its jails 10,068 Palestinians. Of these, 1,455 are sentenced, 3,190 await trial, and 3,577 are held without charge under administrative detention.
In contrast, the Palestinian group Hamas, after capturing 251 people during its October 2023 raid on Israeli military sites and settlements that were once Arab farms and homes, has released dozens of hostages.
It currently holds 49 captives, including 27 who are feared to have been killed in indiscriminate Israeli strikes.
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) has released a new, data-driven report titled The Carceral History of Occupied Palestine, offering one of the most statistically comprehensive analyses to date of Israel’s incarceration practices in Palestine. Drawing on more than five decades… pic.twitter.com/VCTwHsrVpT
— American Muslims for Palestine (@AMPalestine) July 3, 2025
“Meanwhile, administrative detention has exploded after Israel’s 2023 genocide in Gaza, jumping from 350 to 2,373 detainees per month — a seven-fold surge that now accounts for nearly one-third of all prisoners,” the report said.
Tel Aviv enforces its carceral system with movement barriers and draconian laws, it said, adding, the occupied West Bank now suffers from almost 900 Israeli military’s checkpoints, gates, and roadblocks, up from 645 in 2023, paralysing daily life.
In the first half of 2024, the study said that Israeli military conducted 3,384 documented search-and-arrest operations across the occupied West Bank.
“In April 2025 alone, Israeli forces conducted mass raids resulting in 530 arrests, including 60 children and 18 women, across cities, towns, and refugee camps in the West Bank,” it said.
The report highlighted Israeli Knesset’s 2024 amendments “legalising collective punishment and permitting life sentences for children aged 12.”
American complicity
The American Muslims for Palestine said in its report that all along it is United States that has “bankrolled this oppression”, adding Washington recently gave more than $14 billion to Israel to carry out genocide against Palestinians of besieged Gaza.
“Since 1948, Congress has appropriated an inflation-adjusted $383.75 billion in aid, promising at least $3.8 billion in annual aid since 2016, while rushing to give Israel $14.1 billion in April 2025 to underwrite their genocide.”
Unlike other countries, the group said, the American money for Israel arrives as an immediate lump-sum, lets Israel earn interest, and flows through lightly-scrutinised Direct Commercial Sales that speed up US weapon approvals to their military, prison guards, and illegal settlers alike.
“Israel’s carceral system, its military courts, administrative detention, torture, deportations, and child imprisonment constitute a comprehensive and deliberate apparatus of domination,” the group said.
It said the system is sustained by US money, weapons, and diplomatic cover.
“To uphold international law and Palestinian rights, the system must be dismantled entirely, and US support must end.”
The American Muslims for Palestine said that Israel’s recent legislative actions, its ongoing genocide in Gaza, its escalating repression of their own Palestinian citizens, and advancement of the occupation of the West Bank, and occupied East Jerusalem, “indicates that Israel has no intention of altering its carceral system.”
“While this report has documented high rates of detention and imprisonment, in order to fully comprehend the scale of these systems, it is critical to recognise that while not every Palestinian has experienced detention formally, every Palestinian living under Israeli occupation has been subject to the occupation’s carceral programme in some capacity,” the group added.
The group said Israel is using incarceration, especially of children, to exhaust, deter, and displace Palestinians.
The carceral state, the group concluded, underpins occupation, functioning as a mechanism of apartheid and the US complicity, via material support, necessitates its abolition.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Israel has been carrying out a genocide in Gaza since October 2023.
Palestinians have recorded killings of more than 57,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Some 11,000 Palestinians are feared buried under rubble of annihilated homes, according to Palestine’s official WAFA news agency.
Experts, however, contend that the actual death toll significantly exceeds what the Gaza authorities have reported, estimating it could be around 200,000.
Since October 2023, Israel and illegal Zionist settlers have escalated its violence in the occupied West Bank, killing 1,000 Palestinians.
Washington allocates $3.8 billion in annual military funding to its long-standing ally Israel.
Since October 2023, the US has spent more than $22 billion supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and wars in neighbouring countries.
Despite senior US officials criticising Israel regarding the high civilian death toll in Gaza, Washington has, thus far, resisted calls to place conditions on any arms transfers.
C. TRT World
