Introducing the Symposium “From Incarceration to Erasure: Palestinian Prisoners in the Architecture of Genocide, Apartheid, and Torture”

April 17 marks Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, an international day of commemoration dedicated to raising awareness of the Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and to advocating for their rights and release. The date was formally designated in 1974 by the Palestinian National Council. It was chosen to coincide with a significant historical event, namely the first prisoner exchange between Palestine and Israel.

Since 1948, it is estimated that at least one million Palestinians have been imprisoned, a figure that underscores how deeply incarceration is embedded in Palestinian life. This reality cuts across all sectors of society: students, journalists, writers, lawyers, scholars, healthcare workers, human rights defenders, and political leaders, from refugee camps, villages, and cities throughout occupied Palestine.

Yet, what is at stake today extends beyond mere imprisonment. The scale, conditions, and legal architecture of detention increasingly indicate a qualitative shift from incarceration as a mechanism of control toward a broader process of erasure.

Constructing the Detainable Subject

Today, Israeli prison facilities have an estimated capacity of around 14,500 detainees, yet the number of Palestinians currently held exceeds 21,000, indicating severe overcrowding and deteriorating conditions. Since October 7, approximately 6,400 Palestinians from the West Bank have been arrested, contributing to a sharp escalation in detention rates. Central to this system of mass incarceration is the use of administrative detention, i.e., imprisonment without charge or trial. This practice has been widely criticized by human rights NGOs, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as international institutions, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Committee against Torture. There are currently 3,329 administrative detainees, while the total number of administrative detention orders issued since October 7, including both new and repeatedly renewed orders, has exceeded 10,000. These measures are not limited to adults but extend to children, with around 351 minors currently in detention.

In addition, 1,447 prisoners are serving formal sentences. These sentences typically relate to a broad range of charges, including ‘security offenses’, such as membership in banned political organizations (e.g. Fatah or others), participation in protests, stone-throwing, alleged involvement in attacks against Israeli soldiers, or the provision of support to armed groups (see UN Doc. CAT/C/ISR/CO/4, para. 15). Most alerting is the staggering number of 3,600 individuals considered to have been forcibly disappeared, with their whereabouts undisclosed.

Taken together, these figures point to a systemic state policy that institutionalizes a framework in which virtually every segment of the Palestinian population is constructed as a potential security threat, and therefore rendered detainable on that basis, reflecting a presumption pro securitate in which Palestinian life is afforded lesser value in the name of Israel’s security.

In this way, the figure of the ‘detainee’ is constructed through a logic that renders the Palestinian population perpetually susceptible to state violence. Consequently, the suspension of due process, the reliance on secret evidence, and the normalization of indefinite detention generate an institutional environment in which coercion becomes both possible and routine (see UN Doc. CAT/C/ISR/CO/4, para. 21). Torture and ill-treatment thus emerge as techniques embedded within the very production and management of the detainable subject.

Apartheid, Torture, and Genocide: An Integrated Regime of Domination and Destruction

Recent findings by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese confirm this observation, demonstrating that torture constitutes a central component of a de fatco state doctrine targeting Palestinians as a group and foregrounding its co-constitutive relationship with genocide (see also this statement). Under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (‘Genocide Convention’), genocide includes acts that cause ‘serious bodily or mental harm’ to a protected group. In this sense, torture is not external to genocide but one of its operative mechanisms (see UN Doc. A/HRC/61/71, paras. 12, 17). It produces severe physical and psychological harm at the individual level, while, when applied systematically, it generates a collective climate of fear, humiliation, and vulnerability that erodes social cohesion and undermines the conditions necessary for life (see UN Doc. A/HRC/61/71, paras. 12, 17).

This structural relationship is further intensified by a recent legislation passed through the Knesset, expanding the application of the death penalty to Palestinian detainees (see statements by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, New Zealand and the United Kingdom).

What emerges is an interconnected configuration in which the co-constitutive relationship between torture and genocide is structured through apartheid. This relationship becomes clearer when understood across mutually reinforcing levels.

At the level of structure, apartheid designates the legal and institutional order that produces segregation, differential rights, and racialized domination. The death penalty legislation translates discriminatory violence into law, formalizing a dual legal regime and giving legal expression to unequal valuations of life. In doing so, it establishes a de jure system, i.e., an explicit articulation of state policy that institutionalizes a hierarchy extending to the most fundamental guarantees of human dignity and the right to life itself.

This structural ordering is given concrete effect at the level of the system through mass incarceration. As outlined above, detention functions as a generalized mode of governance, rendering Palestinians broadly susceptible to imprisonment by virtue of their group membership.

It is precisely here that the connection to genocidal violence becomes analytically salient. When such practices are applied systematically to a protected group and embedded within a broader pattern of harm, they move beyond isolated acts of repression and begin to constitute a process in which destruction is cumulatively produced. The infliction of severe physical and mental suffering through indefinite detention, torture, and the execution of death targets the very conditions of life of the group as such, thereby aligning with the forms of harm contemplated under the Genocide Convention.

Therefore, the relevance of these developments to the question of genocidal intent (dolus specialis) lies in the death penalty legislation as the formal and authoritative expression of the state policy analyzed here. Legislation occupies a uniquely probative position in this regard. It is the most explicit articulation of state will, adopted through formal procedures and binding on all state organs. When such legislation systematically targets a protected group and escalates forms of harm – by expanding the application of the death penalty – it provides direct insight into the normative orientation of the state, demonstrating that the production of harm is not incidental or unauthorized but deliberately structured at the highest level.

Taken together, apartheid, torture, and genocide do not merely coexist but interlock within a single, internally coherent configuration of power. Rather than discrete practices, they function as relational components, each enabling and reinforcing the other. The result is a regime in which the management of a population is inseparable from the production of harm directed against it. It is within this convergence that the mutually constitutive dimensions of a single system of domination and destruction become most visible.

Sumud in the Face of Erasure

However, this analytical framework of the co-constitution of genocide, torture, and apartheid, while necessary to capture the structural and systemic dynamics at play, remains incomplete without an account of Palestinian agency and resistance. Although apartheid, torture, and genocidal violence structure the conditions under which Palestinians are forced to live, Palestinian existence cannot be reduced to these conditions. At its core lies sumud (صمود) – often translated as ‘steadfastness’, a concept that captures an active, everyday refusal to be broken, erased, displaced, and forgotten.

This concept is powerfully captured in the words of Khalida Jarrar, a prominent Palestinian activist, feminist, and former member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, who has spent years in Israeli prisons under indefinite administrative detention. Writing from within this painful reality in a letter to the Palestine Writes Festival in 2020, she reflects:

‘Although physically we are held captive behind fences and bars, our souls remain free and are soaring in the skies of Palestine and the world. Regardless of the severity of the Israeli occupation’s practices and imposed punitive measures, our free voice will continue to speak out on behalf of our people who have suffered horrendous catastrophes, displacement, occupation, and arrests. It will also continue to let the world know of the strong Palestinian will, that will relentlessly reject and challenge colonialism in all its forms.’

In the spirit of sumud, we are launching an ongoing symposium devoted to Palestinian prisoners, exploring the legal, political, and historical dimensions of imprisonment. We invite contributions to this vital topic on a rolling basis.

Janan Abdu will kick off this symposium, drawing on her extensive experience as a lawyer, researcher, and human rights defender. She highlights the legal, political, and everyday conditions confronted by prisoners, with particular attention to the intensification of violations since October 7, 2023. Through a feminist lens, Janan brings forward often-overlooked dimensions of incarceration, such as gendered power relations and the lived consequences of systematic abuse.

With this introduction, we hope the symposium will not only offer fruitful insights but also serve as an urgent call for solidarity with Palestinians. While this symposium seeks to foster critical reflection on how law operates within and against structures of apartheid, torture, and genocide, it must be acknowledged that we have only begun to address the vast realities of Palestinian imprisonment.