17 April marks Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, observed this year amid catastrophic conditions faced by detainees in Israeli occupation prisons, particularly since the onset of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians, including women and children, are being held in increasingly harsh, degrading circumstances, defined by daily human rights violations, denial of medical care, and the erosion of even the most basic standards of treatment.

Under a strict media blackout and with no independent oversight, detainees are subjected to systematic physical and psychological abuse. Human rights organisations have documented the widespread use of torture, humiliating treatment, and prolonged solitary confinement. The international community’s failure to act, or even speak out, has only entrenched what many Palestinians describe as a regime of collective punishment behind prison walls.

These prisoners are not anonymous statistics. They are individuals with names, families, and futures lives placed on hold or violently derailed. Each detainee represents a mother left waiting, a child growing up in absence, or a dream left to fade behind bars. Their resilience, even in the face of such brutality, is a quiet but powerful act of defiance.

As Palestinians say: because they are our stories, we must tell theirs. Palestinian prisoners are among the starkest symbols of the broader machinery of occupation,  people imprisoned not only in cells of concrete, but in a system built to crush hope and silence resistance.

On Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, campaigners emphasize that symbolic gestures are not enough. What is urgently needed is the amplification of these voices, the clear documentation of the abuses they endure, and international accountability for the Israeli state’s treatment of detainees. These men, women, and children are not merely victims, they are living witnesses to repression and the enduring pulse of Palestinian freedom.