A sharp expansion of administrative detention has become one of the defining features of the current genocidal war, reshaping the Palestinian prison landscape at a scale unseen in recent decades. Throughout 2025, thousands of detention orders were issued or renewed, pushing the number of Palestinians held without charge or trial to levels that now represent more than a third of the entire prison population. What was once presented as an exceptional measure has increasingly become a routine instrument of control.

This surge marks a stark departure from the period preceding the genocidal war, when the number of administrative prisoners was significantly lower. Today, many detainees face open-ended incarceration, with orders repeatedly renewed on the basis of undisclosed material. Entire sections of society have been drawn into this system, including students, political representatives, municipal officials and activists, alongside women and minors, some as young as their early teens. The practice has also extended to re-arresting former prisoners immediately after the completion of their sentences, effectively transforming release into a temporary pause rather than an end to imprisonment.

Particularly alarming is the treatment of prisoners from Gaza, many of whom have been placed under a separate legal label that strips them of basic protections and places them outside established safeguards of international law. Legal advocates argue that this classification, combined with enforced disappearance and the use of secret evidence, prevents prisoners from challenging their detention in any meaningful way. Courts, in turn, rely on files inaccessible to both detainees and their lawyers, eroding the very notion of due process.

The human cost of this system continues to mount. Deaths in custody have been recorded among administrative prisoners, with accounts pointing to medical neglect and conditions designed to exhaust both body and mind. As the genocidal war grinds on, the prison system has emerged not merely as a site of detention, but as a central arena where collective punishment is normalised and legal boundaries are steadily erased.