Palestinian Prisoner’s Day: What happened in Palestine on April 17, 1971?

On April 17 each year, Palestinian Prisoner’s Day is commemorated to remember the plight of thousands of men, women and children held in Israeli prisons.

This year’s remembrance is underscored by Israel’s new death penalty law, which solely targets Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks. Rights groups have called the measure a violation of international law and inherently discriminatory. The United Nations human rights chief called it a possible “war crime”.

Nearly 10,000 Palestinians are now being held in Israeli prisons in Israel and in occupied territory, according to the prisoners’ rights group Addameer. To Palestinians, they are political prisoners who must be freed.

Here’s what we know about Palestinian Prisoner’s Day and the situation facing Palestinians held in Israeli detention.

What happened on April 17, 1971?

April 17, 1971, was the date when Mahmoud Bakr Hejazi was released in the first prisoner exchange between Israel and Palestine.

In 1974, the Palestinian National Council (PNC) officially designated April 17 as Palestinian Prisoner’s Day.

Since then, it has served as a day of national and international solidarity, highlighting the Palestinian struggle against Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian land.

How many Palestinians are in Israeli custody?

As of early April, more than 9,600 Palestinians were in Israeli custody. Of those in detention:

• 3,532 are administrative detainees – held without charge or trial.
• 342 are children.
• 84 are women.
• 119 are serving life sentences.

What is administrative detention?

Administrative detention is a longstanding Israeli policy to hold Palestinians – men, women and children – without charge or trial for six-month periods that may be renewed indefinitely.

While Israel says the policy allows authorities to hold suspects while continuing to gather evidence, critics and rights groups say the system is widely abused and denies due process.

More than one-third (3,532) of the 9,600 Palestinians detained by Israel as of early this month were being held under administrative detention.

Why are Palestinian children held in Israeli prisons?

Israel is the only country in the world that tries children in military courts, often denying them their basic rights. According to Addameer, 342 children were being held this month in Israeli prisons.

Since the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000, more than 12,000 Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli forces.

Arrested children are often subjected to physical and psychological torture, according to child rights groups. They are interrogated without the presence of a parent or lawyer, and critics have accused Israel of exploiting their detention to turn them into informants and to extort their families financially by forcing them to pay large fines.

An Israeli soldier guards Palestinian Hasan Khalifeh, 15, after he was arrested near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus on August 29, 2005 [Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters]

What sort of trials do Palestinians receive?

Palestinian prisoners are tried and sentenced in military courts rather than civilian courts.

International law permits Israel to use military courts in territory it occupies. However, a dual legal system operates in Palestine: Israeli settlers living in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are subject to Israeli civil law while Palestinians there are tried under Israeli military law in courts run by Israeli soldiers and officers.

What is the new death penalty law?

Under the new law, military courts are able to impose the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis in acts of “terror”. This law will not impose the same penalty on Jewish Israelis convicted of killing Palestinians, which reinforces the legal inequalities that grant privileges to Jewish citizens while targeting Palestinians.

The law, which was approved on March 30 and is to take effect by the end of April, will apply to Palestinians from the West Bank who are tried in Israeli military courts as Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip continues.

The Palestinian Authority has condemned the bill as “a war crime against the Palestinian people”, saying it violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, particularly the protections it guarantees for individuals and the safeguards for fair trials.

The rights group B’Tselem pointed out before the Knesset’s approval of the bill that the conviction rate for Palestinians tried in military courts is about 96 percent.

“The law is worded in such a way that it targets only Palestinians. And it will turn the killing of Palestinians into an accepted and common tool of punishment through several mechanisms,” it said in a post on X.

“In many cases, these convictions are based on ‘confessions’ obtained through pressure and torture during interrogations,” the group said.

One million Palestinians detained since 1967

Israel’s detention policies have deeply affected Palestinian life for decades. According to the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, since 1967, Israeli forces have detained an estimated one million Palestinians, or about 20 percent of the Palestinian population. Statistically, this means one of every five Palestinians has been imprisoned at some point.

For many families, arrests have become an inevitability. This systemic practice has fragmented communities, perpetuated cycles of trauma and generated widespread resentment.

As Israel’s arrest campaign continues, many Palestinians fear that mass imprisonment is not just a byproduct of occupation but a deliberate tool of control. For the thousands currently behind bars, freedom remains uncertain, just as it has for generations before them.