2026 marks the 52nd anniversary of the first Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. Since 1974 “April 17 has stood as a defining moment in Palestinian national consciousness. Palestinian Prisoners’ Day is not merely commemorative—it is a unifying act of struggle rooted in a long history of resistance to violent settler-colonialism.” — Addameer This is not simply a commemorative day, it is one about action, true solidarity.

This year a glaring new reality exists — one in which the illegal occupation’s government has passed a law legalizing the execution of Palestinian prisoners. This “marks a dangerous escalation in the architecture of colonial violence. It does not create violence—it legalizes it. By cloaking execution in law, it formalizes murder as state policy and advances a system that codifies Palestinian killing. Explicitly discriminatory, the law targets Palestinians alone, embedding racialized violence within a fully institutionalized legal framework.”

There are currently over 9,600 Palestinian political prisoners, including about 350 children. This also includes 3,532 administrative detainees — “Palestinians abducted from the occupied West Bank and are held without trial or charge” — and 1,251 “illegal combatants” — “Palestinians abducted from occupied Gaza and are held without trial or charge under the ‘unlawful combatants’.” Since 1967, “326 Palestinians have been martyred inside the prison system, including 89 people since the genocide in Gaza began. This figure includes only those who have been identified. Dozens from Gaza remain forcibly disappeared.”

Palestinian prisoners’ have always been subject to horrific abuse, including isolation, medical negligence, sexual violence, and torture. In a 2023 report, Al-Haq, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, and Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) highlighted the realities specifically for disabled Palestinian political prisoners. In one prison, known as a ‘clinic’ or ‘the slaughterhouse’, disabled Palestinian prisoners are detained in “incredibly cruel detention conditions.” Those who have be imprisoned there describe “pervasive negligence, lack of specialized medical staff, medical devices, and the absence and denial of urgent medical interventions for prisoners who are already diagnosed with grave maladies.”

Arbitrary detention here acts as an extension of colonial violence that is intended to disable. For example, N.A.J., a 27-year-old Palestinian man was arrested immediately after being shot by the Israeli military with several bullets. This did not just paralyze N.A.J.’s lower body, the detention by Israeli forces also exacerbated his condition due to a denial of proper care, in line with “Israel’s policy of neglecting the medical needs of Palestinian prisoners.”

This report and decades of advocacy efforts by Al-Haq, Addameer, PCHR, and others demonstrates “Israel’s effort to erase Palestinian presence” in occupied Palestine. Israel’s new execution law is a drastic extension of its settler-colonial project.

Today, we encourage individuals and organizations to take action, in solidarity with all Palestinian prisoners. In Canada and beyond:

• Send a letter to tell the Canadian government to take concrete action: English tr.ee/stop-law or French tr.ee/arrete-ca
• Join the Global Day of Fast for Palestinian Prisoners: instagram.com/p/DXE8avZAMgW
• Send a letter dedicated to a Palestinian political prisoner: bit.ly/letters4palprisoners
• Check out local events you can join in-person