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.”
Read the full statement on JPA website
Today, we encourage individuals and organizations to take action, in solidarity with all Palestinian prisoners. In Canada and beyond:
