There are more than 4,800 Palestinian prisoners currently held in Israeli jails. Of these, 236 are children under the age of 18, 12 are women, and 178 are under administrative detention, meaning they are being held without charge or trial and can have their detention renewed indefinitely.
There are 109 prisoners who have spent more than 20 years behind bars, as they were imprisoned before the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords between officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israeli government, which held more than 12,000 Palestinians prisoner at that time. As a report from the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association shows, these prisoners were not a priority for PLO officials, which included the late president Yasser Arafat, de facto Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and unelected chief negotiator Saeb Erekat.
