Thousands of Palestinians are in Israeli jails – one father hopes the ceasefire will bring his son home

In a smoke-filled room in Bethlehem, four men pore over a list – just released – of the names of Palestinian detainees to be freed in phase one of the ceasefire deal.

This is the office of the Palestinian Prisoners Society. The phone has not stopped ringing. Families are desperate for news.

Some 735 names are on the list – 328 of them handed one or more life sentences, 74 have faced no charges and 49 are under “administrative detention”, which means they have been held for an indeterminate amount of time, without charge.

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One room here is packed floor to ceiling in case files.

“Since 1967 the Israeli occupation has arrested 1.2 million Palestinians,” says Abdullah Zaghari, the director of the organisation.

Now, he says, 10,400 Palestinians – from the West Bank and East Jerusalem – are in Israeli jails.

The number who’ve been taken from Gaza since 7 October, though, is unknown.

“This is the biggest challenge for us,” Mr Zaghari says.

“We’ve received calls from families in Gaza since the beginning of the war, they have no confirmation about who has been arrested. Maybe some, maybe they’ve been killed. Maybe they are in secret jails.”

He claims conditions in prisons have worsened since 7 October – as “revenge” for the Hamas attacks.

Read more: A timeline of events since the 7 October attacks

“Hundreds of people in the jails are suffering from starvation, from disease, unable to shower… most of the prisoners in the jails lose more than 40kg in body weight,” he claims.

Before 7 October, the biggest prisoner handover came after the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. He was abducted in a cross-border tunnel raid and held by Hamas for five years.

More than 1,000 Palestinians were freed in the prisoner exchange, but among them, after 22 years in prison, was Yahya Sinwar. He became Hamas leader in Gaza and is widely regarded as the architect of 7 October – finally killed by the Israeli military in Tal as-Sultan, in Rafah, last October.

Across Bethlehem, sat together on a terrace in the shade of a tree, we meet a family with three generations who’ve each experienced time in Israeli prisons. Grandfather, son and, now missing, their eldest son.

It was at two o’clock in the morning, Firas Hassan, 50, tells me that his son Ahmed, 16, was dragged from his bed. He’d criticised the Israeli occupation on Facebook. That was last September. Firas fears for his son in Ktzi’ot jail in southern Israel.

He knows too well what jail is like. He’s spent 15 years in and out of various Israeli prisons. He was last released in April 2024, after two years, this time with no charge.

He’d been arrested at a checkpoint, sat in his car, on his way to university to study for his master’s degree.

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As a young man, he had been a member of the political wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, he told me, but no more.

“I was in prison multiple times for a long time because of my opposition to the occupation. The situation in jail is very difficult – especially after 7 October. Before 7 October the situation was stable, after that, everything turned upside down, it was horrible, crazy, scary – the beatings, starvation and decreasing the amount of food compared to before 7 October.”

Firas says he was beaten on his last day in jail, showing us a photograph – his face swollen and bruised.

Now he wants his son home. His hope: that the ceasefire lasts long enough to get his first born back to his family.

Israel says its arrests and detentions comply with international law and the Israeli Prison Service denies all allegations of abuse.

Additional reporting by producer Nick Stylianou