Palestinian prisoners' institutions - namely the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, and the Commission of Detainees' Affairs - have sent an urgent appeal to the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, calling on the organization to intervene immediately in response to the continued deterioration of the health conditions of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons, foremost among them the escalating spread of scabies, including among children.

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* These figures are based on information provided by prisoners’ institutions and on what was announced by the Israeli occupation’s Prison Service up to February 2026.

* The number of Palestinian political prisoners and detainees held in Israeli occupation prisons exceeded 9,300 people, as of the start of February 2026.

* Among them are 56 female prisoners, including two girls.

* The number of imprisoned children stands at 350 children, held by the occupation in Megiddo and Ofer prisons.

The game consists of mimicking the arrival of a rocket hitting one’s home: someone dies, the other children pull the “corpse” out of the rubble and carry it away. A diplomat who has witnessed this scene several times during his travels to Gaza during the war, and who prefers to remain anonymous, says he has seen the same scene depicted in children’s drawings as well. His explanation is that young children reproduce in play the only reality they know. “They live surrounded by violence and death, and this is a way to normalize them”.

December 16, 2025

These figures are based on information from Palestinian prisoners’ institutions and the Israeli occupation’s prison service up to December 2025.

👉🏼There are some 9,300 Palestinian political prisoners and detainees in the Israeli occupation’s prisons, the majority of whom are held without trial or charge, or are awaiting trial and have not yet been charged. This figure does not include detainees held in military camps run by the Israeli occupation army.