Walid Daqqa

Hailing from the Palestinian town of Baqa Al-Gharbiyye, Daqqa was among the most prominent intellectual figures in the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, penning books and essays from behind prison walls that went on to influence generations of Palestinian political thought.Daqqa was among a dozen Palestinian political prisoners whose release was negotiated in the 1993 Oslo Accords. On the day of his scheduled release, the Zionist authorities reversed their decision for unspecified reasons. Daqqa was incarcerated a total of 38 years, until his martyrdom.During his imprisonment, Daqqa was denied the right to have a family, to raise his daughter, and to see his dying parents. In 2022, Daqqa was diagnosed with myelofibrosis — a rare form of bone marrow cancer that disrupts the body’s normal production of blood cells. Israel repeatedly delayed his treatment and rejected his request for an urgently needed bone marrow transplant.Israel murdered Walid Daqqa through medical negligence — deliberately denying him treatment and delaying necessary procedures for him as a punishment for his continued writing and political activities from behind prison walls. Israel uses medical negligence to kill Palestinian political prisoners who would otherwise live a normal lifespan when they are diagnosed with a treatable illness while in prison.

Khalida Jarrar

Khalida Jarrar is a longtime feminist organizer and educator with a history of advocating for Palestinian Political Prisoners. She served as the Director of Addameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association for over 10 years and is a researcher at the Muwatin Institute for Democracy and Human Rights at Birzeit University, where her research focuses Palestinian female prisoners.Her work and advocacy led to the zionist state imprisoning her many times, the last time in 2024. Notably, while in prison, Khalida served as a teacher to her fellow female prisoners, starting secondary and post-secondary educational programs, smuggling writings, including a letter in 2020 read at the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, and even conducting her own studies.

Nael Barghouti

Nael Barghouti is the world’s longest-serving political prisoner, having spent over 45 years in zionist prisons serving a life sentence. When Barghouti was in his 50s, he was liberated through the 2011 prison exchange after 34 years in prison.The zionist state had ordered him to stop being active in the community as a term of his release, but Al Barghouti refused. Nael Al Barghouti’s story is a symbol of steadfastness in the face of zionist colonization, occupation, and oppression. His sacrifice for the palestinian liberation movement is apparent throughout his life's story.

Ahed Tamimi

Ahed Tamimi is a world-renowned Palestinian activist, born and raised in the small West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, which became a center of the resistance to Israeli occupation when an illegal, Jewish-only settlement blocked off its community spring.Her global renown reached an apex in December 2017, when, at sixteen years old, she was filmed slapping an Israeli soldier who refused to leave her front yard. The video went viral, and Tamimi was arrested.The Tamimi family is no stranger to brutal Zionist oppression, as family members have been regularly harassed, detained, beaten, and shot by IOF countless times over the years, targeted for their leading role in organizing weekly protests in the village of Nabi Saleh to demand the end of Israeli encroachment on their lands.

Zakaria Zubeidi

Zakaria Zubeidi embodies the working-class Palestinian refugee story. A son of the Jenin Camp, Zubeidi was born in 1976 as the son of refugees displaced from Caesarea by Zionist militias during the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian (1947-49). Growing up, he attended an UNRWA school inside his refugee camp and was recorded to have been an outstanding student.His father was an educated English teacher, but was prevented from pursuing that career after the Israeli occupation forces accused him of being a member of Fatah, which they then considered a terrorist organization. In order to earn a living, he was instead forced to work physical labour for an Israeli iron foundry.Despite doing well in school, at 13-years-old, Zubeidi was shot in the leg by an Israeli sniper while throwing stones. At age 15 he was kidnapped by the Israeli occupation forces and held in an Israeli prison for six months for throwing stones.On September 6, 2021, Zubeidi and five other Palestinian political prisoners managed to escape the Gilboa Israeli prison, digging their way out with spoons.

Bushra
Al-Tawil

Bushra al-Tawil is a Palestinian journalist, photographer, and advocate for Palestinian political prisoners and detainees. She has been one of many journalists systematically targeted by the zionist entity and imprisoned five times for her journalistic work.Al Tawil works as a journalist for J-Media Network and in 2011 founded a news network named ‘Aneen AlQeed’, which covers Palestinian political prisoners and highlights their cases, and makes efforts to specifically highlight women political prisoners.She has been committed to her work and refuses to be silenced despite the constant threat of rearrest.Al Tawil and other journalists play a critical role in our movement, bringing to light the realities on the ground in Palestine.

Ahmad Sa'adat

Born in 1953, Sa’adat is the child of refugees expelled from their home in the village of Deir Tarif, near Ramleh, in 1948. He has been involved in the Palestinian national movement since 1967, when he became active in the student movement. Prior to his abduction from Jericho in 2006, he had been held at various times as a political prisoner in Israeli jails.In 2008, the Israeli military prison system declared that they would be keeping Sa’adat under their detention for at least 30 years, then proceeded to transfer him in and out of solitary confinement.The story of Ahmad Sa’adat symbolizes many elements of the Palestinian struggle to the occupied nation, including Israeli brutality, torture, betrayal by the Palestinian Authority and the will to never surrender against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Maher al-Akhras

Maher al-Akhras, a 49-year-old father of six from the Palestinian village of Silat a-Dhahr in the occupied West Bank.On July 27, 2020, al-Akhras decided to go on a hunger strike to block his administrative detention. This is a means used by administrative detainees to confront Israel’s intransigence and its refusal to end or limit the detention period despite its violation of international law.Al-Akhras was arrested six times and spent more than five years in Israeli prisons.