Elderly Palestinian Political Prisoner Martyred in Israeli Occupation’s Prisons
Officials Disclose His Killing Three Months Late

Palestinian Prisoner's Society & the Commission of Detainees' Affairs

January 11, 2026

Ramallah, occupied Palestine – Israeli occupation authorities have disclosed to Palestinian prisoner groups the martyrdom of the 67-year-old Palestinian political detainee Hamza Abdullah Abdulhadi Adwan who was abducted from the Gaza Strip in November 2024.

According to the response received by the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) and the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, Adwan lost his life on September 9, 2025. The manner in which he was martyred remains unknown due to the information blackout that occupation authorities continue to impose on Palestinian detainees since the genocide in Gaza.

Adwan was a husband, and a father to nine children, two of whom were martyred prior to the genocide. According to his family, occupation forces arrested him despite his suffering from health problems, including heart disease, and despite his need for continuous medical care.

The PPS and the Commission noted that Adwan is one of over a hundred prisoners who have been killed in Israeli occupation prisons through torture including rape, starvation, medical crimes, since the beginning of the genocide, as well as other crimes involving deprivation, looting, humiliation, and detention in conditions that undermine human dignity.

This brings the total number of identified martyred Palestinian prisoners since the occupation of 1967 to 324 people.

Many of Gaza’s killed detainees remain forcibly disappeared, along with dozens who were executed in the field. Images of prisoners’ corpses delivered after the ceasefire provided conclusive evidence of the systematic executions carried out by the occupation army against detainees.

The PPS and the Commission hold occupation authorities fully responsible for the martyrdom of detainee Hamza Adwan and renewed their call to the international human rights system to take effective measures to hold the leaders of the occupation accountable for war crimes committed against prisoners and the Palestinian people. They urged an end to the impunity granted by the United States and other international powers to the Israeli occupation system over many decades, which reached its peak with the genocide, despite irrefutable evidence of the occupation’s commission of genocide against the people of Gaza, in addition to war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against prisoners.

In this context, the PPS and the Commission emphasized that the crimes that the Israeli prison system continues to commit against prisoners form an inseparable part of the genocide in Gaza. Through these crimes, the occupation system seeks to carry out slow executions, making this period the deadliest in the history of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement. This comes as the occupation seeks to legislate a law to execute Palestinian prisoners, turning extrajudicial executions into a codified and “legalized” policy.

It should be noted that the vast majority of Palestinian political prisoners are people who are held without trial or charge, either under arbitrary administrative detention or classified by the occupation authorities as “illegal combatants.” According to available data, as of January 2026, the number of prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons exceeds 9,300, including 3,385 people under administrative detention and 1,237 people classified as “illegal combatants,” meaning that the overwhelming majority of detainees are held without charges or trials.