Prisoners & Detainees
Israel holds 351 Palestinian children, half of them without charge
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Israel was holding 351 Palestinian children in its prisons at the end of December 2025, and 180 of them — 51 percent — were in administrative detention without charge or trial, according to Defense for Children International-Palestine, which published its reading of Israel Prison Service data on 18 March 2026.
The organisation said it was both the highest number and the highest proportion since it began tracking the figure in 2008.
B'Tselem's tally from the same Israel Prison Service release puts the December 2025 figure at 351 minors held on what the service defines as "security" grounds, alongside 106 Palestinian minors held for being in Israel without permits.
Six months earlier the balance was different. DCIP reported on 2 September 2025 that 360 children were held as of 30 June, the highest since early 2016, of whom 147, or 41 percent, were in administrative detention. Ayed Abu Eqtaish, the group's accountability programme director, said Israeli forces had expanded the use of administrative detention against children every month since October 2023.
The Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs put the number at around 350 children as of early April 2026, held in Megiddo and Ofer prisons, with two girls in Damon. The Commission said Israel was then holding more than 9,600 Palestinians in total, including 3,532 administrative detainees.
The organisation that produced the most detailed record of child detention no longer exists. DCI-Palestine announced in April 2026 that it was ending 35 years of work, its general director Khaled Quzmar citing "operational challenges" from Israel's criminalisation of Palestinian rights groups, as reported by Mondoweiss. Israeli forces had raided its office outside Ramallah and declared it closed in August 2022.
Independent counting was already constrained. B'Tselem says the Israel Prison Service stopped supplying it with requested figures at the end of 2020 and now publishes partial data on its own website every three months. DCIP recorded that the service was more than two months late with both the second-quarter and fourth-quarter releases of 2025.
Children in the West Bank are prosecuted in the same military court system as adults, under Military Order 1651, which sets the minimum age of criminal responsibility at 12.
In a statement to the UN Human Rights Council in 2019, Defence for Children International said the military court's own annual report showed 99.74 percent of cases ending in conviction, with custodial sentences imposed on children in 98 percent of cases, against about 6.5 percent for Israeli children in the civilian juvenile system.
It also said 72 percent of detained children were transferred into prisons inside Israel, contrary to Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
B'Tselem, in a 2018 report, said the conviction rate "verges on 100 percent" and attributed it largely to plea bargains, with young suspects advised to plead guilty for a shorter sentence. The Israeli military said at the time it had not received the report and could not comment, according to the Times of Israel.
Scale has changed since. The Israel Democracy Institute, citing prison service and army data, wrote that between 150 and 200 Palestinian minors were held in pre-trial detention at any given time after September 2015. The Israeli outlet HaMakom, reviewing prison service reports for the first half of 2026, reported that 29 minors had been in administrative detention for more than a year.
HaMoked's published figures, drawn from the prison service, show 8,045 "security" prisoners in June 2026: 1,335 serving sentences, 3,386 held before conviction, 3,324 in administrative detention.
On conditions, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs issued a report on 2 August 2026 on minors in Megiddo, saying shower water is available for about an hour a day and not regularly, that yard time is limited to an hour and not consistently granted, that drinking water is taken from taps, and that cleaning supplies are short.
All the minors had lost significant weight because the food falls far short of their needs, the Commission said.
A joint submission to the UN Committee against Torture in November 2025 by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Adalah, HaMoked and Physicians for Human Rights Israel documented beatings and degrading treatment in Israeli facilities and referred to a pending High Court petition over the food given to Palestinian prisoners.
Israel's delegation told the Committee against Torture in November 2025 that the prison service maintains a zero-tolerance policy on harm to detainees, trains staff on the imprisonment of minors, and grants authorised inspectors access to its facilities.
One child has died in Israeli custody since October 2023: Walid Khalid Ahmad, 17, who collapsed in Megiddo on 22 March 2025. An autopsy at the Abu Kabir institute, a copy of which his family gave CNN, found likely prolonged malnutrition. DCIP said the findings pointed to starvation, dehydration and denied medical care.
The Palestinian Prisoners' Society said he was arrested in Silwad on 30 September 2024, was never charged, and that his hearings were repeatedly postponed. What Israeli authorities concluded about the death has not been made public.
Children have come out mainly through exchanges. Al Jazeera reported that 21 of the 90 prisoners freed on 20 January 2025 were children, and that eight of the 90 had been detained before October 2023. Nearly 2,000 Palestinians were released in the October 2025 exchange, of whom about 250 came from Israeli prisons and 154 were deported abroad, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Media Office.
The Knesset passed a law in November 2024, by 53 votes to 33, allowing judges to imprison minors aged 12 to 14 convicted of terrorist murder, manslaughter or attempted murder.
On 30 March 2026 it passed the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law, mandating hanging for West Bank Palestinians convicted by military courts of deadly attacks, with execution within 90 days. Adalah, which is challenging the law, says it strips essential safeguards.
How the mandatory sentence applies to defendants tried as minors has not been set out publicly.
No published count exists for Palestinian children held by the Israeli military rather than the prison service. The Commission notes that its figure of 1,251 detainees classified as "unlawful combatants" excludes Gaza detainees held in army camps, and the next prison service quarterly release is the only scheduled point at which the number of children in custody will be updated.
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