Israeli Occupation Escalates Attempts to Assassinate Imprisoned Leader Marwan Barghouti As Global Calls for His Release and Solidarity for Palestinian Political Prisoners Increases

Palestinian Prisoner’s Society

July 14, 2026

Ramallah, occupied Palestine – Abdullah Al-Zighari, head of the Palestinian Prisoner's Society, said that the Israeli occupation’s prison administration's special suppression forces firing rubber bullets at imprisoned leader Marwan Barghouti inside his cell represents an extremely dangerous escalation in attempts to assassinate him. This clearly demonstrates that Israel has moved to more brutal levels in targeting imprisoned national leaders as part of its ongoing campaign of extermination against Palestinian political prisoners - a direct extension of the continuing genocide against the Palestinian people.

Al-Zighari added that, since the beginning of the genocide, Barghouti, along with a number of imprisoned national leaders, has been subjected to a systematic campaign of torture, abuse, solitary confinement, and repeated assaults in an organized effort to physically and psychologically exterminate them. The same policy affects thousands of male and female prisoners, including children, women, the elderly, the sick, and the wounded, within a prison system that has become an open arena for torture, slow killing, and organized crimes.

Al-Zighari stressed that what Barghouti is experiencing is not an isolated incident but rather a new chapter in a deliberate assassination policy carried out by the Israeli occupation’s prison system against leaders of the Palestinian prisoners' movement. This has been enabled by international silence and by the political protection provided to Israel by international powers, despite documentation by human rights organizations of dozens of crimes and violations that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He further stated that Israel is attempting, as it did in the Gaza Strip, to normalize scenes of torture, humiliation, and killing inside prisons so that its daily actions against prisoners become routine and no longer provoke serious international action. However, the growing global popular and human rights mobilization, along with expanding solidarity campaigns for Marwan Barghouti and Palestinian prisoners, demonstrates that Israel's narrative is weakening in the face of increasing international awareness of its crimes. This, in turn, is driving the occupation toward greater brutality and retaliation, relying on terror, violence, and extermination as its primary tools to silence those calling for freedom and justice.

Al-Zighari emphasized that the treatment of Palestinian prisoners cannot be separated from the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. Israeli occupation prisons have become sites of extermination where torture, starvation, medical neglect, sexual assaults, and killings are carried out beyond effective international oversight and in blatant violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions.

The Palestinian Prisoner's Society, together with human rights and national institutions, will continue pursuing legal and advocacy efforts regarding Israeli occupation crimes and will intensify international efforts to isolate its colonial system and hold its leaders accountable. He called on people and civil society around the world to expand pressure and accountability efforts, and statements of condemnation alone are insufficient. He urged meaningful action to impose sanctions on Israel and end its longstanding impunity, which he said has enabled the commission of genocide against the Palestinian people and the continuation of abuses against Palestinian prisoners without deterrence.