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As Palestinian prisoners were being released last week, Israel imposed a ban on celebrations by their family members. “Expressions of joy”, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said, “are equivalent to backing terrorism”.

Israel has presented imprisoned Palestinians as “terrorists” and has subjected many of the detainees to abuse.

But of the 300 Palestinian women and children whom Israel has identified for potential release as part of the humanitarian pause between Israel and Hamas, nearly 80 percent were not even formally charged.

An overwhelming majority of Palestinian prisoners were arrested under a quasi-judicial process known as administrative detention, under which Palestinians are initially jailed for six months. Their detentions can then be repeatedly extended for an indefinite period without charge or trial.

Most Palestinians, including children, are tried in military courts and handed lengthy sentences in what critics call sham military trials because in many cases Palestinians are deprived of defence lawyers and due process. In comparison, Israeli citizens are tried in civil courts, highlighting the two-tier justice system that discriminates against Palestinians.

Here’s a look at the treatment of Palestinian prisoners, how Israel has weaponised administrative detention and why many Palestinians are forced to go through Israeli military courts.

Who is on the list?

The vast majority of the Palestinians – 233 prisoners out of the 300 – on Israel’s release list have not been formally charged and were held as administrative detainees. An overwhelming majority of them are children. The youngest is 14.

Almost three-quarters of them are from the occupied West Bank, which has seen a surge of arrests since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza on October 7. The West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem had already seen a spike in Israeli raids this year even before the war.

The longest serving prisoner among the 300 has been held for 102 months, or eight-and-a-half years. The most recent prisoner was arrested two months ago.

Nearly half of the prisoners have no affiliation with any Palestinian political or armed group. Others are believed to be affiliated with Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

What are the effects of administrative detention?

Prisoners may be held under administrative detention indefinitely. During that time, which could span years, the prisoners, their families and their lawyers may remain in the dark as to what the prisoner has been charged with and what evidence there is against them.

Israel has arrested an estimated one million Palestinians since occupying East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1967, according to a United Nations report released last year. A considerable number of them are believed to be administrative detainees.

Israel has ramped up arrests since the October 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel, doubling the number of Palestinians in custody to more than 10,000 b efore releasing some of them. Hamas fighters killed at least 1,200 people during their attack. Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed nearly 15,000 people, most of them women and children.

How does the Israeli military judicial system work in the occupied territories?

The Oslo Accords of the 1990s led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), but a semi-government run by Palestinian has not ended the Israeli military judicial system. Israel still directly controls a majority of the West Bank and has allowed construction of illegal settlements on Palestinian lands.

The PA has faced criticism for its security coordination with Israel, under which it is obliged to share information regarding armed Palestinian groups. It has a penal code and a judiciary, but the three million Palestinians in the occupied territories could easily fall under the jurisdiction of Israel’s military courts if they are accused of endangering Israeli security. That could include any activity tied to the hundreds of Palestinian organisations that Israel has deemed illegal over the decades.

When charges are filed, they regularly include “terrorist” activities, which could include acts against Israeli soldiers or settlers, and “incitement”, which includes influencing public opinion. Traffic violations or being in Israel illegally for work also bring Palestinians into the military judicial system, which has a conviction rate of 99 percent.

In contrast to Palestinians, Israeli settlers arrested in the West Bank are tried in civilian courts inside Israel. This practice has in effect created two legal systems, which human rights groups have called discriminatory and a form of “apartheid”.

How are Palestinians treated in prison?

Some of the Palestinian prisoners who have been released as part of the truce have said they were beaten and humiliated by Israeli soldiers before being freed.

Beatings grew more intense and frequent after the start of the war, but testimonies of prisoners over the decades have pointed to a longstanding pattern of beatings, torture and abuse of prisoners.

Since the start of the war, rights groups have reported that the Israeli Prison Service has also considerably restricted water, food, medical care and communal items for prisoners and has restricted or altogether halted family and lawyer visits.

This means that Palestinian prisoners have effectively lost some of the limited privileges that they had earned through years of campaigning and hunger strikes in prisons that are now severely overcrowded as well.

How does Israel treat its child inmates?

Hundreds of children, some as young as nine years old, have been detained by Israeli forces in what many have said represents a violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children fare no better than adults in Israeli prisons, and an array of abuses against them has been documented.

The rights group Save the Children said in a report in July that 86 percent of children are beaten in Israeli detention, 69 percent are strip-searched and 42 percent are injured during their arrests. They have suffered gunshot wounds and broken bones among other injuries.

Some children have reported violence of a sexual nature, and some are transferred to court or between detention centres in small cages, the London-based child rights organisation said.

Palestinian children are “the only children in the world who are systematically prosecuted in military courts” and an estimated 10,000 have been held in the Israeli military detention system over the past 20 years, according to the group.

The VAR official involved in the decision to award a penalty to Paris St Germain against Newcastle for a controversial handball has been stood down from his game on Wednesday.

Tomasz Kwiatkowski asked referee Szymon Marciniak to go to the screen after he reviewed a potential handball by Newcastle defender Tino Livramento during Tuesday night’s match.

The referee did not give the penalty on-field, but reversed the decision after looking at the incident on the screen.

Kwiatkowski was due to be the VAR official in Wednesday’s Champions League game between Real Sociedad and Salzburg but has now been replaced, Sky Sports News reported.

Newcastle looked to be heading for a famous 1-0 win in Paris until the penalty was awarded against Livramento, allowing Kylian Mbappe to level in the eighth and final minute of added time.

Speaking on Sky’s Soccer Special, former Spurs manager Tim Sherwood labelled the decision “disgusting”, while Newcastle boss Eddie Howe said referee Marciniak should have been stronger to disregard Kwiatkowski’s advice.

Howe said the referee had been placed under “extreme” pressure by the PSG players, and later labelled the decision “poor”.

Had Newcastle won, they would have had their Champions League destiny in their own hands.

Instead, they must now beat AC Milan in their final group game and hope Dortmund get at least a point against PSG to progress to the knockout stages.

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IFAB, who set out the laws of world football, have laid out guidelines on what does and doesn’t constitute a handball offence – though leagues also have their own individual interpretations.

More generally, for the purposes of determining handball offences, the upper boundary of the arm is in line with the bottom of the armpit. Not every touch of a player’s hand/arm with the ball is an offence.

It is an offence if a player:
• deliberately touches the ball with their hand/arm, for example moving the hand/arm towards the ball
• touches the ball with their hand/arm when it has made their body unnaturally bigger. A player is considered to have made their body unnaturally bigger when the position of their hand/arm is not a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player’s body movement for that specific situation. By having their hand/arm in such a position, the player takes a risk of their hand/arm being hit by the ball and being penalised
• scores in the opponents’ goal: Directly from their hand/arm, even if accidental, including by the goalkeeper or immediately after the ball has touched their hand/arm, even if accidental

Khan Younis, Gaza Strip – Ahmed Isleem wishes he were dead.

The 35-year-old’s wife and daughter were killed along with 10 other family members and neighbours in an Israeli attack on their home. He lies on a bed in the European Gaza Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, surrounded by sounds of other patients moaning and crying out in pain.

Isleem was pulled out from under the rubble of his home last month.

“I cannot believe that I am still alive,” he says. “Getting out from under the rubble was very difficult. I wished I had been martyred with my family instead of the suffering and pain I am experiencing now.”

Isleem suffered multiple shrapnel injuries on different parts of his body including his abdomen, and underwent surgery on his digestive system and another operation to insert platinum in his foot after it was broken.

“There is no safety, no treatment, nothing,” he says. “I cannot bear my pain and the screams of the other injured people around me as well.”

Due to the lack of fuel and medical supplies and the Israeli targeting of hospitals, the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip has all but collapsed. And as hospitals in northern Gaza and Gaza City have been rendered out of service, the burden on the few functional hospitals in the central and southern parts of the enclave has increased.

The European Gaza Hospital receives dozens of Palestinians killed and wounded on a daily basis, some of them referrals from other overwhelmed hospitals. It is also a place of shelter for displaced people, despite the lack of provisions.

Khawla Abu Daqqa, 40, is from the eastern Khan Younis area, near the Israeli fence which has been targeted frequently by bombings and artillery shelling. She fled with her five children to the hospital, saying she had no choice.

“Where do we go? We have no shelter,” she says. “Everything is difficult here, from finding food, water and even sleep. I wish I could sleep at least five hours a day. I cannot sleep or rest. I hope this war will stop for everyone.”

‘Extreme fatigue’

In a conversation with Al Jazeera, the director of the European Gaza Hospital, Dr Youssef al-Aqqad, says that displaced people – who come from all over the Gaza Strip – are having to find space wherever they can in the hospital: at the doors of patient rooms, in the corridors, on the stairs, and in the hospital garden.

“These displaced people need services, including food, water and electricity,” he says. “We also feel very concerned about the Israeli army targeting hospitals. This is an abnormal and terrifying thing for patients and displaced people as well.”

Al-Aqqad says dozens of wounded people arrive on a daily basis from the cities of Rafah and Khan Younis.

As a result, the number of infections is on the rise and has exceeded the capacity that the hospital can handle. Al-Aqqad says a field hospital has been set up in the Ras Naqoura School, which is adjacent to the hospital’s eastern wing and where patients with moderate or minor infections are treated.

“This is not an easy matter, but rather very complicated because the schools are not equipped and suitable to receive infected people and there is no medical equipment and devices there,” he says. “Furthermore, our medical staff is already stretched thin and have to follow up here and there, which had led to extreme fatigue.”

The hospital has 450 wounded patients. Some of them, he says, require multiple specialist doctors — such as a neurosurgeon, a vascular doctor, an orthopaedic doctor for broken bones, and another expert for burns.

The medical staff are exhausted from the non-stop work, and the volunteers who assist them have little to no experience.

“We need specialised doctors to work in intensive care rooms, operations and delicate surgical specialities,” al-Aqqad says. “We have reached a difficult stage in health services, and we feel that we are giving beyond our strength and ability to save the injured and try to treat them.”

‘Experiencing the worst of it all’

At least 26 out of the 35 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are not functioning due to the lack of fuel and attacks by the Israeli army.

In the northern Gaza Strip, the Indonesian Hospital has been bombed repeatedly by the Israeli army, which also ordered the evacuation of doctors and the wounded. This forced the Ministry of Health in Gaza to distribute the injured to hospitals in the central and southern Gaza Strip, including the European Gaza Hospital.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital is also under great pressure, after exceeding its capacity to receive people wounded in the Israeli attacks on towns and refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip, including Deir el-Balah, Nuseirat and Bureij.

Al-Aqqad urges international health and human rights organisations to intervene to stop “this hideous war” on Gaza.

“I have never seen in my life hospitals that are besieged and bombed out of service and forced to discharge patients to leave their hospital beds before completing their recovery process,” he says. “What we are experiencing is the worst of all. Save what remains of the people of Gaza.”

After the war on Gaza, US President Joe Biden says he wants to “reinvigorate” the attempts to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

But the devil is in the details. After the Hamas attack on Israel, and Israel’s scorched-earth war on Gaza, will either side want to talk about peace and stability? Are Israelis willing to make the compromises that Palestinians would find acceptable, and vice versa?

Mara Rudman worked as a Middle East envoy in the Clinton and Obama administrations. She tells host Steve Clemons that US national security interests will force Washington to impose a resolution.