Researcher Smadar Ben-Natan published a research article in the Social Science Research Network titled: “The One Carceral State: Mass Incarceration and Carceral Citizenship in Israel/Palestine.” This paper shows that one carceral state lies under the formal separation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and Israel. After the 1967 occupation, Israel designed two separate systems in the OPT, legal and carceral, and created a military prison system in the OPT.

This dramatically changed after the Oslo Accords’ failure and the second intifada’s breaking. The paper shows how more prisons and Palestinian prisoners have been transferred to the ‘48 occupied territories. This is done through the analysis of legal and administrative documents and statistics of the Israeli Prison Service(IPS), the military, Knesset and Supreme Court decisions. By 2006, all prisons, except for one, were physically moved to Israel and the military prison system vanished from the OPT.

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