Palestinians demonstrate at a weekly sit-in in Gaza City calling for the release of their relatives from Israeli jails. (Hatem Omar, Maan Images)

Last November, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert extended an "olive branch" for peace. One of his central offers was to release a number of the roughly 9,200 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom have been held for 25 years, in exchange for one Israeli soldier captured by Palestinians near Gaza last June. Olmert declared that the onus is on the Palestinians to meet his peace offering in kind. Palestinians yearn for a genuine peace. Our representatives, including Hamas officials, have repeatedly offered Israel peace in exchange for the right to live free on what remains of our land. This land shrinks daily as Israel expands Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and pens Palestinians into what are becoming open-air prisons surrounded by a concrete wall.

Today, I am technically "free" in one of these open-air prisons, but for 12 years, I was incarcerated in actual Israeli jails. My "crime" was being a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was then the sole political representative of the Palestinian people, and practicing my right to resist foreign occupation. I was imprisoned for my beliefs -- specifically, for the belief that the Palestinian people deserve to live in freedom in our own country.

My experience was hardly unique. Since Israel first occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, more than 600,000 Palestinians have spent time in Israeli jails. Some of them, like me, were "guilty" of expressing their political beliefs. The vast majority, however, were never put on trial or convicted of any crime - they were simply guilty of being Palestinian. According to Israel's own court records, of the more than 9,200 Palestinian men and women currently imprisoned, fewer than 1,800 have been tried and convicted. The rest have been arbitrarily arrested and detained, often denied legal counsel, and routinely tortured. Their families are rarely allowed to visit, and frequently do not know where they are being held. Despite dozens of investigations and harsh criticism by Amnesty International and even Israeli human rights groups, Israel's government continues to deny imprisoned Palestinians many legal and human rights.

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For decades, ordinary Palestinians have lived with the anxiety that on any day, they or their loved ones may be rounded up, blindfolded, handcuffed, and whisked away for months or years. It is a nightmare that I experienced first hand. And no Palestinian is immune: today 380 Palestinian prisoners are under the age of 18, and some are as young as 13. Few if any of these children have been charged with a crime. They are regularly housed with the adult prison population in appalling conditions and subject to physical and psychological torture. In one instance documented by Defense for Children International, eleven Palestinian children were crammed into a cell only 5 square meters in size. Denied information by Israeli authorities, the children's parents are left to worry about their fate and to despair over whether they ever will return home.

Most imprisoned Palestinians are, like me, supporters of a peaceful resolution to our conflict with Israel. In fact, it was a group of Palestinian prisoners who negotiated the "Prisoners' Document" last June, a comprehensive proposal for a peaceful two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel immediately dismissed this expression of peace - perhaps they were embarrassed by the revelation that they had imprisoned the very people they should have been negotiating with.

The plight of Palestinian prisoners is one of the most emotionally powerful issues in Palestinian society. Prisoners are in effect a metaphor for all Palestinians. The injustice of their imprisonment mirrors the injustice of our nation's occupation by Israel; the abuse and torture that they suffer reflects the brutality of our daily lives under occupation; and their denied freedom reminds us of our own longing to be free people in our homeland. The reality is that all Palestinians live in a de facto Israeli prison, in which we are subject to apartheid-like laws that severely restrain literally every aspect of our lives. Where we are allowed to live, study, work or travel is limited because we are not Jewish, but we find ourselves ruled by the Jewish state. And we will continue to be imprisoned until we have a sovereign, independent country of our own.

Sufian Abu Zaida is former Minister of Prisoner Affairs for the Palestinian Authority.