Welcome to Hell: the Israeli prison system as a network of torture camps
Ofer Prison
The Executive Summary of the B’tselem report Welcome to Hell begins:
When we got off the bus, a soldier said to us: “Welcome to hell.”
From the testimony of Fouad Hassan, 45, a father of five and resident of Qusrah in Nablus District, who was held in Megiddo Prison.
This report concerns the treatment of Palestinian prisoners and the inhuman conditions they have been subjected to in Israeli prisons since 7 October 2023. B’Tselem’s research for the report included collecting testimonies from 55 Palestinians who were incarcerated in Israeli prisons and detention
facilities during this time. Thirty of the witnesses are residents of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; 21 are residents of the Gaza Strip; and four are Israeli citizens. The testimonies were given to B’Tselem after the witnesses were released from prison, the overwhelming majority of them without being tried.
The testimonies clearly indicate a systemic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel:
Frequent acts of severe, arbitrary violence; sexual assault; humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation; forced unhygienic conditions; sleep deprivation, prohibition on, and punitive measures for, religious worship; confiscation of all communal and personal belongings; and denial of
adequate medical treatment – these descriptions appear time and again in the testimonies, in horrifying detail and with chilling similarities.
Over the years, Israel has incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in its prisons, which have always served, above all, as a tool for oppressing and controlling the Palestinian population. The stories presented in this report are the story of thousands of Palestinians, residents of the
Occupied Territories and citizens of Israel, who have been arrested since the beginning of the war, as well as Palestinians already incarcerated on 7 October who experienced the massive increase in hostility from prison authorities since that day.
In early July 2024, there were 9,623 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and detention facilities almost double the number just before the war began. Of these, 4,781 were detained without trial, without being presented with the allegations against them, and without access to the right to defend themselves, in what Israel terms “administrative detention.” Some were jailed simply for expressing sympathy for the suffering of Palestinians. Others were taken into custody during military activity in the Gaza Strip, on the sole grounds that they came under the vague definition of “men of fighting age.” Some were imprisoned over suspicions, substantiated or not, that they were operatives or supporters of Palestinian armed groups. The prisoners form a wide spectrum of people from different areas, with varying political opinions and only thing in common – being Palestinian.
The prisoners’ testimonies lay bare the outcomes of a rushed process in which more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, both military and civilian, were converted into a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates. Such spaces, in which every inmate is intentionally condemned to severe, relentless pain and suffering, operate as de-facto torture camps. The abuse consistently described in the testimonies of dozens of individuals held in different facilities was so systematic, that there is no room to doubt an organized, declared policy of the Israeli prison authorities. This policy is implemented under the direction of the Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, whose office oversees the Israel Prison Service (IPS), with the
full support of the Israeli government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.