Newly released inmates detail cases of humiliation, torture, rape threats, and a prisoner beaten to death by Israeli forces in the weeks since October 7.
Israeli prison guards stand watch in front of a van with Palestinian convicts set to be released as part of a deal between Israel and Hamas, Ofer Prison, west of Ramallah, occupied West Bank, November 25, 2023.
Content warning: This article contains testimonies of severe abuse and threats of sexual assault.
The release of 240 Palestinian prisoners and detainees during the recent temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has shed light on the severe deterioration of conditions inside Israeli prisons since the war began. Restrictions imposed since October 7 by the Israel Prison Service, under the instruction of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, include the limiting of food provisions and recreation time; the confiscation of personal items; a prohibition on hot water, shoes, and pillows; and a ban on visits by family members and lawyers. These restrictions, however, are only the tip of the iceberg.
Testimonies gathered by +972 Magazine from Palestinians released from Israeli prisons in recent weeks — both as part of the ceasefire agreement and independently of it — paint a picture of a surge in abuse and humiliation inside prison cells, in interrogation rooms, and during arrests. According to these testimonies, Israeli forces and prison authorities have used methods of torture, threatened to rape a female detainee and her young daughter, and beaten a prisoner to death — one of six Palestinians known to have died in Israeli custody since October 7.
In the two months since declaring a state of war in the wake of the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel, Israeli forces have arrested more than 3,000 Palestinians, detaining many of them without charge. This number does not include the estimated 4,000 laborers from Gaza who were in Israel when the war broke out and were detained for weeks before being deported back to the besieged Strip.
According to the human rights NGO HaMoked, among the more that 7,600 “security” inmates that Israel is currently holding in prisons across Israel and the occupied West Bank are at least 260 Palestinians that it defines as “unlawful combatants,” including those who participated in the attacks of October 7. Members of that group, say the former inmates who spoke to +972, are being held in a designated section of Ofer Prison, west of Ramallah, and their constant screams can be heard alongside the barking of dogs. Israel is concealing the names and detention conditions of many of the detainees from Gaza and is preventing lawyers and the Red Cross from visiting them.
Palestinians gather in the occupied West Bank city of Beitunia to celebrate and welcome prisoners who released by Israel in exchange for hostages held in Gaza, November 24, 2023. (Wahaj Bani Moufleh/Activestills)
“I was in prison for many years,” Qadura Fares, the head of the Palestinian Authority’s Commission for Detainees’ Affairs, told +972. “There was never anything like this. I heard things that I cannot believe.”
According to Amjad a-Najjar from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, since October 7, the IPS has confiscated inmates’ televisions, radios, electronic devices, clothes, shoes, medications, books, and stationery. “Ben Gvir has declared war against the prisoners,” he said. “The tools of communication are batons and beatings. Death hovers over the prisons, awaiting a decision from the guards to strike any of the detainees.”
More …
