‘WELCOME to Hell,’ is the title of a new report by Israeli rights group B’Tselem: ‘The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps, August 2024.’
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.
B’Tselem says: ‘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…
A clear indicator of the severity of the situation and the moral degradation of the Israeli prison system can be seen in the number of Palestinian prisoners who have died in Israeli custody – no less than 60. The report includes testimonies given to B’Tselem regarding three of these deaths.
Thaer Abu Asab, a 38-year-old from Qalqiliyah held in the Negev (Ketziot) Prison, was found dead in his cell on 18 November 2023. On his body were severe signs of violence. Arafat Hamdan, a 24-year old diabetic from Beit Beit Sira who relied on insulin treatments, was found dead in his cell on 24 October 2023, two days after his arrest. The testimonies reveal he was denied proper medical treatment.
Muhammad a-Sabbar, a 20-year-old from the town of a-Dhahiriyah who had an intestinal disease requiring a special diet, died at Ofer Prison on 8 February, according to testimonies due to lack of proper nutrition, poor medical care and brazen disregard for his condition.
The testimonies given to B’Tselem reveal the following prevalent, consistent and widespread conditions.
Overpopulation and crowding in cells: The testimonies indicate that cell occupancy more than doubled. Cells intended for six prisoners held 12 to 14 prisoners at a time, with ‘excess’ inmates forced to sleep on the floor, sometimes with no mattress or blanket.
No sunlight and no air to breathe: Some prisoners found themselves locked in their cells throughout the entire day; others were allowed out for an hour once every few days in order to shower. Some never saw daylight during their time in prison.
Violent roll calls, increased frequency: According to the testimonies, roll calls and/or cell searches occur three to five times a day. In most cases, inmates were forced to crowd together, facing the wall, with their heads bowed down to the floor and their hands interlocked on the back of their necks, in some cases kneeling in prostration as during prayer. These practices no longer serve their original purpose, and have become an opportunity for prison guards to unleash severe violence and another tool for humiliating and degrading prisoners.
Withholding access to the courts, aid agencies and legal counsel: As the Emergency Regulations permit, the vast majority of the witnesses went days, weeks, and in some cases, months before being brought before a judge for the first time, and even then, the hearings took place remotely via Zoom. The menacing presence of the prison guards inhibited prisoners from complaining to the judges or reporting the torture they underwent.
Meetings with legal counsel were denied for increasingly long durations, reaching as much as 180 days, on the pretext of ‘dynamic needs on the ground’. Most of the witnesses interviewed for this report did not see their lawyers once during their entire incarceration. They were also prevented from meeting with representatives of the ICRC, aid and human rights organisations, the Public Defender’s Office, or other official oversight bodies.
Confiscation of personal possessions: One of the very first steps taken by prison authorities as soon as the war began was to confiscate all shared and personal property that Palestinian prisoners kept in their cells.
Unrelenting physical and psychological abuse: Institutional violence against Palestinian prisoners by prison authorities has become more frequent and more virulent since 7 October. Testimonies attest to physical, sexual, psychological and verbal violence, directed at all Palestinian prisoners and perpetrated in an arbitrary, menacing fashion, usually under a shroud of anonymity.
The scope of violence emerging from the testimonies clarifies that these are not isolated, random incidents, but rather an institutional policy integral to the treatment of prisoners.
Physical violence and intimidation: Pepper spray, stun grenades, sticks, wooden clubs and metal batons, gun butts and barrels, brass knuckles and tasers, attack dogs, beatings, punches and kicks – these are just some of the methods used to torture and abuse prisoners according to the testimonies. These assaults were described as a fixture of everyday life in prison and often led to severe injuries, loss of consciousness, broken bones, and in extreme cases even death.
Extreme violence during transfers and travel: The testimonies attest to severe violence used against prisoners during transfers: whether between prison facilities, in prison waiting areas used as way stations prior to admission into prison or travel out of it (also known as ‘transitions’), and sometimes during transitions between wings and other areas inside the prison itself.
Sleep deprivation: Sleep deprivation was an integral part of the daily abuses meted out on inmates. In some cases, the lighting in the cells is on throughout the night; in others, guards played loud music or unpleasant sounds to keep prisoners from sleeping. These are acts that sometimes amount to actual torture.
Sexual violence: Various testimonies revealed repeated use of sexual violence, in varying degrees of severity, by soldiers or prison guards against Palestinian detainees. The witnesses described blows to the genitals and other body parts of naked prisoners; the use of metal tools and batons to cause genital pain; the photographing of naked prisoners; genitals being grabbed; and strip-searches for the sake of humiliation and degradation. The testimonies also reveal cases of gang sexual violence and assault committed by a group of prison guards or soldiers.
One particularly grave testimony, quoted at length in the report, describes the attempted anal rape with a foreign object of a Palestinian detainee by several prison guards. Similar incidents were mentioned in other testimonies.
Absence and denial of medical treatment: Many witnesses said that prison guards and medical staff at the detention facilities and prisons refrained from providing essential medical care or refused to do so, even in life-threatening situations. In some cases, medics and other medical staff admitted to prisoners they had received instructions not to provide treatment and medication to inmates, even when the treatment in question was life-saving.
The denial of medical care and improper treatment of patients often led to horrific outcomes, causing long-term injuries.
Food deprivation and starvation: The reduced amounts of food provided to Palestinian prisoners and limited calorie intake are part of the new policy declared by the Minister of National Security when he first took office. The witnesses spoke about the extreme hunger they were forced to endure and the poor quality of the food, which was often undercooked or past its expiry date. The policy of starvation affected prisoners’ health and physical shape. The profound lack of food resulted in significant weight loss, sometimes amounting to tens of kilogrammes.
Hygiene and cutting off the water supply: Witnesses spoke of being forced to live in filth during their incarceration, as a result of the blanket confiscation of bathing, cleaning and washing supplies, the water supply cut off in cells, and the limited access to shower facilities that were not meant for such a large number of prisoners in the first place. In many cases, toilet tanks had running water for only one hour a day as well.
Prison cells were turned into a sanitary hazard and made unfit for human habitation. These conditions led to the development and spread of diseases and various health problems.
Keter – the Israel Prison Service Initial Reaction Force (IRF): Among the IPS’s special units, the Initial Reaction Force (IRF), known in Hebrew as Keter, which operates at the Negev (Ketziot) and Ofer prisons, featured prominently in the testimonies given to B’Tselem. Two witnesses referred to it as the ‘death squad’…
According to the witnesses, IRF personnel wear masks and black uniforms with no identification tags. They are armed with batons and firearms, and often accompanied by dogs. In one case, the unit reportedly used a stun grenade. Impossible to identify, and safe in the knowledge they would face no consequences for their actions, members of the unit employed brazen, unbridled violence that amounts to abuse and torture.
The Israeli apartheid regime’s incarceration project: For decades, Israel has used the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from all walks of life to undermine and unravel the social and political fabric that binds the Palestinian population.
According to various estimates, since 1967, Israel has imprisoned over 800,000 Palestinian men and women from the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, which accounts for about 20% of the total population and about 40% of all Palestinian men.
The scale of this incarceration project means there are hardly any Palestinian families without a member who has been through the Israeli prison system.
The project is underpinned by the same repressive logic found elsewhere in Israeli apartheid. Here, too, Palestinians are completely dehumanised and treated as a homogenous, faceless mass, stripped of any individual identity. All are deemed ‘human animals’ and ‘terrorists’ simply because they are behind bars, whether their detention was justified or arbitrary, lawful or not.
B’TSelem concludes: ‘We appeal to all nations and to all international institutions and bodies, including the International Criminal Court, to do everything in their power to put an immediate end to the cruelties meted out on Palestinians by Israel’s prison system, and to recognise the Israeli regime operating this system as an apartheid regime that must come to an end.