In a report released by B’tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, in August entitled Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps, testimonies collected from 55 Palestinian prisoners from Gaza revealed the scope of violence at Israeli war-time detention centers.

Most of the detainees eventually released were never charged with a crime. 

They described sleeping on the floor in cramped cages, packed into cells at double their occupancy, deprived of sleep as loud music blasted through speakers all night. Prisoners also recounted what they called “humiliation rampages,” in which, during tours of the base to outside visitors, guests could partake in spitting, mocking, and cursing at detainees. Over 60 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli custody since the start of the war, many of their circumstances pointing to torture and medical negligence amounting to war crimes. After a detainee from Sde Teiman, one of the military camps-cum-detention facilities in the Negev desert, turned up at a civilian field hospital with “a ruptured intestine, severe injury to the anus and lungs, and broken ribs“, ten Israeli soldiers were taken into custody for the sexual abuse. The incident was corroborated by leaked security footage later released by Israel’s Channel 12 news. 

Soon after, a group of Israeli far-right nationalists stormed the gates of Sde Teiman and clashed with Israeli army police in protest against an investigation into the ten Israeli soldiers. Some of the agitators included far-right Knesset members who joined in chanting “shame” while waving Israeli flags. The previously shadowy base, converted into a holding facility for Palestinian prisoners following October 7, garnered headlines in May when whistleblowers who worked at the site corroborated Palestinian detainee testimonies exposing the rampant torture at the facility to CNN. 

In one of the accounts from a whistleblowing medic who worked at the base, a detainee had a limb forcibly amputated after zip-tie injuries to his wrists were left untreated. The whistleblower also detailed disturbing conditions at the center’s medical unit: Guards forced prisoners to lie naked in diapers, blindfolded and handcuffed to beds, feeding them only through straws, while doctors performed surgeries without anesthesia. In January an investigation by the left-wing Israeli news publication +972 into the mass detentions of Palestinians from Gaza revealed accounts from four men—none of whom had any affiliation with Hamas—who recounted the torture they endured while in Israeli custody. They described daily beatings, being forced to stay in stress positions for hours, electric shocks, being burned with lit cigarettes, starved, deprived of sleep and access to a bathroom, and regularly cursed at, mocked, and spit on. While a September ruling in the Israeli High Court on the constitutionality of Sde Teiman brought by several civil society organizations found that the camp did violate Israeli law, instead of ordering it closed, justices urged the government to bring the detention facility’s operations into compliance. Earlier, far-right Israeli protestors had gathered outside the court in an attempt to block the start of hearings. 

While the case does represent a dismally rare instance of an Israeli criminal investigation into the abuse of Palestinian detainees, recent protests also shed light on a broad swath of the Jewish Israeli public prepared to justify and defend the brutal dehumanization of Palestinians in what human rights groups have been decrying for decades as policies of collective punishment and systemic torture in violation of international law. On July 30, Israeli Knesset member Hanoch Milwidsky in response to a question regarding graphic details of the soldiers’ alleged gang rape of a Palestinian detainee, said: “If he is Nukhba (the Hebrew word for a special forces unit part of the Al-Qassam Brigades) everything is legitimate.” 

Israeli lawmakers continue to use the events of October 7 to capitalize on public anger to justify more arbitrary mass arrests and the brutalization of Palestinians for the sake of public security—harkening back to a time when torture methods were first legitimized in Israeli law under the guise of addressing threats to “national security”. As Israel’s 14-month siege of Gaza continues unabated, testimonies from victims and eyewitnesses, along with horrific photo evidence of torture in Israeli custody, are likely to continue to surface.

Inhumane Prison Conditions 

Since October 7, Israel has intensified widespread arrest campaigns across the occupied territories in what the government classifies as “counter-terrorism operations. According to the latest data from Addameer, a Palestinian prisoner support and human rights organization, 9,900 Palestinian prisoners are currently being held in Israeli prisons, up from 5,192 at the start of the war. Thousands of these prisoners, many of whom are women and children, are also being held in administrative detention, an indefinite imprisonment practice used by Israel in which detainees are not able to access a lawyer or be tried in court. In the occupied territories, civilians, including minors, are tried in military court, which has a conviction rate of over 99 percent—a ratio that also contributed to the recent International Court of Justice ruling that determined Israel’s occupation as illegal. 

At the start of the war, Israel rushed to convert multiple Israeli military bases into detention camps using empty hangers to hold a surge of prisoners from Gaza. Israel considers these camps legal under the jurisdiction of the Unlawful Combatants Law—legislation passed in the Knesset last December that allows for the detention of people for up to 45 days without an arrest warrant. Israeli military commanders at Sde Teiman defended the administrative detention of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza to New York Times reporters in a recent investigation, stating that it is necessary to deny detainees access to lawyers “to prevent Hamas fighters from conveying messages to their leaders in Gaza, hindering Israel’s war effort.” In the days following October 7, thousands of Palestinians from Gaza who cross the border daily to work in Israel had their permits revoked and were also detained, nearly doubling the prison population in just two weeks. Israel is believed to have forcibly disappeared thousands of these laborers and has repeatedly refused to disclose information on the prisoners. Additionally, Israel expelled over 6,000 other permit holders to the West Bank where they are now living in housing sites administered by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

As Israeli military raids on West Bank cities intensified, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March called on the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) and other leading security figures to prepare for an influx of detainees. The response by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, whose office oversees IPS operations, has been to make conditions for Palestinians in Israeli custody even more inhumane as part of his declared plight to “reduce their rights to the minimum required by law”. Ben Gvir has boasted about implementing policies to reduce their food portions, cut showers, cancel family visits, and deny financial deposits. These restrictions are in addition to IPS’s already severe lockdown—which went into effect shortly after the start of the war—which further forced Palestinian prisoners into complete isolation. Testimonies from prisoners detained before October 7 described a palpable change in the already hostile, brutal nature of their Israeli jailers following the Hamas attacks.

Since the start of the war, photo evidence has continued to emerge to reveal numerous incidents of Israeli forces standing over groups of kneeling, blindfolded, bound men, including boys as young as 15, stripped down to their underwear. Israel has defended these actions as part of military efforts to identify Hamas militants. Palestinian doctors and medical workers have also been targeted and rounded up in Gaza as part of these efforts: Israel is currently holding more than 300 medical personnel in custody, most of whose exact location and reason for their arrest are unknown. The head of Al-Shifa Hospital, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, who was detained and later released in early July after seven months in an Israeli prison, recounted to reporters the torture he and his colleagues endured while in Israeli custody, including near-daily beatings and severe lack of food and water. It was also reported in April that Al-Shifa’s head of orthopedics, Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, died while detained at Israel’s Ofer prison. Israel hasn’t disclosed any details about the cause of Al-Bursh’s death or any evidence as to why he was incarcerated for “national security reasons”, stating only that his death is allegedly under investigation. Israel has also repeatedly defended airstrikes on hospitals in Gaza, often claiming that they function as Hamas command centers. 

The Legalization of Torture in Israeli Law

In testimony given to B’tselem, a 41-year-old formerly incarcerated prisoner spoke about his 22 years in Israeli custody up until his release in February 2024. “This is the worst time in the history of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The prisoners have no rights. They’ve been stripped of everything and left completely vulnerable and isolated. Even our family visits have been abolished since the beginning of the war. Our isolation was complete,” said Sami Khalili.

While testimonies like Khalili’s point to a spike in the severity of Israel’s brutal tactics of interrogation and a worsening of prison conditions since the start of the war, the use of policies amounting to torture against Palestinian detainees has been well documented since the beginning of the first intifada in 1987. Carceral violence and indefinite prison sentences have become part and parcel of Israel’s violent military occupation as a way to oppress Palestinian social, political, and cultural life. The nature of such violent tactics starts at the time of arrest. Haunting images and videos depict children appearing no older than 14—terror, tears, and confusion in their eyes—towed along by heavily armed Israeli soldiers, often for the crime of throwing rocks during a protest. 

During the siege of the northern West Bank cities of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nablus since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces and Jewish settlers have killed over 615 Palestinians, 140 of whom are children. In August, Israeli airstrikes killed 12, including one child. As the Palestinian Authority (PA) is mainly absent and often seen as working in coordination with the Israeli military-security apparatus in the West Bank, violent Israeli raids have galvanized support for various armed Palestinian resistance groups in these areas to fill the gap and serve as community defense lines. 

In Israel and East Jerusalem, Israeli authorities have arrested Palestinian residents for social media posts expressing support for an end to the war and the blockade of Gaza. Following October 7, State Prosecutor Amit Eisman introduced legislation permitting police to investigate suspected incitement of terrorism without requiring prosecutorial approval. The Knesset further expanded on this law, criminalizing the mere consumption of certain media. This amendment has led to the arrest of over 400, including numerous students and peace activists, charged with “inciting terrorism”. Of those detained, 190 are currently being held in administrative detention serving sentences in maximum security prisons. 

The recent surge in arrests has brought to light what human rights groups have been describing for decades as Israel’s “systemic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners”. In 1987, the Landaeu committee was established to evaluate the practices of the General Security Services (GSS), known today as the Shin Bet or Shabak, after Palestinian detainees brought forward an overwhelming amount of incidents of torture. The Committee had concluded that the use of force and specific measures of physical pressure were allowed in circumstances where acquiring certain information from an interrogation was vital to national security. This emboldening measure served as a conduit for torture methods so routinely used with impunity by Israeli forces over the years that they have seeped into Palestinians’ modern-day vernacular. For example, “the banana position” is often used in Israeli interrogations to force a detainee to remain bent with their back over a chair, their hands and legs tied to each other underneath. None of the hundreds of complaints lodged by lawyers representing Palestinian victims of torture while in Israeli custody have so far resulted in a criminal prosecution. In recent months, Israeli soldiers have even posted evidence of their cruel treatment of prisoners on social media, smiling and posing with Palestinian men who appear blindfolded, handcuffed, and some stripped of their clothes. Soldiers cloak prisoners with the Israeli flag and force them to sing the Israeli national anthem and curse their female relatives. 

Sexual violence is particularly prevalent in many Palestinian prisoner’s accounts of the abuse they endured while in Israeli custody. A New York Times investigation into Sde Teiman revealed the testimonies of recently released detainees who alleged soldiers tortured them with sodomy. Palestinian women and girls in Israeli custody are also frequently subjected to sexual assault and threatened with rape. In two recent cases, female detainees stated that they were stripped, raped, and photographed in degrading situations by Israeli officers. Female prisoners also describe deprivation of feminine hygiene products, food, and medicine.

These reports point to a broader collective desensitization of the Israeli public to violence against Palestinians, a reality reaffirmed by the ongoing siege on Gaza that has so far killed over 43,000. Hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and aid distribution sites are bombed under the same vague lines repeatedly parroted by Israeli military officials, often without evidence, that these sites also operate as “Hamas command centers”. While public opinion on the war has faltered in Israel over the past few months with focus on the return of roughly 115 Israeli hostages still believed to be held in Gaza, a May poll found that over half of those who identify on the political right say the military response in Gaza has been insufficient.

Prisoner Rights in Ceasefire Negotiations

Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners contravenes the Fourth Geneva Convention on “civilians in areas of armed conflict and occupied territories,” which stipulates that they “are to be protected from murder, torture or brutality, and from discrimination based on race, nationality, religion or political opinion”. Accounts from Palestinian prisoners also reveal Israel’s contradiction to multiple United Nations resolutions that protect prisoners and prisoners of war from the denial of fundamental rights. These include the Mandela Rules, which set standards for the treatment of prisoners, and The Body of Principles for the Protection of the Persons Under any Form of Detention or Imprisonment which forbids the use of torture under any circumstances. Israel’s “necessity interrogation” protocols, backed by the 1987 Landau Committee, have effectively undermined the Convention Against Torture, which Israel ratified in 1991 but failed to integrate into its legal framework fully. According to calls from human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the international community must urgently address these human rights violations by pushing for the inclusion of Palestinian prisoner rights in global judicial discussions at the International Court of Justice. 

This discourse also includes calling for the release of unlawfully detained individuals, an end to the practice of administrative detention, and UN access to conduct independent investigations in Sde Teiman, Anatot, and Ofer prisons. Additionally, the international community is being urged to push for the critical classification of Palestinian prisoners from Gaza as Prisoners of War (POWs), in addition to their inclusion in any future hostage-prisoner exchange deals, securing their rights under international law. 

Furthermore, there are demands that ICC prosecutor Karim Khan issue arrest warrants for Ben Gvir and Israeli Military Chief Commander Rav Aluf Herzi Halevi for crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute, adding to existing warrants for Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.