Violence, extreme hunger, humiliation and other abuse of Palestinian prisoners has been normalised across Israel’s jail system, according to Guardian interviews with released prisoners, with mistreatment now so systemic that rights group B’Tselem says it must be considered a policy of “institutionalised abuse”.
Former detainees described abuse ranging from severe beatings and sexual violence to starvation rations, refusal of medical care, and deprivation of basic needs including water, daylight, electricity and sanitation, including soap and sanitary pads for women.
In a months-long investigation, B’Tselem interviewed 55 former prisoners housed in 16 Israeli prison service jails and detention centres run by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), mapping the scale and nature of abuse. The highly respected Jerusalem-based group concluded that Israel’s prisons should now be labelled “torture camps”.
“When we started the project we thought we would find sporadic evidence and extreme cases here and there, but the picture that has emerged is completely different,” said Yuli Novak, the organisation’s executive director.
“We were shocked by the scale of what we heard. It is uncomfortable as an Israeli-Palestinian organisation to say Israel is running torture camps. But we realised that is what we are looking at.”
The Israel Prison Service (IPS) said it operated according to the law and under the oversight of the state comptroller. “We are not aware of the claims you described and as far as we know, no such events have occurred under IPS responsibility,” it said in a statement. The IPS also claimed that several petitions regarding jail conditions filed by human rights organisations had been rejected by the supreme court.
The IDF said it “rejects outright allegations concerning systematic abuse of detainees in detention facilities” and acts “in accordance with Israeli law and international law”. Allegations of abuse were thoroughly examined, a statement said. Conditions for detainees had significantly improved throughout the war, it added.
There have been multiple reports of arbitrary, cruel and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees since the Hamas attack of 7 October – the outside world’s only glimpses of conditions inside the jails, since Israel has denied access to lawyers, family members and Red Cross inspectors.
In late July, multiple members of parliament broke into two military bases, backed by a far-right crowd, to protest against the arrest of nine men over the violent rape of a detainee in Sde Teiman detention centre. The MP Tally Gotliv told the crowd that Israeli troops deserved total immunity, regardless of their actions.
A former barracks that became a processing centre for people seized in Gaza, there have been suggestions that suffering at Sde Teiman is a horrific and temporary exception created by the Gaza war.
Detainees’ testimony and the B’Tselem report suggest, however, that it is just one particularly violent component of an abusive system, and cases of abuse are not unsanctioned acts of violence.
Instead, it is suggested that under the direction of the far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the mistreatment has become an integral part of Israel’s detention system.
At least 60 people have died in Israeli custody since the war in Gaza broke out, compared to one or two deaths a year previously.
The Guardian carried out separate interviews with eight detainees, the majority arrested without charge and released without trial, who detailed patterns of abuse matching those documented by B’Tselem.
Field researchers in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza collected dozens of testimonies, medical reports, autopsies and other evidence.
They found consistent and widespread testimony of severe, arbitrary violence, sexual assault, humiliation and degradation, starvation, deliberately unhygienic conditions, overcrowding, denial of medical treatment, prohibitions on religious worship, and denial of legal counsel and family visits.
Several witnesses the Guardian spoke to gave details of three killings: Thaer Abu Asab and Abdul Rahman al-Maari, who were allegedly beaten to death by guards, and Mohammad al-Sabbar, who died from a chronic medical condition. Cellmates said that after 7 October he was not given medicine or the special diet he needed.
Along with the use of direct violence and restrictions on movement, Palestinians have long alleged that imprisonment is a key element of Israel’s 57-year-old occupation: various estimates suggest that up to 40% of Palestinian men have been arrested at least once in their lives.
Before 7 October, 5,200 Palestinians were held in Israeli jails, including 1,200 in administrative detention, which allows indefinite detention without charge or trial. Intense waves of arrests in the aftermath of the Hamas attack mean that prisoner numbers soared to 9,623 as of early July.
Among them, 1,402 prisoners from Gaza are classed as “unlawful combatants” under emergency legislation, which also allows detention without charge or trial. The IDF says the measure complies with international law.
Firas Hassan, a 50-year-old youth ministry worker from Bethlehem, was arrested under an administrative detention order in 2022. Conditions then were acceptable, he told the Guardian: there were hot showers, decent food, time outside in the yard, and about six prisoners to a cell, each with his own bunk.
In early 2023, Ben-Gvir was appointed the minister in charge of prisons. He immediately set about getting rid of what he called “perks” for Palestinian inmates, such as fresh bread, and limiting shower times to four minutes.
But those changes were nothing compared to what happened after 7 October, Hassan said. “There was respect before. But after 7 October I was sure I was going to die there. I lost all hope.”
Hassan described conditions common to many of the interviews. He said he and his cellmates – up to 20 people in the same cell designed for seven – were beaten, sometimes several times a day. He said one injured cellmate claimed to him through tears after a particularly brutal incident in November that guards had raped him with a baton.
With little water and no washing facilities or clean clothes, conditions quickly became extremely unsanitary. Food for the entire room consisted of a piece of meat, a cup of cheese, half a tomato and half a cucumber in the morning, and about five spoonfuls of uncooked rice per person for dinner. There was one 2-litre bottle of water for the whole room to share.
“The guards told me, we are giving you enough to keep you alive, but if it was up to us we will let you starve,” he said. On his release without charge in April, Hassan had lost 22kg in weight.
Hassan also heard the screams of 38-year-old Thaer Abu Asab, who was allegedly beaten to death in the cell next door after refusing to bow his head to guards.
Another witness, Mousa Aasi, 58, from Ramallah governorate, told the Guardian that after the beating, Asab was dragged into the courtyard in view of all the inmates. “They said he died in hospital later, but I think he was already dead,” he said.
