Since the horrific Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, we have been hearing every day of more and more crimes and atrocities that would have been unthinkable in the not-too-distant past. Tens of thousands of civilians killed, entire neighborhoods obliterated, over a million people turned refugees in one fell swoop, civilians taken hostage and held as bargaining chips. In the West Bank, settler violence is surging, a massive expulsion of Palestinian communities is underway, and violence by Israeli armed forces is rampant. Countless human-made disasters that the mind cannot countenance and the heart cannot contain. Amid this tragic reality, state mechanisms are undergoing terrifying systemic changes, in a cynical exploitation of the loss, fear and vengefulness sweeping the country.
This report concerns the treatment of Palestinian prisoners and the inhuman conditions they have been subjected to in Israeli prisons since 7 October. B’Tselem collected testimonies from 55 Palestinians 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. They spoke with B’Tselem after they were released from detention, the overwhelming majority of them without being tried. Their testimonies uncover a systemic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners. This includes 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. 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 in fact as torture camps.
Over the years, Israel has incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in prisons, which have always served, above all, as a tool for oppressing and dominating 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 in prison on 7 October, who experienced the massive increase in hostility from prison authorities since that day.
Just before the war started, the overall number of Palestinians incarcerated by Israel and classified as “security prisoners” was 5,192, with about 1,319 held without trial as “administrative detainees.” In early July 2024, there were 9,623 Palestinians incarcerated in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, 4,781 of whom were detained without trial, without being presented with the allegations against them, and without access to the right to defend themselves. In the months since the war started, thousands more Palestinians have been arrested, held for varying periods of time, and released without charges.
The circumstances and pretexts for arrest varied. Among the prisoners, both male and female, are physicians, academics, lawyers, students, children and political leaders. 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 armed Palestinian organizations. The prisoners form a wide spectrum of people from different areas, with varying political opinions. The only thing they have in common is being Palestinian. These people found themselves on their way to detention, handcuffed and blindfolded, for an unknown period of time.
The reality described in the prisoners’ testimonies can only be explained as the outcome of the ongoing dehumanization of the Palestinian collective in Israeli public perception. This process, underway with varying intensity since the Nakba and the establishment of the State of Israel, has become so firmly entrenched since the war that it is now prevalent and accepted in Israeli public discourse. Calls by public figures and politicians for genocide and mass expulsion of Palestinians have become commonplace. The Israeli media reverberates and normalizes this incendiary speech, and barely reports on Palestinian victims, while a large majority of Jewish Israelis display indifference to the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in the Gaza Strip and hundreds in the West Bank. In this social climate, the abuse of Palestinian prisoners is tolerated and even welcomed.
Systemic change: an organized plan
The abuse consistently describe in the testimonies of dozens of people held in different detention facilities is so systemic, that there is no room to doubt an organized, declared policy of the Israeli prison authorities. This policy is implemented under the direction of 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. Collective abuse by dozens of guards, carried out openly for months across prison facilities, could not have occurred without support and encouragement from above. Delivering on his political credo, Minister Ben Gvir has openly steered a policy of humiliating Palestinian prisoners and trampling their basic rights underfoot from the moment he took office, long before the war, using legislative changes, political appointments and public statements designed to drive home the ministry’s new tone.
The first inklings of this shift were a series of political moves to downgrade conditions for Palestinian prisoners over the past few years. Specifically, several decisions by the Israeli government, including/and especially Minister Ben Gvir, months before the war marked a significant policy change. Among other things, Ben Gvir issued directives to limit family visits and cancel the option of early release. Some of the changes he instated clearly have no other purpose but to torment Palestinian prisoners. They include reducing the time allocated for showers, and canceling prisoners’ ability to prepare their own food and buy from the canteen.
The heinous attack by Hamas and other armed Palestinian organizations on 7 October, and the widespread targeting of civilians – about 800 of the 1,200 Israelis killed that day were civilians, and about 250 people were taken hostage, some still being held in Gaza – deeply traumatized Israeli society, evoking deep-seated fears and an instinct for revenge among many. For the government and the National Security Minister, this provided an opportunity to press harder with applying their racist ideology, using the oppressive mechanisms at their disposal. In record speed, the IPS molded itself in Minister Ben Gvir’s image. For example, the Negev (Ketziot) Prison Commander Brigadier General Yosef Knipes proudly described the conditions in which prisoners are kept at his facility: “Most of the day they are actually inside the cells, 23 out of 24 hours, except for those who are in the tents […] There are between 10 and 12 terrorists in each cell. The cells are currently crowded because we are in an emergency situation. They have a mattress and a blanket, with the minimum conditions required by law.” Knipes clarified that “as far as we are concerned, they are all terrorists. We’ve reduced the conditions to a minimum.” Koby Yaakobi, a close associate of Minister Ben Gvir appointed by him as IPS Commissioner in the height of the war, declared his intent to “revolutionize” the IPS in keeping with the minister’s policies as soon as he took office, naming the downgrading of prison conditions a top priority.
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 since the war started – no less than 60. Forty-eight of them were from the Gaza Strip. Some of these perished in the new military detention camps, and others died on their way there, likely due to extreme violence at the hands of soldiers transporting them from the Gaza Strip to Israel. B’Tselem is aware of another 12 Palestinians who died in IPS custody. In some cases, the circumstances strongly suggest abuse and deliberate withholding of medical attention.
Israel’s mass incarceration of Palestinians since 7 October, their systematic abuse, the inhuman conditions to which they are subjected, including the widespread, systematic and prolonged commission of the crime of torture, are a gross violation of multiple norms and obligations under Israeli law, international human rights law, the rules of war and international humanitarian law. Equally important, Israel’s actions have trampled basic morality underfoot, along with the most protected human rights of those held in state custody.
In the face of all this, the legal gatekeepers, such as the High Court of Justice and the State Attorney’s Office, ostensibly entrusted with upholding the rule of law and protecting human rights, have bowed their heads in submission to Ben Gvir’s agenda, allowing abuse and dehumanization to become the governing logic of the prison system.
The result is a system specializing in torture and abuse where, at any given moment, many thousands of Palestinians are held behind bars, most without trial, and all in inhuman conditions.
The Israeli apartheid regime’s incarceration project
The story of Israel’s incarceration project did not begin on 7 October, nor with Itamar Ben Gvir’s appointment as minister. Its roots run much deeper. The current situation, horrifying as it is, cannot be fully understood without examining the key role of this project in the social and political oppression of the Palestinian collective over the years.
The prison system is one of the most violent and oppressive state mechanisms that the Israeli regime uses to uphold Jewish supremacy between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Israel has incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from all walks of life over decades, as a way of undermining and unraveling the social and political fabric of the Palestinian population. The scale of the project speaks for itself: 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 cycle of suffering and the mental effects of imprisonment are not limited to the prisoners themselves. They are felt by relatives, friends, acquaintances and the entire community. It is no coincidence that Israeli prisons have become central to the Palestinian experience and national ethos. The scale of Israel’s incarceration project means there are hardly any Palestinian families without a family member who has been through the Israeli prison system: children whose parent was sent to prison; women and men who had to raise their children alone; parents whose children were taken from them, sometimes for years; families who had to spend a great deal of money, even go into debt, to pay legal fees; students whose classmates suddenly disappeared with no explanation. A host of family and social relationships is violently disrupted when a person is put behind bars.
Moreover, as Palestinians in the Occupied Territories depend on Israel for work, the fact the former inmates are denied permits to work in Israel has financial implications for families extending far beyond the actual prison time. There are other long-term effects, as prisoners often struggle to reintegrate into civilian life and pick up where they left off, whether they are teens who drop out of school or adults who have trouble resuming work and parental roles.
The upheaval families go through is exacerbated by uncertainty over the fate of their loved ones within prison walls. Over the past few months, during the war, Israel has disappeared thousands of Palestinians, mostly from Gaza, for extended periods of time. Many of them are still missing at the time of publication. This practice, of enforced disappearance, has been employed in the past, but has become prevalent in recent months. The testimonies we collected describe how prisoners seem to vanish off the face of the earth once taken into custody. Their families have no way of finding out where they are or what state of health they are in, and they certainly cannot see them as family visits have been banned in all prisons. Exposed to the harrowing accounts of released prisoners, the families live in constant uncertainty and fear for their loved ones.
The mass incarceration project plays a key role in the system of control and repression that the Israeli apartheid regime inflicts on its Palestinian subjects. The sheer scale evinces that one goal, as with many other Israeli practices towards Palestinians, is to “burn a message into Palestinians’ consciousness,” and unravel the fabric of their community. The constant threat of arrest and imprisonment, with the attendant implications, are meant to deter Palestinians from taking part in any political action or political discourse about their lives and futures under Israeli rule; they are meant to clarify that any attempt, however inconsequential, to resist Israeli repression and apartheid might be met with detention without trial, violence and even torture.
The dehumanization of Palestinian prisoners begins the moment they are arrested, as their individual identity is erased and they are treated as a homogenous, faceless mass – whether the prisoner is a veteran doctor from Gaza, a teen from East Jerusalem, a student from Haifa or a military wing operative of an armed group.
All are deemed “human animals” and “terrorists” simply because they are behind bars, whether their detention was justified or arbitrary, lawful or not. This is how abuse, degradation, and the violation of rights becomes permissible. Arbitrary and extreme violence, withholding medical care from the injured or ill, denying food and water in overcrowded cells – none of these would have been possible if the guards saw Palestinians as human.
The logic at the base of the incarceration project is the same followed by the Israeli apartheid regime elsewhere. The differentiation between Palestinian prisoners from Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, and the varying laws and practices applied to them interchangeably, demonstrate how the Israeli regime tears apart and reconstructs the Palestinian collective to fit its needs. Likewise, the arbitrary violence, unleashed without rhyme or reason, and the anxiety that the guards instill in prisoners are essentially similar to the routine violence applied against Palestinians to uphold the regime of occupation and apartheid. The guards’ systematic violation of Israel’s own laws resembles the constant violation of rules and regulations by Israeli soldiers and police officers in the Occupied Territories, or when engaging with Palestinian citizens of Israel. This also holds true for the obligations, albeit partial, that Israel has undertaken to fulfill as the occupying power, but never does in practice.
The incarceration project is one of the most extreme, violent manifestations of Israel’s system of control over Palestinians. The testimonies given to B’Tselem for this report by released prisoners depict a wide variety of tools for control and oppression. Their value goes beyond providing an account of the appalling reality inside Israeli prisons and detention centers since October 7. They are a window into a much broader reality.
Given the political function of Israel’s prison system in a reality of accelerated dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli discourse, a radically right-wing government, a weak judicial system swept up in public sentiment and a minister who takes pride in violating human rights – this system has become an instrument for the widespread, systematic and arbitrary oppression of Palestinians through torture.
The testimonies presented here tell the story of how Israel’s prison system turned into a network of torture camps.
