On August 3, prisoners’ rights organizations and Palestinians around the world stand in solidarity with Gaza and Palestinian prisoners. This day is dedicated to highlighting Israel’s crimes and violations of the rights of Palestinian prisoners, as well as the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The machine of brutality that secretly punishes and tortures in Israeli prisons must be exposed.
Since October 7, Palestinian detainees have been subjected to atrocious crimes. Shortly after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced that Israel was cutting off food, water, electricity and fuel to Gaza, effectively announcing the start of genocide, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir launched his own war against Palestinian political prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons and camps, declaring a policy of “overcrowding.”
Since then, the Israeli military and security services have launched mass arrest campaigns, which have increased the number of Palestinian citizens of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to 9,800. At least 335 women and 680 children have been arrested. More than 3,400 people have been placed in administrative detention, which is held indefinitely without charge. Among them are 22 women and 40 children. The number of administrative detainees is the highest since 1967.
Israel has also arrested an unknown number of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which we estimate may exceed thousands. They are being held under the 2002 Detention of Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows the Israeli military to arrest people without issuing a detention order.
Under Ben-Gvir’s watch, the already poor conditions in Israeli prisons have worsened. Prison authorities have drastically cut food and water rations, closing small shops where Palestinian prisoners could buy food and other necessities. They have also cut off water and electricity, and even reduced the amount of time allowed to use the toilet. Prisoners are not allowed to shower, which has led to the spread of diseases, including skin diseases such as scabies. There have been reports that Palestinian prisoners have been denied medical care.
The systematic malnutrition and dehydration suffered by Palestinian prisoners has taken its toll. The few prisoners who are released leave the detention centers in a terrible physical state. Even the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that this use of food as a weapon is “unacceptable.”
The use of torture, including rape and beatings, has become commonplace. There have been shocking reports of prison guards urinating on detainees, torturing them with electric shocks, and using dogs to sexually assault them. There are even accounts of Israeli forces using detainees as human shields during the fighting in Gaza.
The systematic use of torture and other ill-treatment has predictably led to extrajudicial executions. According to a recent report by the Hebrew daily Haaretz, 48 Palestinians have died in detention centers. Among them is Thaer Abu Asab, who was brutally beaten by Israeli guards in Ketziot prison and died of his injuries at the age of 38.
According to Haaretz, 36 Gaza detainees also died in the Sde Teiman camp. Testimonies from Israeli medical staff working in the detention center have revealed the horrific conditions in which Palestinians are held. Detainees are reportedly often operated on without anesthesia, and some have had limbs amputated because they were chained even when sleeping or receiving treatment.
The freed Palestinians said what they had suffered was more horrific than what they had heard in the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo detention centers, where U.S. forces tortured and forcibly disappeared Arabs and other Muslims. They also testified that some detainees had been killed by torture and severe beatings. A Bethlehem prisoner, Moazaz Obaiat, released in July, said Ben-Gvir had personally participated in the torture he suffered.
The Israeli authorities have denied the prisoners access to their lawyers, families and even doctors, including from the International Committee of the Red Cross. They have committed acts of collective punishment, destroying their family homes, arresting their relatives and holding them hostage, and illegally transferring some of them to secret detention camps and military bases without revealing their fate, which constitutes the crime of enforced disappearance.
Despite condemnation from various human rights organizations, Ben-Gvir and the rest of the Israeli government coalition have redoubled their efforts to implement these measures. “(The prisoners) must be shot in the head and the bill on the execution of Palestinian prisoners must pass the third reading in the Knesset (…) In the meantime, we will give them the minimum food to survive. I don’t care,” Ben-Gvir said on July 1.
Through the use of mass detention, Israel, the occupying power, has systematically destroyed the Palestinian social, economic and psychological fabric since 1967. More than a million Palestinians have been arrested since then, thousands have been held hostage for long periods in administrative detention and 255 detainees have died in Israeli prisons.
Israeli crimes against Palestinians did not begin in October 2023, but are part of a systematic process of ethnic cleansing, forced displacement and apartheid that began even before 1948.
But the Israeli colonial regime ignores the resilience of the Palestinian people. Inspired by the experience of the free nations of Ireland, South Africa and Vietnam, we draw strength from our determination to win our right to self-determination, freedom and independence.
Therefore, on this 3rd of August, we urge the world to collectively protest the crimes of the Israeli occupation and racist laws, and we call on governments to uphold their legal obligations to prevent such crimes from happening. We also call on trade unions, universities, parliaments and political parties to effectively participate in large-scale events, protests and digital campaigns in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners.
The international community should hold the occupying power to account by imposing a comprehensive arms embargo, implementing economic sanctions and suspending its membership in the UN.
They must also cancel bilateral agreements and end Israel’s participation in international forums and events until it complies with international law and human rights. The international community must compel Israel to protect civilians in accordance with its obligations as an occupying power.
Israel must also reveal the identities and circumstances of those it has forcibly disappeared. We demand an end to arbitrary and administrative detention policies. The bodies of those who died inside and outside prisons must also be released, and all prisoners must be granted legal protection.
Israel, the occupying power, has an obligation to allow special rapporteurs, United Nations experts and the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to visit Palestine, inspect prisons and deliver justice to victims, including by paying them material and moral compensation.
Israel must not be allowed to commit these horrific crimes.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.