August 13, 2024
While the world
witnesses the atrocities and massacres committed by Israel’s military assault
on Gaza every day, the thousands of Palestinians detained by occupation forces
– before and after the events of 7 October 2023 – face torture and death behind
closed doors, alone.
Worse yet, these
detention horrors have been brazenly publicized and even bragged about by
occupation soldiers, with violent, vocalized support from wide swathes of
Israeli society.
In the shadows
of Israel’s prisons, tens of thousands of Palestinian detainees are enduring a
relentless campaign of cruelty. Reports detail harrowing accounts of beatings,
gang rape, and psychological torture, compounded by the denial of essential
needs such as food, water, and medical care.
This systematic
abuse, carried out on an industrial scale, is staggering in its scope and
savagery. Public protests have emerged – not to condemn these atrocities – but
to demand the release of Israeli soldiers implicated in acts of sexual violence
so severe that their victim tragically died from the injuries inflicted.
Secrecy and
suffering inside Israeli prisons
Ronen Bar, the
head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, issued a dire warning to Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in June, describing the situation in Israeli
prisons as a “ticking time bomb,” which may endanger senior Israelis abroad and
expose them to “international tribunals.”
Bar’s letter
revealed that over 21,000 Palestinian detainees were being held, far exceeding
official figures and the capacity of the centers.
Rather than
addressing these concerns, Israel’s extremist Security Minister, Itamar Ben
Gvir, who has barred Red Cross and humanitarian access to Palestinian
detainees, responded by boasting about his role in worsening conditions for
prisoners.
A policy paper
from the Institute for Palestine Studies highlighted the draconian measures
implemented as early as 17 October – a mere 10 days after the launch of
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. These measures included:
“Constricting living spaces; removing detainees’
beds when necessary and replacing them with mattresses on the floor, leading to
overcrowding; a policy of ‘closures’ whereby prison cells are locked, and total
isolation is imposed; closing prisons to all family visits or visits by the Red
Cross or by lawyers, and rescinding the possibility of bringing detainees
before judges so that all judicial sessions are conducted through video
conference.”
The situation
under the security minister has deteriorated to the point where Ben Gvir has
openly called for the execution of Palestinian detainees, which he offers up as
a “simpler solution.” Since 7 October, at least 35 Palestinian prisoners have
died in Israeli jails and military detention camps.
Reports of rape
and abuse despite censorship
While many
details remain obscure, evidence from court documents, eyewitness testimonies,
and leaked photos and videos paint a harrowing picture of the conditions inside
these facilities.
One particularly
disturbing case is that of Bassem Tamimi, a resident of Nabi Saleh in the West
Bank, who was released from administrative detention – a form of imprisonment
without charge – physically emaciated and emotionally broken.
Even Israeli
news outlet Haaretz had its report on Tamimi’s treatment redacted by
authorities in an attempt to conceal the breadth of prison brutality.
In January, a
joint report published by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel
(PCATI) detailed what it called “systemic” torture of Palestinians. One
testimony presented in the report, from a detainee called “Prisoner R” held in
Ketziot Prison, revealed the following details:
“The wardens would threaten to kill the prisoners as
they entered the cells … Wardens would conduct searches while the prisoners
were naked, place naked prisoners against each other, and place the aluminum
device used in the searches in their buttocks. In another instance, the wardens
passed a card in a prisoner’s buttocks. All of this took place in sight of
other prisoners and wardens, while the wardens took pleasure in beating the
prisoner’s genitals.”
After a prisoner
exchange between Israel and Hamas in late November, claims began to emerge of
severe torture and rape – testimonies that largely fell on deaf ears. On 1
December, Baraah Abo Ramouz, a Palestinian journalist just released from
prison, told the press that:
“The situation in the prisons is
devastating. The prisoners are abused. They are being constantly beaten.
They’re being sexually assaulted. They are being raped. I’m not exaggerating.
The prisoners are being raped.”
Gender-based
violence as collective punishment
Upon exiting the
prisons, many Palestinian detainees opted to remain silent on their experiences
inside Israeli detention facilities due to fears of retribution but also out of
a deep sense of shame and the need to preserve their honor in a conservative society.
At the time, the
Israeli security minister directed Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai to crack
down on any celebrations by families of the released prisoners. As Ben Gvir
publicly stated:
“My instructions are clear: there are to be no
expressions of joy ... Expressions of joy are equivalent to backing terrorism;
victory celebrations give backing to those human scum.”
A UN report
released on 12 June almost entirely focuses on cases of sexual abuse and rape
committed against Palestinian men, women, and children while under detention.
Israeli forces, the report says:
“Systematically targeted and subjected Palestinians
to SGBV [Sexual and Gender-Based Violence] online and in person since October
7, including through forced public nudity, forced public stripping, sexualized
torture and abuse, and sexual humiliation and harassment.”
The report
further states that gender-based violence “directed at Palestinian women was
intended to humiliate and degrade the Palestinian population as a whole.” The
men and young boys were stripped and paraded through the streets, and the women
were forced to watch as the kidnapped, cuffed, and blindfolded captives were
“coerced to do physical movements while naked.”
In Gaza, not
only are random Palestinian civilians rounded up and subjected to public
degradation, but many are then transferred to Israeli detention centers,
without charges, to suffer torture and even death.
According to
eyewitness testimonies collected by the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC) in
July, four blindfolded detainees held without any charge were summarily
executed in front of other inmates at the Kerem Abu Shalom site located along
the perimeter of Gaza.
Palestine’s Abu
Ghraib
Perhaps the most
infamous cases of abuse, torture, and rape against Palestinian detainees have
emerged from the Sde Teiman detention center, a facility located at an Israeli
military site in the Naqab (Negev) desert that is specifically designed for
people abducted from Gaza.
Per an amendment
to Israeli law back in December, the military is permitted to hold ‘suspected
terrorists’ for up to 45 days without charge before transferring them to the
Israeli Prison System (IPS). Many of the Palestinian abductees, however, were
held for much longer using loopholes in Israel’s legal and prison system.
Despite
countless leaked reports on the conditions faced by detained Gazans, including
women, children, doctors, people with disabilities, and the elderly, the first
real expose that broke through the English-language mainstream media barrier
was an investigative piece published by CNN in May.
The US outlet
leaked photos of prisoners kept bound, blindfolded, and held behind barbed wire
fences in stress positions, and quoted Israeli whistleblowers who worked in the
facility.
The testimonies
attested to the horrifying sanitary conditions and routine torture practiced
there, which one Israeli whistleblower said had “stripped them down of anything
that resembles human beings.”
Later, the New
York Times went on to publish its own three-month-long investigation into the
Sde Teiman facility, confirming three cases of electrocution, two cases of
prisoners having their ribs broken during arbitrary beatings, and heinous
crimes such as the anal rape of detainees.
It also detailed
how prisoners were humiliated and forced to wear only diapers during
interrogations. Corroborating the investigative piece’s evidence, a leaked
segment of a UN report on the facility quoted prisoners directly, revealing
stomach-churning details.
‘We saw worms
coming out of his body’
In testimony
collected by UNRWA, a 41-year-old former detainee said:
They made me sit on something like a hot metal
stick, and it felt like fire – I have burns [in the anus]. The soldiers hit me
with their shoes on my chest and used something like a metal stick that had a
small nail on the side ... They asked us to drink from the toilet and made the
dogs attack us … There were people who were detained and killed – maybe nine of
them. One of them died after they put the electric stick up his [anus]. He got
so sick; we saw worms coming out of his body, and then he died.
A woman in her
thirties also testified to being shown the aerial view of her neighborhood and
threatened with the bombing of family members. While another 32-year-old woman
described her harrowing experience while being transferred between different
detention facilities:
They asked the soldiers to spit on me, saying, ‘She
is a b****, she is from Gaza.’ They were beating us as we moved and saying they
would put pepper on our sensitive parts [genitals]. They pulled us, beat us,
they took us on the bus to the Damon prison after five days. A male soldier
took off our hijabs, and they pinched us and touched our bodies, including our
breasts. We were blindfolded, and we felt them touching us, pushing our heads
to the bus. We started to squeeze together to try to protect ourselves from the
touching. They said ‘b****, b****.’ They told the soldiers to take off their
shoes and slap our faces with them.
Dehumanization
of Palestinian prisoners
Confirming
previous reports on the issue, Haaretz also published a piece on the amputation
of prisoners’ limbs by unqualified individuals, which was performed due to the
extended periods detainees were shackled, leaving their circulation-deprived
flesh to rot and get infected.
A 32-year-old
Gazan man, speaking to The Cradle on the condition of anonymity, says Israeli
guards “beat me repeatedly and then urinated on me” while held at Sde Teiman
detention center. He testifies to being severely tortured, too.
“There were even
doctors there, disabled people and young people, but they didn’t care who you
were; we were all treated below animals,” he says, explaining that sounds were
constantly played to disrupt sleep and make it impossible to tell what time it
was.
He goes on to
say that he was beaten with metal tools and that the prison guards would mock
him and threaten to kill the rest of his family, with full knowledge that his
brother had been murdered in a previous series of Israeli airstrikes prior to
his abduction, and using the information to torment him mentally.
The director of
Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City, Dr Mohammad Abu Salmiya, who was
released after spending seven months in Israeli detention without any charge,
testified to what he witnessed after being ferried through a range of detention
facilities, including Sde Teiman.
Dr Abu Salmiya
stated that “prisoners in Israeli jails endure different types of torture. The
army treats them as if they were inanimate objects, and Israeli doctors
physically assaulted us.”
He went on to
say that there were “severe torture and almost daily assaults inside the
prisons and were denied medical treatments,” adding that “no international
organization visited us in Israeli prisons, and we were prohibited from meeting
any lawyers. Many detainees are still left behind in very poor health and
psychological conditions.”
Showers come
with severe punishments
Beyond the
countless makeshift detention facilities hastily erected inside Gaza – where
prisoners were stripped, blindfolded, and left in the sand to endure harsh
weather conditions – there are three official detention centers specifically
for Palestinians from Gaza, surrounding the besieged coastal territory.
Palestinian
lawyer with Israeli citizenship, Khaled Mahajneh, provided an insightful
first-hand account of the conditions faced in the Sde Teiman detention camp
after being granted a rare visit, stating that “the treatment is more
horrifying than anything we have heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.”
Mahajneh
recounted the testimony of one prisoner, who revealed that the only time
shackles were removed was during a weekly one-minute shower. But Palestinian
detainees began refusing these showers because exceeding the one-minute limit,
without a timer to guide them, resulted in “severe punishments, including hours
outside in the heat or rain.”
After months of
mounting evidence on the deadly conditions faced at Sde Teiman, 10 Israeli
reservist soldiers were accused of gang-raping a Palestinian prisoner with a
stick. Nine of the accused were arrested, one of whom would be released the
next day and go on to brag about his actions on Israeli television.
The arrests,
however, triggered the invasion of military facilities by thousands of Israeli
protesters, backed by Ben Gvir, who lionized the rapists as “heroes.” A debate
on the incident even followed in the Israeli Knesset, where Likud Party MK
Hanoch Milwidsky argued in favor of the gang rape.
Since then, a
video of the assault has surfaced, and Israel’s Honenu legal aid organization,
representing four of the accused, has claimed their clients were acting in
“self-defense.”
It’s not just
one facility
At a press
conference held in the West Bank city of Ramallah in mid-July, Mahajneh also
revealed that he had learned, during a visit to the Ofer detention center
located in the West Bank, that a 27-year-old Palestinian inmate was brutally
raped as follows:
A pipe from a fire extinguisher was used on a
handcuffed prisoner. Forcing him to lie on his stomach, stripping him of all
his clothes, and inserting the pipe of the fire extinguisher into the
prisoner’s rectum. Then, activating the extinguisher … in front of the eyes of
the other prisoners.
The case of
Palestinian bodybuilder Muazzaz Abayat from Bethlehem, who lost half his body
weight during his nine-month incarceration, is indicative of the inhumane
conditions that all prisoners are subjected to and that the foul treatment is
in no way confined to the detention camps surrounding Gaza.
Official Israeli
figures put the number of Palestinian political prisoners at just under 10,000,
including 3,380 administrative detainees and 250 children. These numbers are
clearly inaccurate, given that Israel’s Shin Bet director has already estimated
detainees to number around 21,000 – in June. The exact figures remain elusive,
and many prisoners remain unaccounted for. The confirmed death toll among
Palestinian prisoners, currently at 53, is also likely an underestimation, as
many detainees are still considered missing.
In stark
contrast to the intense media coverage and political concern for the Israeli
captives held in Gaza, the plight of Palestinian detainees is largely ignored.
There are more
Palestinian children held as hostages by Israel than the total number of
Israelis seized on 7 October, even according to the lower 10,000 prisoner
estimate. In comparison to the suffering of Palestinian detainees, the issue of
their Israeli counterparts – less than 100, by some accounts – is a mere drop
in the ocean.
Olivia Rosane
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib had harsh
words for Secretary of State Antony Blinken as he attempted to commemorate the
75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions while enabling what many experts
consider to be Israel's genocide in Gaza.
"The United States reaffirms
our steadfast commitment to respecting international humanitarian law and
mitigating suffering in armed conflict," Blinken wrote on social media
Monday. "We call on others to do the same."
Tlaib responded early Tuesday,
"Is this a joke?"
"You supported sending more
U.S.-made bombs being used to commit war crimes," Tlaib continued.
"The government of Israel bombed hospitals, schools, and tents full of
displaced Palestinians. How can you say you are for respecting international
human rights laws?"
Tlaib also shared a link to an
Amnesty International USA report from April finding that U.S. weapons sent to
Israel had been used in violation of both international and U.S. law and
calling for an "immediate suspension" of weapons transfers to the
country.
The U.S. is Israel's leading arms
supplier, providing it with 69% of its weapons imports between 2019 and 2023.
This has continued in the wake of Israel's war on Gaza, which began on October
7, 2023 in response to Hamas' deadly attack on southern Israel.
The Geneva Conventions of 1949
enshrine protections for vulnerable populations during armed conflict,
including wounded soldiers and first responders, prisoners of war, and
civilians. They include prohibitions on torture and the targeting of hospitals,
and mandate that occupying powers provide food and medical supplies to civilian
populations. Despite this, Israel has made it so difficult to get supplies into
Gaza that famine has spread across the territory. Reports emerged last week
that Palestinians in Israeli custody were subjected to systematic abuse,
including rape. And Israel has routinely used U.S. weapons to target civilian
areas and infrastructure in Gaza.
Days before Blinken's remarks
commemorating the conventions, the Biden administration approved $3.5 billion
in new military funds to Israel, as well as new weapons shipments. Hours later,
Israel reportedly used U.S.-made weapons to target the al-Tabin school in Gaza,
killing around 100 people, including at least 11 children.
"Few people have done more to
make the Geneva Conventions a dead letter," author Hari Kunzru wrote in
response to Blinken's 75th anniversary commemoration message.
Beyond Gaza, the U.S. under
President Joe Biden has also refused to state whether or not the Fourth Geneva
Convention protecting civilians in armed conflict and occupied territories
applies to Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank. In particular,
it has not acknowledged that the convention would prohibit Israeli settlements
in the territory altogether.
Tlaib and Kunzru were not the only
people to criticize Blinken for his statement.
"Irony is dead," wrote
human rights lawyer Mai El-Sadany. "If the U.S. cared anything for the
Geneva Conventions, it would not be choosing active complicity in war crimes
and crimes against humanity every day for the last 10 months."
Rutgers Law professor Adil Haque
observed, "The rest of the world has spent the last 10 months defending
international humanitarian law from us."
Qasim Rashid, also a human rights
lawyer, said, "An actual commitment to respecting international
humanitarian law would mean you stop funding [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin]
Netanyahu as he commits genocide of Palestinians."
Institute for Middle East
Understanding Policy Project policy director Josh Ruebner responded to a
separate message that Blinken had posted on the State Department website.
"Nope, Secretary Blinken,"
Ruebner wrote on social media. "You don't get to praise the Geneva
Conventions when you're rushing weapons to Israel to enable it to violate
almost every single clause in the convention as it continues to inflict
genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza."
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