{"id":2694,"date":"2025-11-20T00:57:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T00:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/?p=2694"},"modified":"2025-11-20T00:57:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T00:57:16","slug":"its-israeli-policy-report-reveals-abuse-of-palestinians-in-prisons-israel-palestine-conflict-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/?p=2694","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s Israeli policy\u2019: Report reveals abuse of Palestinians in prisons | Israel-Palestine conflict News"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

For Palestinians held within Israel\u2019s prison network, torture, abuse and contempt for life isn\u2019t just the norm, it\u2019s the system.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to report released this week [PDF]<\/a> by the NGO Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI).<\/p>\n

\n

Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n

list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n

In the report, PHRI reveals the details of at least 94 Palestinian prisoners killed while in Israeli detention. The true number is likely far higher, the report\u2019s authors concede. All of those killed died from either torture, assault, wilful medical neglect or malnutrition.<\/p>\n

The report builds upon a tranche of evidence of abuse and torture published by a variety of human rights organisations, both inside Israel and internationally.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just [far-right National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir\u2019s policy, it\u2019s an Israeli policy directed against Palestinians in Israeli custody, in military and civilian deterioration facilities alike,\u201d one of the report\u2019s authors, Oneg Ben Dror, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Included in the testimonials [PDF]<\/a> is the case of 33-year-old Abd al-Rahman Mar\u2019i from the occupied West Bank, whose body \u2013 a latticework of bruises, contusions and fractures \u2013 was returned to his family after he died in Megiddo prison in November 2023.<\/p>\n

Another prisoner, 17-year-old Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmad from Nablus, was returned to his family with his body having next to no muscle or fat remaining, despite his family saying that he had been an athlete before his arrest in September 2024. A post-mortem revealed that Walid died six months after his arrest, with post-mortem findings indicating he had suffered \u201csevere and prolonged malnutrition\u201d.<\/p>\n

Yet another detainee, 25-year-old Arafat Hamdan from the occupied West Bank village of Beit Sira, only lasted two days in military custody before he died. A type 1 diabetic, Arafat needed regular insulin injections to stay alive. Witnesses to Arafat\u2019s death report him being brutally beaten and his medication withheld.<\/p>\n

Systems of hatred<\/h2>\n

Testimonies, official records, and extensive evidence collected by PHRI and other organisations indicate that, alongside Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza, there has been an unparalleled campaign of assault against detained Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Israel is thought to have arrested more than 18,500 Palestinians since the war on Gaza began in October 2023. Many of those have fallen victim to the kind of routine abuse documented by rights groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Israel-based B\u2019Tselem, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR).<\/p>\n

In addition to the thousands whose detention has been documented, there are an unknown number taken as part of an Israeli policy of enforced disappearances in the first few months of the war, legalised through Israel\u2019s Unlawful Combatants Law.<\/p>\n

Two years on, many of those disappeared may no longer be alive. \u201cThousands of Palestinians from Gaza are unaccounted for; of those, hundreds were reported to have been taken by the Israeli military. The concern is that many of them are no longer alive,\u201d Ben Dror said.<\/p>\n

Accusations that Israel has been torturing its prisoners, including United Nations staff, have run almost the length of the war. In August 2024, B\u2019Tselem issued its report on the Israeli prison system titled \u201cWelcome to Hell\u201d, detailing the physical, psychological and sexual abuse meted out to Palestinians taken into Israeli custody.<\/p>\n

Both PHRI and HRW have also previously investigated the specific torture of healthcare workers by the Israeli military in stark contravention of international law.\u00a0 Among other instances of the brutal treatment were threats to cut prisoners\u2019 hands off because \u201cthey were dentists\u201d and forcing doctors to bray like donkeys.<\/p>\n

Israel has previously stated that it treats Palestinian prisoners in accordance with international law.<\/p>\n

\"people
Palestinians, some holding images of relatives held in Israeli jails, protest and call for their release at Duwar al-Manara (Manara Square) in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, July 21, 2024 [Jaafar Ashtiyeh\/AFP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

System of denial<\/h2>\n

\u201cSde Teiman is the only case that has reached the Israeli public, but we are aware of many more,\u201d Ben Dror said of the gang rape of a Palestinian man in the Sde Teiman military prison in July 2024 whose prosecution, if not perpetration, has divided Israeli society.<\/p>\n

\u201cSde Teiman was only reported because the injuries were so extensive that the victim had to be admitted to a public hospital, where a large number of people became aware of the case,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n

None of the other reports of rape and sexual abuse carried out against Palestinian prisoners \u2013 such as the suspected, and ultimately fatal, rape of Dr Adnan al-Bursh in Ofer prison in March 2024 \u2013 have gained much attention within Israel.<\/p>\n

Instead, politicians such as Ben-Gvir, who has responsibility for Israel\u2019s prison system, are confident enough to actively boast of ensuring that prisoners\u2019 food is reduced to the \u201cminimum of the minimum\u201d, despite a July report<\/a> from the Palestinian rights group Addameer documenting what researchers termed the drastic and deliberate reduction in quantities of food and water allowed to prisoners.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaaretz tends to cover these things, but that\u2019s about it,\u201d Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said, referring to the popular liberal Israeli news outlet. \u201cBut if I look at the coverage given to this latest [PHRI] report, there\u2019s nothing. Maybe a few individual leftist websites have picked it up, but that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople just don\u2019t know. I\u2019m not saying if they did know there\u2019d be any great moral outcry, but there\u2019d be something,\u201d he continued. \u201cFor now, statements like those from Ben-Gvir on prison conditions are popular. He wouldn\u2019t say them if they weren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"a
Far-right Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir has boasted of poor conditions within Israeli prisons [File: Ahmad Gharabli\/AFP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nevertheless, despite the overwhelming evidence of abuse within Israel\u2019s prison network, in late October, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz renewed the ban on allowing international agencies, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), to inspect its prisons.<\/p>\n

\u201cHorrific reports on the treatment of Palestinians in detention have been met with inaction and ignored, with Israel blocking ICRC access and independent oversight,\u201d Milena Ansari from HRW said. \u201cThis isn\u2019t about isolated abuses, but a broader pattern carried out with impunity. Without accountability, the violence will only deepen, and more deaths in Israeli detention will continue to emerge.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Palestinians held within Israel\u2019s prison network, torture, abuse and contempt for life isn\u2019t just the norm, it\u2019s the system. That\u2019s according to report released this week [PDF] by the NGO Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI). Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list In the report, PHRI reveals the details of at least 94 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}