For Palestinians held within Israel’s prison network, torture, ill-treatment and contempt for life are not just the norm, it is the system.
That’s according to a report (PDF) released this week by the NGO Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI).
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In the report, PHRI has revealed details of at least 94 Palestinian prisoners who died in Israeli custody. The report’s authors believe the actual number is likely much higher. All those killed died either from torture, assault, deliberate medical neglect or malnutrition.
The report is based on a range of evidence of ill-treatment and torture published by various human rights organizations inside Israel and internationally.
Oneg Ben Dror, one of the report’s authors, told Al Jazeera, “This is not just a policy of (far-right National Security Minister Itamar) Ben-Gvir, this is an Israeli policy directed against Palestinians who are deteriorating in Israeli custody, in military and civilian facilities alike.”
Testimonials (PDF) include the case of Abd al-Rahman Marri, 33, of the occupied West Bank, whose body – a web of bruises, cuts and fractures – was returned to his family after he died in Megiddo prison in November 2023.
Another prisoner, 17-year-old Walid Khalid Abdullah Ahmed of Nablus, was returned to his family with no muscle or fat left in his body, even though his family said he was an athlete before his arrest in September 2024. An autopsy revealed that Walid died six months after his arrest, with postmortem findings indicating that he was suffering from “severe and prolonged malnutrition.”
Another detainee, Arafat Hamdan, 25, of Beit Sira, a village in the occupied West Bank, lasted only two days in military custody before dying. Arafat, who suffered from Type 1 diabetes, required regular insulin injections to survive. Witnesses to Arafat’s death reported that he was brutally beaten and his medications were withheld.
system of hatred
Testimony, official records, and extensive evidence collected by PHRI and other organizations indicate that, concurrent with Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, an unprecedented campaign of attacks has been carried out against detained Palestinians.
Israel is believed to have arrested more than 18,500 Palestinians since the war on Gaza began in October 2023. Many of them have been victims of regular abuses documented by rights groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), Israel-based B’Tselem and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR).
In addition to the thousands of people whose detention has been documented, an unknown number were taken as part of the Israeli policy of forced disappearance in the first few months of the war, which is legalized through Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Act.
Two years later, many of the disappeared would no longer be alive. Ben Dror said, “Thousands of Palestinians from Gaza remain unaccounted for; hundreds of them are reported to have been taken by Israeli forces. The worrying thing is that many of them are no longer alive.”
Accusations that Israel is torturing its prisoners, including UN staff, have lasted for almost the duration of the war. In August 2024, B’Tselem released its report on the Israeli prison system titled “Welcome to Hell”, which detailed the physical, psychological and sexual abuse of Palestinians in Israeli custody.
Both PHRI and HRW have previously investigated specific torture of health workers by Israeli forces in gross violation of international law. Other examples of cruel treatment included threats to cut off prisoners’ hands because “they were dentists” and forcing doctors to bray like donkeys.
Israel has previously said it treats Palestinian prisoners in accordance with international law.
system of denial
Regarding the gang rape of a Palestinian man in the SD Teiman military prison in July 2024, Ben Dror said, “SD Teiman is the only case that has reached the Israeli public, but we are aware of many more cases.”
He further said, “SDE Taiman’s report was filed only 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.”
Any other reports of rape and sexual abuse committed against Palestinian prisoners – such as the suspicious and ultimately fatal rape of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh in Ofer prison in March 2024 – have not attracted much attention within Israel.
Instead, politicians like Ben-Gvir, who has responsibility for Israel’s prison system, are confident enough to actively claim to ensure that prisoners’ food is reduced to a “minimum”, despite a July report by Palestinian rights group Addameer that found what researchers called a drastic and deliberate reduction in the amount of food and water given to prisoners.
“Haaretz covers these things, but that’s about it,” Israeli political analyst Nimrod Fleshenberg said, referring to the popular liberal Israeli news outlet. “But if I look at the coverage given to this latest (PHRI) report, there is nothing. Maybe some individual leftist websites have picked it up, but that’s about it.”
“People just don’t know. I’m not saying whether they knew there would be any major moral outrage, but there would be something,” he added. “At the moment, Ben-Gvir’s statements on prison conditions are popular. He wouldn’t say this if it weren’t so.”
Yet, despite overwhelming evidence of abuses within Israel’s prison network, in late October, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz renewed a ban on allowing international agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to inspect its prisons.
HRW’s Milena Ansari said, “Appalling reports on the treatment of Palestinians in detention have been met with inaction and ignored, with Israel blocking ICRC access and independent monitoring.” “This is not about isolated abuses, but about a broader pattern committed with impunity. Without accountability, the violence will only deepen, and more deaths in Israeli custody will continue to emerge.”