New Report Documents Stories of Starvation, Sexual Violence in Israeli Prisons

"It is uncomfortable as an Israeli-Palestinian organisation to say Israel is running torture camps. But we realized that is what we are looking at," B’Tselem executive director Yuli Novak told the Guardian.

By Audra Heinrichs | August 7, 2024 | 12:18pm

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New Report Documents Stories of Starvation, Sexual Violence in Israeli Prisons

A prison security guard at Gilboa prison near Kibbutz Beit HaShita in the Gilboa region, Israel in 2021. Photo: Getty Images

A new report from the Jerusalem-based human rights organization B’Tselem lays bare a host of horrifying abuse allegedly occurring in Israeli prisons. The Guardian on Tuesday published interviews with former detainees, many of them Palestinians who were never charged, that corroborate the report’s claims of ruthless beatings, refusal of medical attention, sexual threats and violence, starvation, and deprivation of basic needs—including sanitary pads for women—from 55 former prisoners held in 16 prison service jails and detention centers run by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

“When we started the project we thought we would find sporadic evidence and extreme cases here and there, but the picture that has emerged is completely different,” Yuli Novak, the executive director of B’Tselem, told the Guardian.“We were shocked by the scale of what we heard. It is uncomfortable as an Israeli-Palestinian organisation to say Israel is running torture camps. But we realized that is what we are looking at.”

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The group’s investigation arrived the same week the U.N. further reported “widespread and systemic abuse” of an estimated 9,500 Palestinians currently in detention. Testimony from prisoners in the U.N. report alleges “cage-like enclosures,” and torture that includes electrocutions, being blindfolded and bound to beds, attacks by dogs, waterboarding, sexual and gender-based violence and more. B’Tselem’s investigation, which spanned several months and spotlights “consistent and widespread” testimony of the dehumanization of Palestinian prisoners, are similarly striking.

Firas Hassan, a 50-year-old youth ministry worker from Bethlehem who was arrested under an administrative detention order in 2022, said that the conditions of the prison he was held in shifted significantly after October 7. Before, there were hot showers, edible food, time allotted for the yard, and the designation of six people to a cell. “There was respect before,” Hassan said. “But after 7 October I was sure I was going to die there. I lost all hope.”

Soon, 20 people were designated to a single cell. Then, regular beatings began occurring daily. He said that one of his cellmates confided that in November 2023, guards raped him with a baton. Hassan also said that he heard the screams of Thaer Abu Asab, a 38-year-old man who was imprisoned for staging a resistance operation in 2005, as he was beaten to death by guards after refusing to bow his head to them. Hassan claimed guards told him during the fatal assault, “We are livestreaming this for [Itamar] Ben-Gvir,” Israel’s national security minister.

Water, food, and sanitary facilities and products were also limited, Hassan said. For instance, a crowded detention room would be given a 2-liter bottle of water, a single piece of meat, one cup of cheese, half of a tomato, and half of a cucumber in the morning, then single-spoon servings of uncooked rice in the evenings.

“The guards told me, we are giving you enough to keep you alive, but if it was up to us we will let you starve,” Hassan said.

Gender makes no difference in treatment, according to the report. Maryam Salhab, a 23-year-old student from Hebron, said she now has back issues after two officers stood on her back for “two to three minutes” during her October 26 arrest. “I was suffocated, I couldn’t breathe, I saw death with both eyes,” she said. “They chatted to each other as if nothing was happening, as if they were standing on solid ground.”

Lama al-Fakhuri, a writer who was arrested not long after, got her period soon after her incarceration. She said she bled through her clothes after being refused a pad. During their respective incarcerations, both Salhab and al-Fakhuri said they were verbally abused and threatened with rape by guards. Neither were charged with any offenses and were released over a month later as part of a deal to free hostages in Gaza.

Ben-Gvir has repeatedly boasted about his transformation of the country’s prison system. “In Ketziot [prison] they say that I am crazy and I am proud of that. I am proud that we have changed all of the conditions,” he recently told the country’s legislature. In a letter to the Israeli Supreme Court, he also confirmed that the food deprivation was his idea: “There is no starvation, but my policy does call for reducing conditions, including food and calories.”

Meanwhile, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) told the Guardian that it is “not aware of the claims you described and as far as we know, no such events have occurred under IPS responsibility.” It added that it is acting “in accordance with Israeli law and international law.”