Three years after the start of Israel\u2019s war of genocide on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli prisons are witnessing one of the most dangerous periods in the history, amid escalating arrests, torture, starvation, medical neglect, solitary confinement and deprivation of family visits and contact with the outside world, alongside the growing issue of forcibly disappeared detainees, particularly those from the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n
The past three years have marked a fundamental transformation in detention conditions. Violations are no longer limited to isolated punitive measures but have become part of a broader system of repression and deprivation affecting sentenced prisoners, administrative detainees, women, children and the sick, and extending to military detention camps and closed facilities that have remained beyond independent humanitarian and legal oversight.<\/p>\n
This period reveals an extremely dangerous reality in which Israeli government policies intersect with prison authorities\u2019 measures, punitive legislation and political incitement, while thousands of detainees face conditions threatening their lives, health and dignity. At the same time, international institutions have failed to provide the necessary protection or ensure regular access to all detention facilities.<\/p>\n
Available data three years into the war indicates that around 9,300 Palestinian prisoners and detainees<\/strong> are being held in Israeli prisons, including more than 3,100 administrative detainees<\/strong>, around 1,400 people Israel classifies as so-called \u201cunlawful combatants,\u201d approximately 90 women and more than 350 children<\/strong>.<\/p>\n These figures do not include all Gaza detainees held in military facilities.<\/p>\n Over the past three years, around 26,000 cases of arrest<\/strong> have been recorded in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, including hundreds of women and thousands of children. These figures exclude widespread arrests in the Gaza Strip, for which complete data remains unavailable, reflecting the extensive use of detention as a means of pressure and control over Palestinian society.<\/p>\n Daily arrest campaigns, home raids and arrests at checkpoints continue, alongside the renewal of administrative detention orders based on secret files, leaving thousands of Palestinians behind bars without criminal charges or fair trials.<\/p>\n Since October 2023, prisons have witnessed sweeping changes to prisoners\u2019 daily living conditions, including reductions in the quantity and quality of food, confiscation of clothing, blankets and personal belongings, restrictions on showers and time in prison yards, suspension of family visits, and expanded searches, repression and solitary confinement.<\/p>\n Testimonies from released detainees describe repeated beatings, prolonged restraints, sleep deprivation, humiliation and threats, as well as sexual assaults and violations of privacy and human dignity. Accounts have also repeatedly described the use of dogs and stun grenades during raids on prison sections and cells.<\/p>\n Health conditions are among the most dangerous aspects of the current situation. Around 1,500 prisoners who are sick or suffer from health problems<\/strong> face extremely harsh conditions amid shortages of medication, delays in examinations and treatment, the spread of skin diseases, malnutrition and poor hygiene, threatening the lives of prisoners with chronic illnesses, the wounded and the elderly.<\/p>\n Women and children have not been spared these measures. Testimonies repeatedly describe degrading searches, physical and psychological assaults, shortages of personal necessities and deprivation of family contact, while children are also denied education and care appropriate to their age.<\/p>\n Over the past three years, more than 90 Palestinian prisoners and detainees have died inside Israeli prisons and detention facilities<\/strong>, according to the publicly reported toll of known cases.<\/p>\n Serious concerns remain that additional victims have not been identified or that the circumstances of their deaths remain undisclosed, particularly among Gaza detainees held in military camps beyond independent oversight.<\/p>\n The growing number of deaths raises serious questions about detention conditions and allegations of torture, starvation, medical neglect and physical assault, particularly in cases where Israeli authorities did not announce a detainee\u2019s death until long after detention or after their fate had remained unknown.<\/p>\n The rising death toll cannot be separated from the policies imposed inside prisons during the war, warning that their continuation without intervention or accountability could lead to further deaths, particularly among sick, injured and isolated prisoners and those inaccessible to lawyers or humanitarian organizations.<\/p>\n Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has emerged over the past three years as one of the most prominent advocates of harsher detention conditions for Palestinian prisoners through statements and policies supporting reduced food and essential supplies and tighter restrictions and punishments inside prisons.<\/p>\n These actions have not been limited to internal prison measures. Ben-Gvir has also entered prisoners\u2019 sections, filmed prisoners, threatened them before cameras and publicly boasted about their conditions of detention.<\/p>\n This was demonstrated in footage involving prisoner Hassan Salameh, who has spent around 30 years in detention, nearly half of them in solitary confinement, when Ben-Gvir directly threatened him with death and execution inside his cell.<\/p>\n These practices reflect an unprecedented level of cruelty and public incitement and to turn prisoners\u2019 suffering into material for political and media spectacle, providing prison authorities with cover to continue abuses and mistreatment.<\/p>\n The Palestinian Center for Prisoners Advocacy warns against exploiting the prisoners\u2019 issue in Israeli electoral competition and using harsher detention conditions and threats of execution as tools to gain political support, particularly as Israeli elections approach and in the absence of serious accountability for such conduct.<\/p>\n The year 2026 witnessed what the Center describes as a dangerous development with the adoption of Israeli legislation expanding the application of the death penalty in certain cases, raising serious concerns over the future of Palestinian prisoners tried before Israeli military courts.<\/p>\n This legislation represents a dangerous escalation in punitive policy and provides legal cover for an irreversible punishment within a judicial system that has faced widespread criticism concerning fair-trial guarantees, the use of secret security files and confessions allegedly obtained under pressure.<\/p>\n Concerns are heightened by Ben-Gvir\u2019s repeated calls for prisoners to be executed and by the incorporation of calls for their killing into Israeli political discourse, raising fears that threats and incitement could develop into actual death sentences against Palestinian detainees.<\/p>\n We call for the legislation to be repealed, for any steps toward its implementation to be halted, and for international legal action to prevent military courts from being used to issue death sentences against Palestinians.<\/p>\n Detainees from the Gaza Strip represent one of the most serious and opaque aspects of the detention issue.<\/p>\n Israeli forces have detained thousands of Palestinians during military operations, including civilians, doctors, health workers and journalists, transferring them to military camps, detention facilities and various prisons while preventing many from communicating with their families or lawyers for prolonged periods.<\/p>\n Israel holds large numbers of these detainees under what it calls the \u201cUnlawful Combatants Law.\u201d<\/strong> The Center rejects this classification, arguing that it cannot be used to deprive detainees of protections guaranteed under international law or justify prolonged detention without criminal charges.<\/p>\n The situation is made more serious by restrictions on legal representation. Families of Gaza detainees face major obstacles in appointing lawyers at their own expense and ensuring that those lawyers can actually reach their relatives, while many families still do not know where their loved ones are being held nearly three years after their detention.<\/p>\n Detainees held under this law are subject to periodic judicial reviews every six months, with hearings often conducted through video technology. Testimonies indicate that detainees may have only limited ability to speak or challenge the grounds for their continued detention, turning such proceedings in many cases into formal reviews that fail to provide effective defense guarantees.<\/p>\n The absence of a lawyer for a Gaza detainee does not merely mean the loss of legal representation. It also deprives the detainee of one of the most important forms of protection capable of assessing their health, documenting their treatment and informing their family of their whereabouts.<\/p>\n The Sde Teiman military detention camp<\/strong> has exposed an extremely serious dimension of the detention of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, following repeated testimonies describing detainees being held blindfolded and restrained for prolonged periods, forced to remain in painful positions, beaten, humiliated, denied medical care and held in harsh conditions.<\/p>\n Concerns are not limited to Sde Teiman. Reports have indicated that Palestinians have also been held at other camps and facilities, including Anatot, Ofer, the Negev and the underground Rakefet complex<\/strong>, alongside concerns regarding additional undisclosed detention locations or closed facilities about which little information is available.<\/p>\n These facilities raise questions regarding the number of detainees held there, the authorities responsible for them, their ability to communicate with lawyers and families, and whether humanitarian organizations can access them.<\/p>\n We call for the disclosure of all detention locations without exception<\/strong>, including military camps and underground facilities, investigations into reports concerning secret or undisclosed prisons, and guarantees that no detainee is kept outside official records or beyond independent oversight.<\/p>\n The issue of forcibly disappeared detainees remains among the most urgent humanitarian and legal concerns, particularly as many Palestinian families still lack confirmed information about relatives detained by Israeli forces during the war.<\/p>\n Human rights data indicates thousands of requests to locate Gaza detainees, including cases in which people were seen being detained but their whereabouts later could not be determined, or Israeli authorities said they had no information about their detention despite testimonies indicating that Israeli forces had taken them away.<\/p>\n The danger lies in detainees being placed beyond legal and humanitarian monitoring. Their families do not know where they are, lawyers cannot reach them, reliable information about their health is unavailable, and in some cases families do not even know whether they remain alive.<\/p>\n Refusing to acknowledge a person\u2019s detention or withholding information concerning their fate or whereabouts constitutes enforced disappearance under international law<\/strong>, and the continuation of this situation requires an independent international investigation and individual follow-up of every case until the person\u2019s fate is established.<\/p>\n The suspension of visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross since October 2023<\/strong>, alongside the suspension of family visits and restrictions on lawyers, has deepened prisoners\u2019 isolation and weakened the ability to independently verify their detention conditions.<\/p>\n Any resumption of ICRC visits must not become a symbolic measure or be limited to known prisons. Visits should extend to all detainees and all places of detention, guarantee confidential individual meetings with prisoners, assess their health conditions, and help establish the fate of missing and forcibly disappeared detainees.<\/p>\n This should also be followed by the resumption of family visits, particularly for families of Gaza prisoners who have been prevented for years from seeing or receiving reassurance about their relatives.<\/p>\n There can be no meaningful return to normal humanitarian access while detainees remain isolated from their families.<\/p>\n Palestinian detainees are entering an extremely dangerous period in which repression, starvation, isolation and medical neglect intersect with punitive legislation and political incitement, amid continued arrests and the absence of effective international protection.<\/p>\n The most serious risks include a possible increase in deaths inside prisons, deteriorating conditions for sick and injured prisoners, the continued isolation of Gaza detainees, escalating threats linked to the death penalty, and the exploitation of the prisoners\u2019 issue in Israeli political competition.<\/p>\n These dangers cannot be addressed through partial measures. They require international intervention that guarantees access to all detainees, investigations into violations, restoration of fundamental rights, and an end to policies that place prisoners\u2019 lives at risk.<\/p>\n Three years after the beginning of the war of genocide, the Palestinian Center for Prisoners Advocacy believes that conditions inside Israeli prisons have undergone an unprecedented transformation in both the scale and nature of violations, and that thousands of detainees now face conditions that go beyond imprisonment and pose a direct threat to their lives, health and dignity.<\/p>\n We call for:<\/p>\n We also call on the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and international human rights and humanitarian organizations<\/strong> to fulfill their responsibilities and move beyond statements and positions toward concrete measures that ensure the protection of detainees and accountability for those responsible for violations against them.<\/p>\n The most dangerous reality revealed by the past three years is that prisons have become another arena of Palestinian suffering.<\/p>\n Leaving detainees beyond oversight and accountability threatens to produce more victims. Protecting their lives, establishing the fate of the forcibly disappeared and ending violations against them are therefore no longer demands that can be postponed, but an urgent humanitarian and legal responsibility of the international community and its institutions.<\/strong><\/p>\n Palestinian Center for Prisoners Advocacy<\/strong> Israeli Prisons Turn Into Sites of Torture, Starvation, Enforced Disappearance and Threats of Execution Three years after the start of Israel\u2019s war of genocide on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli prisons are witnessing one of the most dangerous periods in the history, amid escalating arrests, torture, starvation, medical neglect, solitary confinement and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports-and-investigations"],"yoast_head":"\nA New Reality Inside Prisons: Repression, Starvation and Collective Punishment<\/h2>\n
Deaths Among Palestinian Detainees and the Growing Threat to Life<\/h2>\n
Ben-Gvir and the Transformation of Prisoner Abuse Into Political Spectacle<\/h2>\n
Death Penalty: Legislation Threatening Prisoners\u2019 Lives<\/h2>\n
Gaza Detainees and the ‘Unlawful Combatants’ Law<\/h2>\n
Sde Teiman, Military Camps and Undisclosed Detention Facilities<\/h2>\n
The Forcibly Disappeared: Families Searching for Their Loved Ones for Three Years<\/h2>\n
Absence of International Oversight and Continued Isolation of Prisoners<\/h2>\n
Assessment of the Coming Period<\/h2>\n
Conclusion and Demands<\/h2>\n
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\nOct. 13, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"