HUMILIATION, degradation, sleep deprivation, sexual assault, and arbitrary violence are routinely suffered by Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, a report by the human-rights organisation B’Tselem says.
The report collects the testimony of 55 Palestinians who have recently been released from Israeli custody, most without being charged.
The report says that the number of Palestinians held in Israeli detention centres and prisons has almost doubled since the current war in Gaza began last October.
As of early July, 9632 were being held, of whom almost half were detained in “administrative detention”, with no charges laid against them, and no trial in prospect.
The imprisonment of Layan Nasir, a Palestinian Anglican who has been in administrative detention since April, has been frequently deplored by church leaders in the UK, including the Archbishop of Canterbury (News, 2 August; News, 3 May).
Ms Nasir’s family have been given no information about the conditions in which she is being kept. At the end of July, an Israeli court renewed her administrative detention for a further four months.
B’Tselem’s report sets out the emergency legislation that was introduced after the 7 October attacks last year. Changes were designed to “trample the basic rights of Palestinian prisoners”, the report says.
Responsibility for the prison service rests with the Israeli Minister for National Security, the ultra-nationalist politician Itamar Ben-Gvir. Mr Ben-Gvir lives in an illegal settlement in the West Bank, and the political party that he leads has been characterised as adhering to Jewish-supremacist ideology.
The testimonies collected by B’Tselem include allegations of physical and psychological abuse carried out by prison guards, some in masks and black uniforms with no ID tags, carrying weapons, and using “brazen, unbridled violence that amounts to abuse and torture”.
B’Tselem works in partnership with Christian Aid. The latter’s head of Middle East policy and advocacy, William Bell, described the findings reported as “horrifying and an affront to justice”.
