DayofPal—Human rights lawyers reports that Israel reopened Rakefet jail and incarcerated Palestinian detainees there, where they are being held in total darkness and subjected to abuse.
Israel is detaining dozens of Palestinians from Gaza in a secretive underground prison where they are denied sunlight, adequate food, and information about their families, according to human rights lawyers who have visited the facility.
The underground complex, known as Rakefet, is located within the Ramla prison compound southeast of Tel Aviv.
Lawyers from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) say the detainees include civilians who have been held for months without charge or trial, among them a 34-year-old nurse and an 18-year-old food vendor.
Both men, represented by PCATI, were transferred to Rakefet in January and described enduring routine attacks and conditions consistent with torture documented in other Israeli detention centers.
Rakefet was first opened in the early 1980s to hold a small number of Israel’s most dangerous organized crime figures. It was closed within a few years for being “inhumane.”
However, in the wake of Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on 7 October 2023, Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ordered the subterranean facility to be reopened to detain alleged militants.
Official data obtained by PCATI shows that although Rakefet was designed for around 15 prisoners, it currently holds about 100, most of them civilians. All cells, as well as the exercise area and meeting rooms, are underground, meaning detainees live in total darkness.
Ben-Gvir publicly described Rakefet as “the natural place for terrorists — under the ground.” But lawyers who visited say most detainees are civilians, not combatants.
PCATI lawyers Janan Abdu and Saja Misherqi Baransi were granted access to Rakefet in September. They said the men they met had been kept there for nine months, shackled and bent over when brought into the meeting room.
“The nurse began by asking: ‘Where am I and why am I here?’” said Baransi. “He had not seen daylight since January.”
The lawyers described filthy facilities, cameras in meeting rooms that violated attorney-client confidentiality, and guards who threatened to end conversations if detainees asked about their families or the war in Gaza.
Cells were said to be windowless and poorly ventilated, leaving prisoners gasping for air. Detainees reported beatings, dog attacks, and being forced to sleep on bare iron bed frames after guards removed their mattresses each morning. Some were allegedly allowed outside for only a few minutes every other day.
Former Israel Prison Service chief Rafael Suissa, who shut down Rakefet in the 1980s, once wrote that holding prisoners underground 24/7 was “too cruel, too inhumane for any person to endure,” according to the Akevot Institute’s archive.
Under a ceasefire deal reached in mid-October, Israel released 250 long-term prisoners and 1,700 Palestinians detained without trial. The young food vendor held at Rakefet was among those freed and returned to Gaza.
Yet PCATI estimates that at least 1,000 others remain in custody under the same conditions.
“Though the war is officially over, Palestinians from Gaza are still imprisoned under violent wartime conditions that amount to torture,” said Tal Steiner, PCATI’s executive director.
Israeli courts have authorized some of these detentions in brief video hearings without evidence or defense counsel, ruling only that prisoners would remain “until the war ends.”
Israel’s Supreme Court has previously upheld laws allowing the state to hold Palestinian bodies for potential future exchanges, a practice rights groups say is now mirrored in the indefinite detention of living civilians.
The Israel Prison Service (IPS) said in a statement that it “operates in accordance with the law and under the supervision of official comptrollers,” but added that it “is not responsible for arrest policies or detainee classification.”
The Justice Ministry referred questions to the military, which in turn referred them back to the IPS.
Human rights organizations warn that such practices risk deepening trauma among detainees and undermining Israel’s own security.
“It’s very hard to remain intact when you are held in such oppressive and difficult conditions,” said Steiner. “Holding people underground without light has extreme implications for their mental and physical health.”
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