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A recent report by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has disclosed that over a dozen Israeli prison facilities have been repurposed into a network of camps specifically designed for the systematic abuse of Palestinian detainees in the aftermath of October 7.
The comprehensive 118-page report, titled “Welcome to Hell,” draws on 55 testimonies from former detainees originating from the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the territories seized in 1948. Notably, the vast majority of these individuals were detained without trial.
The interviewees described the abuse in “horrifying detail and chilling similarities,” said B’Tselem.
“Such spaces, in which every inmate is intentionally condemned to severe, relentless pain and suffering, operate in fact as torture camps,” the report said.
The violations include “frequent acts of severe, arbitrary violence; sexual assault; humiliation and degradation; deliberate starvation; forced unhygienic conditions; sleep deprivation; prohibition on, and punitive measures for, religious worship; confiscation of all communal and personal belongings; and denial of adequate medical treatment”.
B’Tselem said at least 60 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since October 7. Some 48 of them were from Gaza.
The report said that detainee testimonies demonstrate “a systemic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners” regardless of their origin and political views.
Among them people detained for expressing sympathy for the suffering of Palestinians, men taken from Gaza based on a vague definition of being of “fighting age” and others taken on suspicions – substantiated or not – that they were supporters or members of Palestinian armed groups.
This policy, it said, is implemented under the direction of Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, with the full support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The rights group said reports of sexual violence suggested it was “recurring with varying severity and carried out by soldiers or prison guards against Palestinian prisoners”.
B’Tselem also noted that the number of Palestinians held in Israeli jails has doubled to 9,623 since the war on Gaza began.
Since the satrt of the Israeli genocide war in Gaza, Israeli occupation unleashed a massive crackdown on Palestinians.
Nearly 10,000 people were arrested from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem alone in the past 10 months, and around 3,000-5,000 were taken from the Gaza Strip.
Around 10,000 people remain in custody as of July, nearly double the number of Palestinian detainees before the war, according to HaMoked, an Israeli-based human rights group.
B’Tselem said the Israeli violations against Palestinian detainees lead to the “inevitable conclusion that Israel is committing torture that amounts to a war crime and even a crime against humanity”.
The group called for international bodies, including the International Criminal Court (ICC), to immediately intervene to “stop the brutal treatment of Palestinians in these detention facilities”.
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