Until December 2023, we were unable to enter the Israeli prison system; accordingly, we could only catch glimpses of life inside. This was not a policy that just applied to Palestinian groups, and the Red Cross was also denied access.

Nevertheless, we could tell something had changed. While the only information we receive is when a prisoner was released, those who were gave disturbing news of torture and beatings. Furthermore, we also noted a change in prisoners upon release. Many prisoners imprisoned after 7 October 2023 were already known to us as former prisoners. This time was different: they are broken as people, and demonstrated signs not just of starvation, but physical and mental abuse.

However, after the murder of Thaer Abu Asab on 18 November 2024, which attracted the attention of both international and Israeli human rights groups and media, we were able to get access. Abu Asab, who had served 20 years of a 25-year sentence, was beaten to death for asking his guard — a member of a notorious IDF elective unit, the Kateib — whether a ceasefire was going to be declared in Gaza.

Abu Asab was the sixth person to die in the prison system after the war in Gaza began, but in the case of the other prisoners no testimony was able to get out of the closed prison system. In this case, we were able to get affidavits from prisoners in his block — who had also been beaten by guards — to shed light on conditions in Israeli prison.

The death of Thaer Abu Asab attracted enough attention for the Israeli prison system to permit visits from lawyers. That said, it is still not easy, as our lawyers themselves are subjected themselves to humiliation and aggression from the prison authorities.

Nevertheless, we have been able to collect affidavits from prisoners inside the prisons and from released detainees. We sit together with each, often for hours, to discuss their treatment. This is important for us, as the Israeli authorities regularly try to raise doubts about our narrative.

There are two systems: the prisoners operated by the Israeli prison authority, and those operated by the occupying Israeli army. With regards to the Israeli prison authority, since the beginning of the war, they have loosened what they consider their ‘standards’ for what are considered minimum living requirements in prison.

The impact on the lives of prisoners has been dramatic, and ranges from what can appear mundane to the severe. Prisoners in custody of the prison authority [where prisoners are predominantly from the West Bank] have all their property confiscated: clothes, blankets — even spoons — and they deny them television, radio, books and even access to the Quran.

On the more extreme side, violence from elective units has increased dramatically: we were used to torture in the process of interrogation, but not in the process of standard imprisonment. Now, physical violence has been used against every prisoner we have interviewed.

The situation is dire everywhere, but at its worst in the Naqab [Negev]. We have received affidavits of prisoners having been severely beaten on the upper sides of their body, demonstrating cracked ribs, as well as beatings on their sexual organs.

The beatings were inflicted on older prisoners — one of our cases concerned a man in his 50s, arrested soon after the war, who was taken to Gush Etzion detention camp from Ramallah and beaten the entire way — as well as those with severe illnesses.

Beating has been turned into an art in prison. Sometimes the beatings are conducted with the express purpose of leaving lasting disability and health problems; often, guards aim to kill the prisoners.

The situation in Gaza is worse. Prisoners from Gaza are held under military jurisdiction, rather than by the civilian police. Detainees from Gaza are often ‘disappeared’ rather than formally detained. This is connected to Israeli legislation concerning ‘illegal combatants’, introduced in 2002 to deal with Hezbollah. It was not designed for use against thousands of detainees in Gaza. Due to the nature of this law, we do not have data on how many Gazans have been incarcerated, we only have assumptions.

For a long time, we did not have access to prisoners held under this law, but we found a mechanism by which we have been able to inspect these prisons, alongside Israeli human rights organisations. It’s a very ugly system, and I find it hard to talk about.

We don’t talk about deterioration, but rather a sharpening of pre-existing policy. Beatings, sexual violence, and torture have always been used in the Israeli prison system. When we talk about these practices — which we consider political in nature — it should be made clear they are not new.

One development we have seen is the denial of medical treatment. Take, for example, the case of Arafat Hamdan, from Beit Sera near Ramallah. He was a type one diabetic since his youth and was denied both food and insulin in the prison system. As he deteriorated, the other prisoners asked him to be moved to a clinic: one day, after he didn’t get up for a while, one of the other prisoners went to check on him. He had died in his room.

In the military system, the conditions are appalling: 25 percent of detainees in some prisons have scabies. I met one prisoner who, in cold weather, was wearing a torn shirt. Scabies had developed into welts across his arms, and his body was bleeding: his lawyer stated that he could not continue with the interview, but as he left the prisoner was crying and begging him to take him out.

We have heard of cases where Israeli prison authorities have intentionally moved detainees with scabies into blocks that were scabies free in order to spread the disease. We have lost at least four prisoners to scabies. One, Abu Zneid, died the day we in the Prisoners Society visited — he had scabies for several months without medication. His skin was peeling from his body, and parts of it had fallen into his bed.

55 Palestinian detainees have been murdered in Israeli prisons since 7 October. This is a record in the history of Palestinian imprisonment. Most of the detainees, as we see it, died as a result of torture.

In this case, there is no discrimination — five of the dead are administrative detainees. Many administrative detainees are children [at the time of the interview, 95 children were in administrative detention in addition to the arrested and wounded — the highest in the history of the occupation]. Starvation is used against them to turn them informant, the same way it is used against the sick: child prisoners inform us that they fall asleep and wake up hungry. They are offered medical treatment or food if they collaborate, confess or otherwise give them information.

The effect on political participation and free speech has been crippling. 33 percent of West Bank detainees are administrative detainees, mostly from Hebron governate. If you are active in your village or in an association — we’ve seen people detained for donating to fund an ambulance — you will likely be arrested on administrative charges.

One prisoner had a long struggle against administrative detention — the first prisoner in Palestine to go on individual hunger strike to protest detention without trial. They arrested him on charges, on the hope that he would not go on hunger strike again, but he went on strike again. He died of starvation in solitary confinement.

Sexual violence and assault against both women and men has dramatically increased. I can’t give exact figures, but it is widespread. One prisoner we interviewed reported widespread sexual impotence and disability as a result of beatings administered, with the express intent of causing lasting sexual damage. A journalist we know said his sexual organs were manipulated. This, as far as we’re concerned, is what genocide looks like.

In the Gazan system, again, abuse is shocking. Soldiers have urinated on detainees and have occasionally sprayed them with sewage water. I have friends in Gaza with sons who have been through practices such as these. In one of the most egregious cases, our lawyers interviewed a prisoner who had had a fire extinguisher inserted into his anus and then turned on.

But naturally, the worst abuse concerns Palestinian women. We have taken testimonies from women who were threatened to be raped, and been subjected to full nudity searches in the prisons. Often interrogators don’t ask about political issues, but ask them how many men they’ve slept with, threaten to rape them, and ask about details about the detainee’s sexual lives.

Women, generally, are taken to Ofer prison, following this to HaSharon, from where they are distributed throughout the Israeli prison system. At HaSharon, when women arrive, all women are ordered to remove their clothes — and are scanned with a body scanning baton normally used for clothed detainees. They are then beaten with this baton. I interviewed one woman who passed out recounting her story to me.

The conditions in Damon prison, Haifa are particularly concerning, where they are held in a prison built during the British Mandate that they had plans to destroy but have kept to cope with the rising prisoner rates.

In September 2024, a new prison manager was installed in Haifa. He was physically forward with the women inside the prison. Every week there is an oppressive campaign, in which they pick women to go into three rooms for a strip-search, after which they are allowed to wear their clothes and forced to kneel in the yard in sexually humiliating positions, with their hands and legs chained.

One of the female detainees knew she would be released the next day. The manager noticed she seemed happy, removed her hijab, put his head between her legs and threatened to rape her.

With prisoners in such conditions, there will be a rebellion in the prisons — we will of course pay the price. More will die.