B’Tselem 'Welcome to Hell' Report on The Abuse Palestinians in Israeli Detention Since 7 October 2023.
B’Tselem 'Welcome to Hell' Report on The Abuse Palestinians in Israeli Detention Since 7 October 2023.
When we got off the bus, a soldier said to us: "Welcome to hell."
B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories has released a report on the treatment of Palestinian prisoners and the inhuman conditions they have been subjected to in Israeli prisons since 7 October 2023. B’Tselem’s collected testimonies from 55 Palestinians who were incarcerated in Israeli prisons and detention facilities during this time. Thirty of the witnesses are residents of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; 21 are residents of the Gaza Strip; and four are Israeli citizens.
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 – these descriptions appear time and again in the testimonies, in horrifying detail and with chilling similarities.
Institutional violence against Palestinian prisoners by prison authorities has become more frequent and more virulent since 7 October. Testimonies attest to physical, sexual, psychological and verbal violence, directed at all Palestinian prisoners and perpetrated in an arbitrary, menacing fashion, usually under a shroud of anonymity.
Sexual violence: Various testimonies revealed repeated use of sexual violence, in varying degrees of severity, by soldiers or prison guards against Palestinian detainees. The witnesses described blows to the genitals and other body parts of naked prisoners; the use of metal tools and batons to cause genital pain; the photographing of naked prisoners; genitals being grabbed; and strip- searches for the sake of humiliation and degradation. The testimonies also reveal cases of gang sexual violence and assault committed by a group of prison guards or soldiers.
Download the Summary
Download the Full Report