Beatings, overcrowding and hunger Released prisoners recount horrific abuses in Israeli prisons

Released Palestinian prisoners have revealed to the Associated Press the worsening abuses they have suffered in Israeli prisons, which are overcrowded with thousands of detainees since the war on Gaza began ten months ago.

The prisoners indicated that they were subjected to repeated beatings, severe overcrowding in the detention cells, and were denied basic food rations.

Israeli officials have admitted that they have made conditions “harsher” for Palestinians in prisons, and the extremist National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has boasted that Israeli prisons will not be “summer camps” for Palestinians under his supervision.

Four freed Palestinians told The Associated Press that treatment has worsened dramatically in ministry-run prisons since the Oct. 7 attacks. Some were released after months in detention with emaciated bodies and deep psychological scars.

The fifth prisoner, Muaz Abayat, was so weak he could not speak about his experience shortly after his release last July, after six months in the Negev prison in southern Israel. Weak and unable to concentrate, he could only speak for a few minutes. “I was beaten regularly,” he said. Now inside his home outside Bethlehem, Abayat, 37, can’t get out of his chair.

His cousin, Aya Abayat, says he “hallucinates all night, standing in the middle of the house in shock, remembering the torment and pain that befell him.”

Like all detainees, Abayat was held under the administrative detention law, which allows Israel to hold anyone indefinitely without charge.

According to the Associated Press, other prisoners described similar conditions despite being held in different locations.

While Abayat was only able to speak briefly, the four other prisoners spoke to the agency at length, one of whom requested anonymity for fear of being re-arrested.

Their accounts are consistent with reports by human rights organizations that have documented alleged abuses in Israeli detention facilities.

The panic among human rights organizations over the mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners has focused primarily on military facilities, particularly Sde Teiman, a desert base where Israeli military police have arrested 10 soldiers on suspicion of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee.

Most of the Palestinians arrested in raids in the Gaza Strip since the war began have been held in a detention facility inside the base.

The soldiers, five of whom have since been released, deny the charge of sexually assaulting the prisoner. Their lawyer said they used force to defend themselves against a detainee who attacked them during a search, but did not sexually assault him.

According to the Israeli army, 36 Palestinian prisoners have died in detention centers run by the army since last October.

Autopsies of five detainees found that two of them had broken ribs, while the third could have died if he had received proper medical care, according to reports from Physicians for Human Rights, an Israeli human rights organization whose doctors monitored the autopsies.

In the face of calls to close Sde Teiman, the military has transferred hundreds of Palestinians from the base to prisons run by Ben-Gvir’s ministry. But according to Abiat and others who spoke to the agency, conditions in those facilities are “shocking as well.”

Munther Amira, a political activist in the West Bank who was held in Ofer prison, says guards regularly beat detainees as punishment or for no reason at all. He says he and 12 other prisoners shared a cell with only six beds and a few thin blankets, and were freezing during the winter months.

Amira said that when prisoners had to go to the toilets, they were shackled with their backs bent, and were only allowed out twice a week for 15 minutes.

Amira was held under administrative detention because of his Facebook posts criticizing Israel. He said he lost 33 kilograms (75 pounds) during his three months in detention due to lack of food.

This treatment pushed some to the brink. Amara recounted that he and his cellmates saw through the window another prisoner trying to commit suicide by jumping over a high fence.

He said they knocked on the cell door asking for help. But soldiers - accompanied by two large police dogs - entered their cell, handcuffed them and beat them, including their genitals.

Amira said soldiers ordered him to strip and stretch his legs, then beat him when he was first arrested in December last year. He said a guard scanned his genitals with a metal detector during the subsequent examination.

Since the war began, the number of Palestinian prisoners has doubled to nearly 10,000, including detainees from Gaza and several thousand more arrested from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to HaMoked, an Israeli rights group that collects statistics from prison authorities.

All four former detainees who spoke at length said hunger was perhaps the greatest challenge they faced.

Omar Assaf, a retired Arabic language teacher in Ramallah who was also held at Ofer, said his breakfast consisted of 250 grams of yogurt and one tomato or pepper shared by five people. He also said he was questioned about his social media posts.

He also said that each detainee was given two-thirds of a cup of rice and a bowl of soup for lunch and dinner, which he shared with the others. He continued, "We did not see the color of the fruit... nor a piece of meat."

Israeli authorities imposed extremely difficult conditions after October 7, according to Mohammed Al-Salhi, who was at the time serving a 23-year prison sentence in a Jerusalem prison.

He said that days after the attack, guards stripped his cell of everything, including his clothes. Eventually, the number of inmates in the cell increased from six to 14, and the curtains in the shared bathrooms were removed. Al-Salhi was released in June after completing his sentence.