Prisoner groups warn Israeli prisons have become sites of torture, slow death

In a joint report, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoner Society, and the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said dozens of detainees from Gaza remain subjected to enforced disappearance, while Israeli authorities continue to withhold the bodies of 94 martyred prisoners.

The organizations said testimonies and documented evidence confirm a deliberate policy of physical and psychological abuse against detainees, including torture, starvation, denial of medical care, solitary confinement, and other life-threatening practices.

According to the report, Zionist regime’s occupation forces have continued mass arrest campaigns across the West Bank, including Jerusalem, recording around 21,000 arrests since the start of the genocide. Those detained include children, women, journalists, medical workers, former prisoners, and Palestinian activists.

In 2025 alone, the groups documented more than 7,000 arrests, including 600 children and 200 women, reflecting what they described as an unprecedented escalation in the use of detention as a tool of repression and retaliation.

The report said 49 percent of Palestinian detainees are held arbitrarily without charge or trial, including 3,350 administrative detainees and 1,220 prisoners classified as “unlawful combatants” under Israeli law, in addition to dozens of women and children held under administrative detention.

Prisoner exchanges and torture practices

The report noted that several prisoner exchange deals took place in 2025, leading to the release of 3,745 detainees, in addition to 240 children and women freed under a 2023 exchange. This brings the total number of detainees released since the start of the genocide to 3,985, including 383 forcibly deported outside Palestine.

Despite their release, former prisoners continue to face repeated arrests and assaults, including prominent detainee Wael al-Jaghoub, the organizations said.

They warned that Israeli authorities have employed every known method of torture against detainees, from the moment of arrest through prolonged incarceration. Documented abuses include physical and psychological torture, starvation, denial of medical treatment, solitary and collective isolation, sexual abuse, deliberate exposure to disease, and systematic humiliation through daily inspections and degrading searches.

These practices, the report said, have led to the martyrdom of dozens of detainees, including 17-year-old Walid Khaled Ahmed.

Family visits remain largely banned, lawyers face severe restrictions in accessing detainees, and Israeli courts continue to play what the report described as a complicit role through superficial investigations that fail to hold perpetrators accountable, reinforcing systematic impunity.

Punitive legislation

Following the genocide, Israeli authorities intensified repression through more than 30 new racist laws, further entrenching apartheid policies and undermining the rights of detainees and the Palestinians in general.

Among the most dangerous measures cited was proposed legislation allowing the death penalty for Palestinians, alongside laws criminalizing expression, revoking citizenship, imposing house arrest, and extending the detention of children, steps the organizations said legalize grave human rights violations.

The report also said Israel continues to evade accountability through a comprehensive protection system that includes obstructing documentation, restricting legal access, and concealing evidence, allowing abuses to continue unchecked. It added that the US has targeted some Palestinian human rights organizations in attempts to undermine their work exposing Israeli crimes.

The organizations called on the international community to act urgently to halt the genocide and protect detainees, including the immediate release of sick prisoners, the elderly, children, and women; full access for international bodies and lawyers to prisons; and the referral of crimes to the International Criminal Court.

They also rejected the proposed death penalty law, warning that passing it would render the Knesset a “terrorist institution,” and called for comprehensive economic, cultural, and academic boycotts of Israel, as well as the activation of universal jurisdiction against those responsible for abuses.

The groups concluded that the continued crimes against Palestinian detainees constitute a direct threat to international law and human rights norms, demanding immediate and effective international action to end impunity and ensure detainee protection.