By Janan Abdu
Attorney specializing in torture cases, working in the Legal Department of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI)

“You are the first human being I have seen since the day of my arrest,” said M.A., a 19-year-old detainee held in Rakevet Prison in the city of Ramla, speaking to me with a mixture of grief and agitation. He has been in detention for almost a full year.

This single sentence encapsulates what prisoners from Gaza endure in Israeli prisons and detention facilities—both military and those run by the Israel Prison Service—most of whom were arrested under the “Unlawful Combatants Law,” a form of arbitrary administrative detention. They were abducted in a manner that flagrantly violates international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, which protects civilians in times of war.

Today, there are about 3,000 detainees—in addition to the thousands already released—who have been arrested under this law, including women and minors. The fact that thousands have been released in itself refutes Israel’s claim that they were “combatants” and confirms that they are civilians.

After arrest, the court “approves” the detention in a perfunctory manner: the detainee appears only as a face on a soldier’s phone screen, and the judge tells him, “You are detained until the end of the war,” without inquiring about his circumstances or conditions of detention. Such a process reflects a blatant abdication of the judiciary’s basic responsibility to oversee prisons and the conditions of those held in them—oversight that is essential, especially when all other monitoring is absent, as is the case in these prisons.

M.A. does not know where he is or why he is there—a question repeated by every detainee I visit. Even worse, he does not know how long he will remain imprisoned. He has so far spent about eight months in Rakevet Prison under inhumane, harsh, and degrading conditions that amount to torture, in violation of international law—most notably the Convention Against Torture, which prohibits, absolutely and without exception, all forms of torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Israel signed and ratified this convention in 1991, yet it has never enacted domestic legislation criminalizing torture.

The army arrested M.A. in Gaza, abused him, and transferred him first to Sde Teiman, where he remained for about two months; then to the military prison at Ofer for another two months before being moved to Rakevet—all without meeting a lawyer.

Following the October 7th events, an amendment to the “Unlawful Combatants Law” allowed the authorities to deny access to a lawyer for six months, to hold detainees for 45 days without an arrest order, and to refrain from bringing them before a judge for up to 75 days—creating in effect a situation of enforced disappearance, where people are abducted from Gaza with no legal oversight.

Like thousands of other Gazans, M.A. was abducted and imprisoned without anyone knowing his whereabouts or the conditions of his detention; the authorities refused to disclose any information about such detainees for six months.

Later, when we finally began visiting prisoners and hearing their testimonies, the horrifying scale of the systematic and deliberate torture and abuse they endured became clear. Dozens of families had contacted me, searching for their missing loved ones from Gaza. Some even sent me photos showing the Israeli army detaining them—some dressed in the white suits they were forced to wear—yet the authorities’ response was invariably: “There is no evidence that he is in our custody.”

Those were the most difficult moments for me and for the families. For a person known to be imprisoned—even if visits are delayed—at least we know he is alive and in custody. But when the family asserts that their loved one was arrested and the authorities deny holding him, there is, tragically, only one conclusion—one I often found unbearable to voice to the families.

I will never forget Asmahan asking me, “So where is my son? Please, lawyer, find him for me. I have no one else—my husband and daughter were killed.”

The ordeal endured by M.A. was no different from that faced by other detainees transferred from Gaza to Israel’s prisons, and it mirrors—albeit often in harsher form—the systematic torture and abuse inflicted since October 7th, 2023, on Palestinian prisoners from the West Bank, Jerusalem, and inside the Green Line (’48 areas). What had been known as torture before October 7th now seems the minimum threshold compared to what is being practiced today.

The state of emergency declared in prisons after October 7th led to a total closure of facilities, banning visits by lawyers, the Red Cross, and families. Visits by the Red Cross and families remain banned to this day. Prisoners were cut off from all communication and subjected to a harsh, draconian regime affecting every aspect of life: systematic starvation, denial of medical care, severe restrictions on bathing, confiscation of clothing except for a single garment, confiscation of books and writing materials, and outbreaks of contagious skin diseases.

The authorities have employed a wide array of torture methods:
– Prolonged stress positions including shabah (suspension), squatting, and the so-called “frog position”
– Scalding prisoners with hot water
– Beating with blunt instruments, including on sensitive parts of the body
– Solitary confinement in so-called “disco rooms”, with deafening music that disorients the senses of space and time
– And many other forms of cruel and degrading treatment.

The suffering of M.A. intensified upon his arrival at Rakevet Prison, where he and others are held in underground cells with no sunlight, no windows, stifling heat, and no ventilation. Since arriving at Rakevet, M.A. has not seen sunlight; what is called “recreation time” (fawra) is merely transfer to another closed room, not always granted and sometimes lasting only a few minutes.

They are subjected to routine violent raids, during which dogs with metal muzzles are used to strike their faces, and they are forced to lie face-down as guards trample on them. There is no real medical care—once every two months a man, not wearing a medical coat, comes to ask about their health but provides no medication. M.A. suffers from shortness of breath due to the living conditions but receives no treatment.

M.A. could not describe in detail the prison conditions; how could he, when the masked guard dressed in black, with only his eyes visible, stood behind him, leaving the door open while pacing back and forth—a silent warning: “I am here; beware.”

My colleague and I feared that the prisoners were being kept under such conditions. This prison had been shut down years earlier because it was underground and did not meet minimum living standards—and we found our fears confirmed.

The same masked guard escorted us down several flights of stairs to the underground lawyers’ meeting area, itself no more than one square meter in size. There were three such rooms for lawyers crammed into a space of barely three square meters. The floor was infested with insects and crumbling, evidence that the area had long been unused—or was deliberately left in such a state.

My colleague and I wondered: If this is the state of the lawyers’ room, what must it be like on the other side of the wall—for the prisoners themselves? The answer, as we later learned, was just as grim as we feared.

I left the visit deeply worried for my client and fearful that he would be further abused because of the visit. I spoke to him in a loud voice—deliberately so that the guard would hear—telling him that any abuse he suffers after the visit as retaliation is a crime punishable by law, and that I would return to ask about it.

Yet I also left with a measure of solace, knowing that I had at least enabled him to see and speak with a “first human being” since his arrest a year ago, had informed him of his rights, and had given him the comfort of knowing that he could look forward to another visit—one that would be, above all, a humane encounter.

The article was published in Arabic on the Scene 48 website

Original article in Arabic: Source provided by the author.