Btselem / 1 April 2024

I’m a resident of Jerusalem. I was arrested in April 2021 on security charges, and I was incarcerated until March 2024. During these 35 months, I moved between three prisons: Rimon, Negev and Nafha. I was at Nafha from August 2023 until March 2024 - meaning during the war too.

Each prisoner had a maximum of three minutes to shower

After 7 October 2023, the situation in prisons became catastrophic compared to what I experienced before. The prison administration collectively punished us on a regular basis. The first thing was increasing the number of prisoners in each cell from six to 14. This meant reduced privacy and a much longer wait to use the toilet in the cell. In addition, the new detainees who came to the cell had to sleep on the floor, because there were only three bunk beds.

We used to be able to buy unlimited toilet paper in the canteen, but after 7 October, the canteen was canceled, and we received an allowance of paper from the prison administration, which we had to use sparingly.

About the showers, until the war, I was in a cell that didn’t have a shower, but the shared showers had hot water, and there was enough time to shower. The cell I was transferred to at the beginning of the war had a shower, but by then, the hot water had been cut off the cells. The prison administration provided hot water only in the shared showers, where all of us were allowed to go together for an hour once every three days - so each prisoner had a maximum of three minutes to shower.

They also reduced the number of stalls in the shared showers from 12 to six and removed the partitions between them. Inmates from 20 cells shared these six showers, and without the partitions, there was no privacy at all, and some people refused to shower because of it.

Until the war, we were allowed out of the cells for 12 hours, between 6:00 A.M. and 6:00 P.M., and could walk in a large lot outside, to be in the sun. But since 7 October, we were only allowed out for the shower, and we’d look there for the few rays of sunlight that came through a hole in the wall. On the days we couldn’t shower, I bathed in the toilet bowl with cold water, using the pitcher for hand washing before prayers. Until the war, we also had access to laundry rooms with washing machines in every wing, but after 7 October, the machines were confiscated, and we weren’t allowed to hang laundry outside either.

When the war started, I was transferred from Wing 4 to Wing 12, where the cells are smaller and they’re all in one row, and there’s no ventilation. Because of the restrictions on using hot water and bathing time, and the lack of access to washing machines, it was very smelly there. When the guards came to do roll call or search the cells, they sprayed them with air freshener because of the bad smell. We started washing the clothes by hand with a drop of shampoo, because we got no laundry powder. We had to hang the wet clothes in the cell, and we improvised a clothesline from the plastic bags the bread came in. The prison administration didn’t like it, and they searched the cells to confiscate the clotheslines and started giving out bread in cardboard boxes so we wouldn’t have plastic bags.

I got nail fungus and the only treatment I received was Tylenol, because they closed the prison infirmary

The unhygienic conditions forced on us – limited bathing, no hot water, the ban on hanging laundry and the cancelation of daily outings, which meant staying in the cramped cells for a long time and not being exposed to the sun led to the spread of skin diseases. I got nail fungus and the only treatment I received was Tylenol, because they closed the prison infirmary. The nurse told us the new guidelines were that we only get medical treatment in life-threatening situations. That’s why they gave Tylenol for everything. In our cell, for example, there were seven prisoners who suffered from rashes and pimples. They were itchy all the time and suffered a lot, but they got no ointment or treatment. Some prisoners had scabies.

Before October 7, every wing had a kitchen and we could buy lots of groceries in the canteen: meat, chicken, vegetables, fruit, salt, spices, sugar and rice. We cooked for ourselves so the food was good and we didn’t want for anything. But after 7 October, the canteen was canceled, like I said, and they also confiscated all the food we had already bought. We were completely dependent on the food the prison administration gave us, and the feeling was that they were trying to starve us as a punishment for what happened on the Gaza border. The food they gave us was bad and not cooked properly. For lunch, we only got three spoons of half-cooked rice per prisoner and murky, tasteless broth, sometimes a teaspoonful of tuna, or a cup of hot corn kernels without no salt or seasoning, or half-cooked, smelly eggs. I think they were expired. All the food was disgusting.

Breakfast consisted of 50 grams of labneh for each prisoner, and ten small slices of bread that we shared among us. Dinner was like lunch, sometimes with an added piece of uncooked hotdog. We didn’t get fruit, vegetables, sugar or salt, and there was no seasoning in the food at all.

On 7 October, we still had TVs in our cells, so that’s how we found out about what happened near the Gaza border that day. The prison administration told us nothing. But that day, they confiscated everything in the cells: TVs, electric kettles, hotplates, heaters, fans, pillows, sheets, blankets and mattress covers. They left only one blanket for each prisoner. Family visits and lawyer visits were banned, and even Red Cross visits. So we were cut off from the outside world. Of course, they also confiscated cell phones that people had hidden in the wings.

Family visits and lawyer visits were banned, and even Red Cross visits. So we were cut off from the outside world

They started searching the cells frequently and confiscating the most basic things, paper, pens, batteries and radios. They took away our mattresses every day between 6:00 A.M. and 10:00 P.M. We were also not allowed to talk to prisoners in other cells, and there were punishments for it like no showers. We were punished like that once. At first, they cut off the power during the day, and turned it back on only between 6:00 P.M. and 10:00 P.M. After that, they kept it off all the time. We had to go to the bathroom at night in total darkness and be careful not to step on the prisoners who were sleeping on the floor of the cell because of the overcrowding.

My last six months in prison were especially hard and radically different from what had gone on before. Even prisoners who were sentenced to long prison terms, and had been in prison for 20 or 30 years, said that the period after 7 October was the worst time they had in prison.

During the month of Ramadan, because of pressure from the inmates, power in the cells was restored at night - between the fast-breaking meal and the meal before the fast begins, but the meals they gave were of low quality and insufficient quantity.

Because of the spread of skin diseases, and especially because the guards caught them too, in the last month before my release, the prison administration had to let us go out to the yard for an hour every morning. They took out one cell at a time.

On the day I was released, they took me for a checkup at 11:00 A.M., and then I signed the release document. I asked the officer to let me call my father so he would wait for me outside the prison, but he wouldn’t.

* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher ‘Amer ‘Aruri on 1 April 2024