July 10, 2024
Malak Arouq - April 1, 2024
Holder of a bachelor's degree in Media and Political Science. Social and political activist. Interested in producing documentaries and writing articles.
Insults, torture, maltreatment, physical and even sexual assaults against prisoners in Israeli prisons, whose numbers have reached about 9,100 detainees since October 7 until the holy month of Ramadan, including 3,558 administrative detainees, 200 children, and 51 female prisoners. This represents an unprecedented increase in the number of arrests over a short period.
According to the "Al-Dameer" foundation, the highest rate of arrests for 2023 was in October, coinciding with the start of the aggression on Gaza, totaling 2,070 arrests, and it was also the highest rate of arrests among women.
What happened in prisons after October 7? In the depths of Israeli prisons, the Palestinian detainee suffers from oppressive policies and retaliatory measures, waiting for a different world that leads them to freedom.
"The treatment of prisoners before the war was not good, but undoubtedly it is much worse today, and no detainee has been spared," says lawyer Raham Nasra after documenting testimonies of prisoners from various sections within the military prisons.
In the same context, the released Jerusalemite prisoner R.A. said in a conversation:
"The state of alert and emergency was raised on October 7 in a different and completely changed manner. Their treatment of us during the war period is unethical, we were subjected to daily abuse and assault. Gaza is not the only front in the war, their treatment of us clearly declares that the prisoners are an additional front."
On the morning of October 7, everything a Palestinian prisoner owned was confiscated—books, newspapers, radios, personal belongings—and they were prevented from preparing their own food. Since then, all prisoners wear the same clothes, and the time allotted for showering is about fifteen minutes for all prisoners in the section, indicating a lack of personal hygiene within the prisons.
Due to the unprecedented number of arrests and the prisons' incapacity to accommodate them, sections that were designed for six people now hold twice as many, and there are not enough beds, so some detainees sleep on thin mattresses. Sometimes the windows are left open, allowing the cold to seep into the prisoners' bodies.
The prisoner's right to outdoor breaks, their only respite, and to meet their families has been taken away. Many families know nothing about their sons since the war began. "You cannot see the sun or your family," the jailer tries to break the prisoner and strip the meaning from their life.
In a testimony taken by Nasra from one of the older detainees who had been arrested during the first and second intifadas, he says:
"Every arrest I have been through weighs less than my arrest during this war. Anyone who has not been arrested after October 7 does not know the meaning of prison."
Treating like animals The jailer does not see the Palestinian as a human and treats them in a way that would not even befit animals. Someone from the Public Defense Office told me that a detainee from the West Bank entered illegally to feed his children. After his arrest, he was left out in the cold overnight inside a chicken cage at the Atarot police station.
The Wall Street Journal published in March testimonies from released Palestinian detainees, some of whom said that Israeli forces forced them to kneel for up to 20 hours and stand in difficult physical positions, in addition to physically and verbally assaulting them.
Deprivation of religious rites "We wish from our people in Beitunia and Rafat to raise the call to prayer or to make the loudspeakers closer to us, as the jailer has confiscated our clock and banned the call to prayer in prison, so we do not know the prayer time, my loved ones," wrote one of the prisoners from inside Ofer prison after successfully passing these words outside with his lawyer.
In a conversation with the released prisoner R.A., he said that after retaliatory measures, he witnessed the desecration and urination on the Quran by soldiers in a provocative attempt to upset the prisoners' feelings, who were also deprived of performing group prayers.
Prisoners suffer from restrictions that prevent them from performing their religious rites and experiencing the only moments of tranquility during their day. One of the released prisoners said at the beginning of Ramadan:
"Ramadan has started and we did not fast because we did not know."
The prisoner is isolated from the outside world and unaware of the time, so how can he perform religious duties?
Starvation policy "Do you know what it means for ten men to share one cucumber?"
This was stated by one of the detainees to his lawyer, Raham Nasra, during her visit. Since October 7, the prisoner has been unable to use the prison canteen, and instead, three meals are introduced during the day that barely satisfy a small child.
The bodies of the prisoners are wasting away due to the starvation policy followed by the jailer. Raham explained to me about an administrative detainee who lost 37 kilograms of his weight between the end of December and the beginning of March. In an interview I watched with the father of the prisoner Tariq Kiwan, one of the detainees of the Dignity Uprising, he said:
"My son tried to reassure me but I know he is not well, he lost about 20 kilograms due to the lack of food."
The starvation policy is also a slow death policy for the sick, specifically for those suffering from diabetes. Since October 7, the entry of sugar into prisons has been banned, so how can a diabetic maintain the sugar balance in his body?
Deprivation of treatment Speaking of the sick, the conditions of many sick prisoners worsened after October 7, and some lost their lives. Mahmoud Al-Sabbar, a prisoner from the south of Hebron suffering from a chronic illness, was deprived of the necessary treatment and food after October 7 and lost his life. In the interview conducted with his father for Al Jazeera, he described his son's death as "execution."
The deprivation of necessary treatment continues and death threatens other prisoners, who may lose their lives at any moment.
Sexual assaults inside prisons "The sexual assaults that took place reached the extent of rape, they were inserting electric inspection devices into the sensitive areas of the detainees in front of the female soldiers, then you see fifty guards around you laughing loudly," said R.A. about witnessing sexual assaults some prisoners suffered from the jailers.
Targeting the bodies of female prisoners as a weapon According to reports from UN experts: Gazan women were subjected to arbitrary arrests and violations such as being prevented from accessing sanitary pads and taking food and medicine. They were beaten and put in cages under the rain. They were also subjected to naked searches and taking degrading photos of them.
In addition to being threatened with sexual assault, at least two Palestinian female detainees were raped. This was also confirmed by a report by The Guardian, where the expert committee stated there is evidence of at least two cases of rape.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor documented horrifying testimonies from dozens of Gazan female detainees about being subjected to sexual violence, where one of the released women mentioned:
"In detention, I was interrogated several times and each time I was stripped by the female soldiers and harassed by them. The soldiers sometimes watched and commented, there were obscene words I cannot say and threats of rape."
There is no doubt that the testimonies and the number of sexual violations exceed what we have received, as it is not easy for a Palestinian woman to disclose being harassed or raped, nor is it easy for a Palestinian prisoner to talk about being sexually assaulted. Sexual violations against female prisoners are another weapon used by the colonizer in an attempt to humiliate and weaken the Palestinians.
Gazan detainees suffer greatly I believe that the scenes of civilian and defenseless prisoners, handcuffed and blindfolded, who were stripped of their clothes in Gaza, do not leave our memory. After weeks of torture and enforced disappearance, dozens of them were released showing signs of violence and torture. This confirms that the arrests included civilians, as indicated by an interview with Fahmiya Al-Khalediya, an eighty-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimer's who was released after two months of detention.
According to the Prisoners' Club, thousands of Gazan workers who were arrested from areas inside Israel and the West Bank were later released. As for the number of females inside the detentions, it is more than 120 cases, including infants and elderly women.
The fate of hundreds of Gazan detainees remains unknown and there is complete Israeli blackout. Lawyer Nadia Daqqa from "Hamoked" - Center for the Defence of the Individual, stated:
"There is no accurate information so far about the number of Gazan prisoners but it exceeds 700 detainees. The detention conditions violate international laws and what is happening is enforced disappearance and unprecedented violations."
The elderly "M.N." (70 years old) reported to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor:
"They arrested me from my home in the Hope neighborhood west of Khan Younis, I informed them that I am sick and unable to move, they did not care and forced me to undress, then they transferred me to a demolished house, I felt I was used as a human shield. Later they arrested more and transferred us in a harsh torture journey to a detention center made of iron cages."
Journalist Diaa Al-Kahlout from Gaza describes the harsh conditions of his detention:
"On the morning of December 7th, they demanded that we leave our homes and strip our clothes. About 300 men were gathered and transferred by trucks away from the 'Zikim' military site. We underwent field interrogation and remained facing the sea wearing only our underwear. We spent the entire detention period blindfolded and handcuffed in 'Sediyot Timan', even while sleeping. For many days, we were forced to kneel from four in the morning until eleven at night in front of dozens of soldiers, and anyone who moved even slightly was beaten. They seemed to enjoy humiliating us, as we were also forced repeatedly to chant 'The people of Israel live, long live the state of Israel.' I spent 33 days in detention, was interrogated about my journalistic work, and subjected to 'ghosting' and psychological abuses. When I confronted them and challenged their claims of having terrorists among us, they put tape over my mouth. We were not treated humanely at all; even the elderly and cancer patients among us were not spared. After our release, we were left in the Rafah area in the south of the Strip and separated from our families."
According to data from prisoners released specifically from 'Ofer' prison, it was confirmed that they could hear the screams of Gazan detainees around the clock due to successive torture sessions.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in early March that 27 Palestinians from Gaza died in Israeli detention, exceeding the total number of Palestinian prisoners who have died in jails and detention facilities to 37.
"The prisoner is isolated from life; there were two suicide attempts in 'Ofer' prison due to arbitrary and punitive measures targeting everyone in the prison irrespective of the charges against them."
In the text "Almond in Prison" by prisoner Walid Daqqa, it is said:
"The prison does not tolerate a middle ground, standing as it does, in stark contrast to freedom. The space between them may appear real, but it widens to encompass the void of the entire world—a desolate emptiness and a deadly routine. At best, the smallest space is virgin land, perhaps allowing the prisoner to cultivate something fruitful to broaden his slice of freedom in the absolute confines of the prison, before the jailer occupies it, in a daily struggle, with more barbed wire."
The jailer has succeeded in occupying this space with more and more barbed wire through violations and arbitrary measures against every Palestinian detainee, leaving no possibility for the prisoner to cultivate his plot fruitfully—no almonds to bloom in the prison under these oppressive conditions, vengeful desires, and in the absence of oversight and justice.
One wonders how prisoners wipe the dust of despair from themselves, how they break the monotony of time in prison, and how they stand at the thresholds of the future. What also happens behind the thick prison walls? What happens afterwards and hasn't reached us? Many questions without answers.