Arrested and held unlawfully, thousands of Palestinians are suffering abuse at the hands of Israeli captors.
Occupied East Jerusalem – In early November, the Israeli authorities summoned Hashim Matar* to the police station in occupied East Jerusalem.
For 10 days, he was interrogated about whether he supported Hamas and was a member of the Palestinian group. Between questioning, Matar was locked in a small room with other detainees, where they were punched, kicked and beaten with batons.
“Lots of people had their [sternum] or heads broken, often gushing with blood,” Matar, a 54-year-old man with a short grey beard and laugh lines around his eyes, told media three months after he was released from detention.
“We weren’t even treated like animals. At least animals are treated with some sort of dignity.”
Israel has taken thousands of Palestinians captive since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, in which 1,139 people were killed and about 250 abducted.
Since then, the number of Palestinians arrested in the occupied West Bank exceeds 7,350 people, according to the Addameer monitor in Ramallah.
While some Palestinians have been released, 9,100 remain captive. That’s a sharp uptick from the 5,200 that were in Israeli prisons before October 7.
These figures do not include the thousands of adults and children the Israeli army has reportedly detained, tortured and interrogated in makeshift prisons across Gaza, outside any legal or civilian oversight.
Once in custody, Palestinians are shoved into vehicles and beaten until they arrive at the detention facility. That is where they are told to strip, get dressed and to strip again – a cycle that occurs several times while they are beaten, sometimes on their genitalia.
Captives are subjected to even worse treatment behind bars. Addameer said water or electricity is cut off and captives are denied visits from their relatives or the Red Cross. The rights group added that most victims are denied healthcare, even for injuries sustained during their arrest. As a result, prisoners have died due to health neglect.
“So far, 10 prisoners from the West Bank [have died]. This is the highest figure ever in such a short period,” the Addameer staff member told media.
Matar was afraid he might fall ill during his time in prison. He described how Israeli guards would turn the lights off during the day so captives languished in the dark and flood the cells with light at night to keep prisoners awake as they lay on the cold floors.
However, being beaten was the worst part of detention, Matar said.
Violence and neglect
“I would ask them: ‘Why are you beating us? What did we do to you for you to beat us?’”
Israel has also weaponised quasi-judicial measures to arrest thousands of Palestinians without charge. Of all Palestinians detained since October 7, about 3,050 are held in “administrative detention”, an emergency measure that Israel inherited from the colonial British Mandate for Palestine.
“Israel’s sweeping use of administrative detention is not lawful,” said Omar Shakir, the Israel-Palestine director at Human Rights Watch.
“But these practices don’t just date back years, but decades and they have only escalated since October 7.”
The Addameer staff member added that among 200 Palestinian children languishing in Israeli prisons, 40 are held under administrative detention, and captives suffering from severe or terminal illnesses are denied seeing family and have little hope of being released.
At the end of February, the Addameer staffer said, one cancer patient died in an Israeli prison at the age of 23.
“He just collapsed. He died after five months of not being able to see his family,” they told media.
“This is cruel collective punishment. Just imagine [this person’s family] who lost their beloved. They weren’t even able to be with him in his last moments.”
In addition to the sweeping arrests in the West Bank, the Israeli army has arrested thousands of Palestinians from Gaza since launching its devastating war on the enclave.
Over the last five months, Israel has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly the entire population of 2.3 million people in Gaza. Many have also gone missing, raising fears that they are either buried under the rubble or languishing in the labyrinth of makeshift Israeli prisons in Gaza.
Ibrahim Yacoub*, 29, was arrested by Israeli soldiers in northern Gaza on November 21. He said his hands were tied behind his back and he was forced to walk to an Israeli detention spot in a group of 80 captives.
“Any time one of us stumbled, a soldier would hit us on top of the head,” he told media. “I kept dreading when they were going to hit me next.”
Yacoub was eventually taken to what appeared to be an empty warehouse, where Israeli soldiers interrogated him, repeatedly asking about Hamas’s operations and his role in the group.
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