Ramallah, occupied West Bank – Israel has arrested so many Palestinians in the two weeks since it began bombing the besieged Gaza Strip that the number of Palestinians in its custody has doubled.
Before October 7, when the armed Palestinian resistance group Hamas launched an attack on Israel, which responded almost immediately with a relentless bombing campaign, there were about 5,200 Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
The number of prisoners has now risen to over 10,000 people, Palestinian officials said on Thursday afternoon.
Israel has arrested around 4,000 Gazans working in Israel in the past two weeks and is holding them in military bases, according to officials and human rights groups. In addition, 1,070 more Palestinians were arrested in army night raids in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“Arrests are happening 24 hours a day,” Sahar Francis, head of the Ramallah-based Addameer prisoners’ rights group, told Al Jazeera.
Most Gazans are being held at a military base called Sde Teyman near Beer al-Sabe (Be’er Sheva) in the southern Naqab Desert, she said.
Hundreds more are being held in Ofer prison near Ramallah and the Anatot military camp near the village of Anata in occupied East Jerusalem.
Palestinian lawyers and officials have highlighted the severe mistreatment and horrific conditions in which detainees are arrested and held.
A prison guard stands in Gilboa Prison in northern Israel in September 2021 [Sebastian Scheiner/AP Photo]
“Dangerous” prison conditions
At a news conference in Ramallah on Thursday afternoon, the head of the Palestinian Authority’s Detainees Affairs Commission, Qadura Fares, said recent developments regarding prisoners were “unprecedented” and “dangerous.”
“We have long hesitated to hold this press conference about another chapter of Israeli crimes and what our male and female prisoners are subjected to in the occupation prisons, out of fear, tension and anxiety among the prisoners’ families and ours Palestinian people in general,” Fares said.
“Prisoners face hunger and thirst; They do not have access to medicines, especially for those suffering from chronic diseases that require regular medication,” he said, adding that the situation became worse “when the prison administration cut off water and electricity.”
Addameer also reported on preventing access to medical care. “They also closed prison clinics and prevented prisoners from attending hospitals and outside clinics, although prisoners included some cancer patients who needed ongoing treatment,” the human rights group said.
“The most dangerous thing” in recent days has been “physical attacks” and degrading treatment, Fares continued. “Anyone who is arrested is attacked.
“Many of the prisoners had their limbs, hands and legs broken…degrading and insulting facial expressions, insults, insults, they were handcuffed behind their backs and at the end tightened so much that they caused severe pain…naked, humiliating and grouped.” Search of prisoners “, he said.
A man sits among buildings destroyed by an Israeli bombardment in al-Zahra, on the outskirts of Gaza City, Friday, Oct. 20, 2023 [Ali Mahmoud/AP Photo]
“Cut off from the world”
Aside from the 4,000 Gazans, most of whom are held in the Sde Teyman military camp, about 6,000 Palestinians are detained in Israeli prisons and detention centers.
The 5,200 people detained before October 7 are mostly residents of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
But over the past two weeks, the Israeli army arrested another 1,070 Palestinians in nightly military raids in these areas.
During times of “calm” under Israel’s 56-year military occupation, 15 to 20 people are arrested every day. However, according to Palestinian officials, the number of arrests of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem has increased to 120 people a day since October 7.
The arrests come through surprise military raids on Palestinian homes at dawn, humiliating searches of family members and their homes, destruction of property and belongings, and verbal and physical abuse.
Francis said Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and detention centers are “cut off from the world.”
“There is no time on the farm, no contact with their families, no family visits and no regular lawyer visits,” she explained.
Israeli authorities have also blocked access to canteens needed to purchase essentials such as toothpaste and limited meals to two per day instead of three.
The Israeli parliament, known as the Knesset, on Wednesday approved a plan, currently in effect for three months, that calls for a reduction in the minimum living space allocated to each prisoner from the previous 3.5 square meters to accommodate the growing number of prisoners.
In a press conference by Palestinian civil rights groups on Tuesday in Ramallah, Addameer called on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to “fulfill its responsibility” as the only authorized international organization monitoring the situation of Palestinian detainees and the group to visit them, particularly those from Gaza in military camps.
“We don’t see any real pressure from the ICRC,” Francis told Al Jazeera. “They say they are trying but Israel is stopping them, but that is no excuse. Too much time has passed.”
Indefinite detention
According to human rights groups, Israel uses different legal pretexts to detain detainees from different areas.
Palestinians from the Gaza Strip detained in Israel are being held under the Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows authorities to detain Palestinians indefinitely without effective judicial review.
The law defines an “unlawful combatant” as “a person who has either directly or indirectly participated in hostile acts against the State of Israel or is a member of a force that commits hostile acts against the State of Israel.”
On October 13, Israel changed the law to make it easier to arrest Palestinians on mere suspicion. The provisions include, among other things, “expanding the circle of persons authorized to issue arrest warrants to include generals and lower-ranking persons.”
The Unlawful Combatants Law is the equivalent of administrative detention in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, allowing Israel to detain Palestinians from those areas indefinitely under “secret evidence.”
Most of the 1,070 people arrested in these areas since Oct. 7 will be transferred to administrative detention, Francis said.
“They sign dozens of administrative detention orders every day,” Francis said.
Israel’s latest attack on Gaza began on October 7 after Hamas launched a surprise attack just outside the besieged enclave on Israeli territory. At least 1,400 people have been killed in Israel so far, according to Israeli officials.
Since then, Israeli retaliatory strikes have killed at least 4,137 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including 1,524 children, while 81 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank.