Newly leaked accounts from lawyers and human rights groups describe extreme abuse against Palestinian detainees — including broken bones, rape, mutilation, and denial of medical care — inside Israel’s detention system during the ongoing war in Gaza.
Shocking testimonies collected in recent weeks point to what lawyers describe as a systemic pattern of torture inside Israeli prisons and military facilities. Hundreds of Palestinians are reportedly being held indefinitely in an underground detention wing known as Rakevet, part of the Ramla prison complex, where sunlight never enters and violence is said to be routine.
“Their faces show what they have suffered”
Palestinian lawyers say detainees in Rakevet have been beaten, starved, and left without treatment, even when suffering serious fractures.
“When prisoners arrive to speak with a lawyer, their faces show what they have suffered,” said attorney Nadia Dhaka, who has interviewed multiple detainees. “Prisoners are afraid to speak. The room is one square meter. Guards refuse to leave.”
One detainee, identified as I.H., had a broken jaw, shoulder, and ribs with no medical care provided. Another, K.H.D., said guards used “breaking thumbs” as a form of punishment.
These accounts join a growing body of evidence compiled during Israel’s two-year war in Gaza, where arrests have surged dramatically.
Allegations of murder, rape, and systematic torture
More than 9,200 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to the rights group Addameer. Most are in administrative detention — held without charge or trial.
Dozens from Gaza are also being held in the notorious Sde Teman military camp, where released detainees have described killings, severe assaults, sexual violence, and rape. Israeli authorities deny the allegations, but testimonies from those freed during last month’s ceasefire paint a grim picture.
Bodies of Palestinian prisoners returned to Gaza reportedly showed signs of torture, mutilation, and execution, with some corpses bearing ropes around their necks.
Israeli human rights organizations, including the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), say these cases are not isolated.
“Organizations have documented widespread abuses — beatings, sexual violence, harassment and threats — indicating systematic, deliberate ill-treatment,” PCATI reported earlier this year.
Netanyahu government moves to tighten laws
The wave of abuse reports comes as Israel’s parliament advances a controversial bill introducing the death penalty for ‘terrorist acts motivated by racial hatred’ against Israelis — a measure rights groups say would apply exclusively to Palestinians.
Meanwhile, attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank continue to rise, often with impunity and without meeting the law’s criteria.
Addameer warned that the new legislation marks “a serious escalation of Israeli violations,” noting that Palestinians have already faced hundreds of extrajudicial executions.
“A broader system of repression”
Experts say the underground Rakevet site is just one part of a much larger network designed to suppress Palestinian society.
“This secret center is symptomatic of the broader phenomenon of Israeli imprisonment,” said Professor Basil Faraj of Birzeit University. “Palestinians are treated in a violent, extremely brutal manner that denies all of their rights.”
Faraj noted that many Palestinians are detained under Israel’s ‘unlawful combatants’ law, which allows indefinite detention without trial.
“The psychological torture of not knowing why you are detained only deepens the violence,” he said. “This has intensified dramatically over the past two years.”
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