UN Report Condemns Unparalleled Violence, Including Torture, Rape and Murder, in Israel’s Unaccountable Prisons for Palestinians

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Three weeks ago, on October 10, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel issued a hugely significant report about Israel’s “war on hospitals” in the Gaza Strip over the last year, and its treatment of Palestinians in its accountable prison system, where torture, rape and murder are all widespread.

I wrote about the “war on hospitals” in a previous article, UN Report Confirms Israel Guilty of War Crimes and “Extermination” in Attacks on Gaza’s Hospitals, when I promised to follow up with a second article about the Commission’s findings regarding Israel’s prisons, and this article is my fulfilment of that promise.

When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, around 80% of the Palestinian population — 750,000 people — were ethnically cleansed from their homes in what is known as the Nakba (“catastrophe”), fleeing or being forcibly expelled as refugees into the West Bank (then controlled by Jordan), the Gaza Strip (then controlled by Egypt), Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. None of them — or their descendants — have ever been allowed to return.

Around 156,000 Palestinians remained within the new State of Israel, where they were subjected to military rule for the next 18 years, which, as Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, explains, “placed tight controls on all aspects of life for the Palestinian minority”, including “severe restrictions on movement, prohibitions on political organization, limitations on job opportunities, and censorship of publications.” The Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestinian Question adds that, “Although the Israeli government officially vowed that Palestinians who remained in the state would be treated as citizens with full rights, in fact it treated them as enemies under occupation, and military rule was the primary tool it used to control them.” As the Encyclopedia also notes, “The policies of the military government were aimed at ‘Judaizing’ the Galilee and remaining Arab areas in general, reducing the area of land held by Palestinians, and isolating them in their villages and towns.”

Resistance to Israel’s steady erosion of the rights of its Palestinian minority, which drew extensively on the martial law imposed by the British authorities during their control of Palestine from 1920 until 1948, meant that “[t]hose who disobeyed these regulations were jailed or fined” — and sometimes killed in massacres or “shot on sight” if they “tried to cross the ceasefire lines and return to their homeland.”

However, it was not until 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip after the Six-Day War, that it began to establish a system of prisons solely for Palestinians in the occupied territories, and an accompanying judicial system, specifically involving military courts.

These again, drew partly on measures introduced during the British Mandate rule in Palestine; namely, the establishment of military courts in 1937. Israel’s military courts were designed not only to deal with alleged crimes involving violence, but also with non-violent protests, political and cultural movements, and freedom of movement and association, and, as the academic Lisa Hajjar has established, they are fraught with problems, particularly involving the prolonged detention of suspects incommunicado, preventing access to lawyers, the routine use of “coercion” — or, as it might be better called, torture — under interrogation to obtain confessions, and the use of “secret evidence.”

When not prosecuting Palestinians, including children, in a military court system with an absurdly high conviction rate of 90 to 95%, Israel also routinely imprisons people under another holdover from British rule — “administrative detention”, which initially applies for six months, but can be renewed every six months on an ongoing basis.

The alleged basis for imposing “administrative detention” is that it involves cases drawing on evidence obtained by the security services, which would compromise national security were it to be revealed in a trial, but in reality, although these concerns may sometimes be valid, its use is largely an excuse to hold people indefinitely without charge or trial.

It should hardly need to be mentioned, as an aside, that, as a result, Israel’s British-derived “administrative detention” system was an inspiration for the Bush administration when it was setting up its post-9/11 prison at Guantánamo Bay, where, after nearly 23 years, some of the men still held there — those not subjected to dubious military trials — continue to be held indefinitely without charge or trial on a basis that looks remarkably similar to “administrative detention”, although without the inconvenience of having to be renewed every six months.

Israel’s prison system for Palestinians

Even before the deadly attacks by Hamas and other militants on southern Israel on October 7 last year, Israel’s prison system for Palestinians was a legal, moral and ethical abomination.

In July 2023, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, presented a report about Israel’s arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Palestinians to the UN Human Rights Council, in which she explained that, since 1967, “Israel had detained approximately one million Palestinians in the occupied territory, including tens of thousands of children.” At the time, she added, “there were 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including 160 children, and approximately 1,100 of them were detained without charge or trial.”

Albanese also explained that the whole of the occupied Palestinian territory had been transformed into “a constantly surveilled open-air prison”, adding that “the occupying power framed the Palestinians as a collective incarcerable security threat, ultimately de-civilianising them [by] eroding their status as protected persons.” She also explained that “Israel’s unlawful carceral practices were tantamount to international crimes, which warranted an urgent investigation by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court”, stressing that this was additionally necessary because “these offences appeared to be part of a plan of ‘de-Palestinisation’ of the territory”, which “threatened the existence of a people as a national cohesive group.”

Multiplying horrors since October 7

Since October 7, Israel’s prison system for Palestinians has, running parallel to its abominable, genocidal slaughter of civilians in the Gaza Strip, plumbed new depths of overreach and depravity, in relation to the numbers of Palestinians detained, and the sickening forms of abuse, torture, rape and murder to which they have been subjected. In addition, Israel has also attempted to prevent accountability for its actions by preventing any visits whatsoever by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the international body that monitors prison conditions.

To understand how troubling the exclusion of the ICRC is, it’s worth remembering that, in the US’s “war on terror”, the ICRC was only uniformly prevented from visiting prisoners in the US’s global network of torture prisons — the CIA “black sites” — but was, from the beginning, allowed access to the prisoners at Guantánamo, except in the cases of a handful of men regarded, erroneously, as being particularly significant.

As the UN report explained, “Between 7 October 2023 and July 2024, Israel arrested more than 14,000 Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem”, increasing its Palestinian prison population by nearly 300%.

Of these 14,000, 4,000 were arrested in Gaza, “many of whom were transferred to facilities in Israel for interrogation.” In addition, “hundreds of members of Palestinian armed groups were arrested on 7 and 8 October inside Israel.”

As the report proceeded to explain, “Those arrested in Gaza and transferred to Israel were apprehended primarily under the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Act”, a vile law, dating from 2002, and coinciding, therefore, with the early days of the US’s law-shredding “war on terror”, which was “intended to regulate the internment of unlawful combatants not entitled to prisoner of war status” — a parallel abrogation from international law, which was replicated at Guantánamo via the designation of prisoners as “enemy combatants” without rights, and the decision that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to them.

As the Commission added, the prisoners seized in Gaza “are being held in military-run facilities, primarily Sde Teiman camp in southern Israel, but some have been transferred to facilities administered by the Israel Prison Service.”

In addition, “Thousands from the West Bank were arrested under military orders”, while “thousands of Palestinian workers from Gaza who were in Israel legally on 7 October were detained in the Anatot facility in the West Bank, which is operated by the military”, although 3,000 of them “were reportedly released and sent to Gaza in November in response to a petition filed with the High Court of Justice of Israel.”

Arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearances and arbitrary releases

As the report explained, the thousands of Palestinians, mostly men, who “were arrested in Israeli military operations and attacks in Gaza and the West Bank”, include “journalists, human rights defenders, medical staff, patients, United Nations staff and relatives of suspects.” As the Commission also noted, “Boys were also arrested”, and, of all those seized, “Many were not informed of the reasons for their arrest.”

In addition, “Released detainees reported being interrogated about their potential involvement in the hostilities, including affiliation with Hamas, and the whereabouts of Israeli hostages”, while “[s]everal female human rights defenders, journalists and politicians from the West Bank were also arrested and detained under charges of ‘incitement to terrorism.’”

The Commission noted that “Israeli officials maintained that, following security screening and interrogation, ‘individuals found not to be involved in terrorist activities are released and returned to the Gaza Strip […] as quickly as possible.’” In reality, however, the Commission “found that detainees continued to be held by Israel, even after they had undergone security screenings and been found not to pose a real threat”, and that these detainees “included older persons, persons suffering from serious chronic diseases, pregnant women, children and medical personnel.”

According to official Israeli sources, detainees from Gaza were meant to “undergo a hearing, interrogation or screening by a senior Israeli security forces officer ‘within 7 to 10 days’, while the detention of Palestinians from the West Bank is reviewed by a military judge”, although the Commission noted that “many released detainees report that they still do not know the reason for their arrest, suggesting that they had not been given a hearing, or, if such a process had occurred, that they had not understood the proceedings.”

Regarding “enforced disappearances”, the Commission explained that the Israeli authorities “have not disclosed the names and whereabouts of the thousands of Palestinians from Gaza arrested since 7 October, including in response to several habeas corpus petitions to the High Court of Justice”, adding that “[m]inimum safeguards against enforced disappearances have been removed as a result of a recently introduced ban on visits by ICRC and new amendments to the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Acts that prevent judicial review of detention for up to 75 days and lawyer visits for up to 90 days pending court approval.”

As they also explained, although the Israeli authorities have, under pressure, provided “an email address that can allegedly be used to facilitate lawyer visits for Gaza detainees”, they were, as of July 15, “aware of only one instance in which a lawyer had been permitted to visit a detainee from Gaza in Sde Teiman camp.”

When it comes to releasing detainees, the process is often as arbitrary as the initial arrests — a deliberate process of terrorizing and disorienting Palestinians in general, which has typified the entire system since 1967. As the Commission noted, “Detainees from Gaza are being released by Israeli security forces at the Kerem Shalom crossing point with no procedures in place to ensure medical attention or support”, adding that this practice “has had a particularly detrimental effect on children.”

The Commission also noted that “the procedure followed by the Israeli authorities for the release of child detainees has contributed to children from the Gaza Strip being separated from family, because they return unaccompanied, with limited ability to locate or communicate with their families.” As a result, many released child detainees “have shown signs of extreme psychological distress and trauma.”

Establishing further disorientation, the Commission noted, “Palestinian detainees who were initially detained in the northern regions of Gaza were later released in the southern regions, far from their homes and families”, a prohibition that seems to have been imposed because of a persistent attempt by the Israelis to prevent anyone returning to the north, although its practical impact has been to prevent “the return of detainees to their places of origin and family unification.”

Horrendous abuse in military prisons, and especially the Sde Teiman facility

After discussing “mistreatment during arrests and transfer”, including “numerous reports of detainees being stripped, transported naked, blindfolded, handcuffed tightly enough to cause injury and swelling, kicked, beaten, sexually assaulted and subjected to religious slurs and death threats, as well as having their property damaged during arrest and transfer to detention facilities in Israel and the West Bank”, and some instances of detainees being used as human shields, the Commission turned its attention to “mistreatment in military-run detention facilities”, noting that it “verified information of widespread and institutionalized mistreatment of detainees from Gaza, including boys, in the Sde Teiman military detention camp, where all detainees from Gaza have initially been held since 8 October.”

The horrors of Sde Teiman have been exposed via mainstream media reports — specifically, a CNN report on May 11, based on the testimony of whistleblowers, and a Guardian article in May, both of which followed the publication of a report by Physicians for Human Rights Israel in April. More recently, its violations have been more fully exposed in “Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps”, a report by B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

Summarizing the abusive conditions, the Commission stated, “Detainees were blindfolded and handcuffed by Israeli security forces personnel at all times, confined to large and overcrowded makeshift cells and forced to kneel in stress positions for hours, while also being prohibited from speaking. They were denied adequate access to toilets and showers, and many were forced to wear diapers. They were subjected to beatings, including with batons and wooden sticks, even while immobilized, and intimidation and attacks by dogs.

In addition, “Detainees reported sleeping on thin mattresses on the floor, with only light blankets for cover, even in winter months, and being deprived of sleep. They were allowed to sleep only four to five hours each night, with the lights kept on continuously. No sleep was allowed during daytime. Detainees reported limited access to toilet facilities, sometimes only once a day, and no access to showers for weeks at a time. The food provided was insufficient and lacking variety, leading to significant weight loss and other medical complications.”

As the Commission proceeded to explain, “Detainees, including older individuals, taken to Sde Teiman for interrogation were tied in painful positions or bound to a screw placed high on a wall for hours, while blindfolded and suspended with their feet touching or barely touching the ground (‘shabah’). In one case, a detainee was left in that position for five to six hours as interrogators repeatedly subjected him to extreme changes in temperatures, using a strong fan and a heated lamp in alternation.” The Commission “also received reports of electric shock devices being used against detainees.”

All of the brutality above, of course, recalls nothing less than the most abusive, isolating and dehumanizing conditions experienced by prisoners in the CIA “black sites”, at Bagram prison in Afghanistan, used for processing prisoners before their long flight to Guantánamo, where numerous prisoners were killed through the use of torture techniques and extreme violence, and at Guantánamo itself during its worst years — from the end of 2002 until June 2004, when the law finally reached Guantánamo through a Supreme Court ruling that allowed lawyers to enter the prison to meet prisoners, piercing the veil of secrecy that, until that date, had shrouded its routine abominations.

As the Commission also noted, “Inadequate sanitary conditions restricted detainees’ ability to perform religious practices, such as prayer and ablutions, increased health risks and served to further humiliate and dehumanize detainees.” One detainee explained to the Commission members that, “owing to infrequent access to toilets, detainees were forced to urinate or defecate in their clothes”, while another stated that the prisoners “had been stripped of their humanity and treated no better than animals”, adding that “all detainees were unwashed and smelled, leaving their trousers yellowed, while soldiers handling them wore gloves that they would throw at the detainees when done.”

In addition, “Medical conditions linked to poor hygiene, including skin rashes, boils and abscesses, became worse. Medical attention was in short supply, of low quality and provided in a separate building, while detainees were handcuffed and blindfolded. In some cases, in both military and Israel Prison Service facilities, beatings sustained during interrogations resulted in fractures, yet appropriate medical attention was not provided. Constant handcuffing and inadequate medical care reportedly caused some detainees to have limbs amputated. Statements made by some medical personnel suggest that they were complicit in unlawful practices.”

These incidences, again, recall the impact of restricted, inadequate or non-existent medical facilities in the “war on terror”, which, in its early days, led to numerous claims by former prisoners that, for example, preventable amputations were widespread, along with the removal of teeth. Shamefully, the inadequate provision of medical care is still in place at Guantánamo today, as was noted last year in a devastating report by Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, based on a visit to the prison in February 2023.

As criticism of the conditions at Sde Teiman increased — particularly because of incidences of rape, and deaths at the prison, discussed below — the Israeli government responded by suggesting that it would close Sde Teiman and move prisoners into facilities run by the Israel Prison Service, although it was noted that, on July 3, “the Attorney General of Israel stated in a letter that the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was obstructing prisoner transfers to Israel Prison Service facilities”, and that, in August, 28 detainees were still detained at Sde Teiman.

Abusive conditions in Israel Prison Service facilities

The crucial role of Ben-Gvir, one of two openly far-right ministers (and settlers) in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, was also noted by the Commission with reference to the Israel Prison Service facilities in which most of the Palestinian prisoners are held. On October 16, 2023, just nine days after the October 7 attacks, Ben-Gvir, as the Minister of National Security, ordered significant additional restrictions in the prisons, which “included the imposition of a complete ban on family and ICRC visits, cancelling or restricting lawyer visits and phone calls, and cancelling non-urgent medical appointments.”

In addition, “Electricity was cut off in prison cells, detainees’ personal property was confiscated and access to showers and toilets was severely restricted. Access to fresh air in the prison yard was restricted or prohibited. Restrictions were imposed on food allowances and applied to thousands of detainees and prisoners, including women and children, who had been detained before 7 October.” The Commission also noted that, “On several occasions, the Minister of National Security indicated that revenge was the motivation for these policies.”

The Commission also “documented multiple instances of physical and verbal abuse, including death threats, in Israel Prison Service facilities”, with detainees in Negev, Megiddo, Ofer and Ramon prisons describing “being beaten by guards using batons and wooden sticks while handcuffed, including upon arrival at those prisons and during cell searches conducted by special Israel Prison Service units using dogs to intimidate and attack prisoners.”

Female detainees from the West Bank were also “subjected to the same restrictions as men in Israel Prison Service facilities and were affected in particular ways by insufficient and inadequate food and water and unhygienic conditions.” The Commission learned that “pregnant women held in an Israel Prison Service facility did not receive either sufficient or adequate food and were denied medical care”, and several women “reported that they had not been allowed to use toilets despite having requested access, or that they had been handcuffed for prolonged periods of time and therefore required help from other detainees to use the toilets.” Furthermore, female detainees also “had limited access to or were denied sanitary pads.”

The treatment of children

In any discussion of the treatment of children, it is important to note that Israel has a long and sordid history of refusing to recognize that juveniles (those under 18 years of age) cannot be held responsible for their actions, and must be rehabilitated rather than punished, according to the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict.

Israel ratified the Optional Protocol in 2005, but has done nothing to indicate its compliance, as has been noted in numerous reports ever since, and as was also confirmed by the Commission, which “determined that hundreds of children from Gaza and the West Bank were arrested and then transferred and detained in Israel and the West Bank”, and that they were “subjected to extreme violence during arrest, detention, interrogation and release.”

Further noting that “[c]hildren from Gaza were held in both military and Israel Prison Service facilities”, and that, in Sde Teiman, “children were held with adults and were subjected to similar mistreatment”, the Commission explained that a 15-year-old boy detained at Sde Teiman facility told them that “he had been the only child among 70 adults in a cell”, and that “[h]is legs had been shackled with metal chains and his hands cuffed so tightly that they had bled, yet he had not received any medical attention.” He added that he “had been repeatedly punished by being forced to stand with his hands raised for hours”, and “described his 23 days of detention as ‘the worst days of my life.’” A 13-year-old boy, meanwhile, told the Commission that “dogs had been used against him during interrogations and that he had been placed in solitary confinement.”

The Commission also noted that children “were imprisoned in overcrowded juvenile sections in Israel Prison Service facilities, primarily Megiddo and Ofer”, and that, although they “were separated from adults, the Israeli authorities subjected them all to the same restrictions that they applied to adults.”

Rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence

In ever darker and bleaker analysis of Israeli abuse of Palestinian prisoners, the Commission “documented more than 20 cases of sexual and gender-based violence against male and female detainees in more than 10 military and Israel Prison Service facilities, in particular in Negev prison and Sde Teiman camp for male detainees and in Damon and Hasharon prisons for female detainees.”

The Commission added, “Sexual violence was used as a means of punishment and intimidation from the moment of arrest and throughout detention, including during interrogations and searches”, also explaining that “[a]cts of sexual violence documented by the Commission were motivated by extreme hatred towards and a desire to dehumanize the Palestinian people.”

The Commission also “found that forced nudity, with the aim of degrading and humiliating victims in front of both soldiers and other detainees, was frequently used against male victims, including repeated strip searches; interrogation of detainees while they were naked; forcing detainees to perform certain movements while naked or stripped and, in some cases, also filmed; subjecting detainees to sexual slurs as they were transported naked; forcing naked detainees into a crowded cell together; and forcing stripped and blindfolded detainees to crouch on the ground with their hands tied behind their back.”

These, again, are techniques well known from the brutal early years of Guantánamo, and also from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where the only photos that have ever emerged of torture and abuse in the “war on terror”, which were made public in April 2004, sent shockwaves of horror around the world, even though no one but “a few bad apples” were ever held accountable.

In Israel’s prisons, the Commission added further details of sexual violence, noting that several male detainees “reported that Israeli security forces personnel had beaten, kicked, pulled or squeezed their genitals, often while [they] were naked”, and that, in some cases, had “used such objects as metal detectors and batons.” One detainee held in Negev prison stated that, in November 2023, “members of the Keter unit of the Israel Prison Service had forced him to strip and then ordered him to kiss the Israeli flag”, and that, when he refused, “he was beaten and his genitals were kicked so severely that he vomited and lost consciousness.”

The Commission also “received credible information concerning rape and sexual assault, including the use of an electrical probe to cause burns to the anus and the insertion of objects, such as sticks, broomsticks and vegetables, into the anus.” They added that some of those acts “were reportedly filmed by soldiers”, and specifically noted that, in July, “nine soldiers were questioned and several arrested for allegedly raping a detainee and causing life-threatening injury at Sde Teiman.”

That particular incident sent shockwaves of particular revulsion around the world, and was followed by the release of a video showing the rape of a prisoner, but the response within Israel only showed quite how depraved the country has become over the last year, as supporters of the accused tried to storm a military base to show their support of the accused. As +972 Magazine reported, “Far-right protesters, soldiers, and MKs [politicians] rallied for guards suspected of raping a Palestinian detainee. Once fringe, they’re now the public face of the state.” Soon after, sickeningly, the lead suspect was feted on Israeli TV as a hero, and efforts were made to legitimize, or even to make mandatory the sexual abuse of prisoners.

In further analysis of the sexual abuse of prisoners, the Commission “determined that detainees were routinely subjected to sexual abuse and harassment, and that threats of sexual assault and rape were directed at detainees or their female family members.” One detainee held in Sde Teiman “reported that female soldiers had forced him and others to make sounds like a sheep, curse the Hamas leadership and the prophet Muhammad, and say, ‘I am a whore’”, and it was noted that they “were beaten if they did not comply.” In another case, “a soldier took off his trousers and pressed his crotch to a detainee’s face, saying: ‘You are my bitch. Suck my dick.’”

The Commission also reported that female detainees were “subjected to sexual assault and harassment in military and Israel Prison Service facilities, as well as threats to their lives and threats of rape.” The sexual harassment “included attempts to kiss and touch their breasts”, and female prisoners also “reported repeated, prolonged and invasive strip-searches, both before and after interrogations.” They were also “forced to remove all clothes, including the veil, in front of male and female soldiers”, and “were beaten and harassed while being called ‘ugly’ and had sexual insults, such as ‘bitch’ and ‘whore’, directed at them.” In one case, a female detainee in an Israel Prison Service prison “was denied access to her lawyer after she had informed him of rape threats.”

The Commission also noted that female detainees “were photographed without their consent and in degrading circumstances, including in their underwear in front of male soldiers”, and that, in one case, verified because photos were posted online, a female detainee “was subjected to repeated and invasive strip-searches following her arrest at a police station in northern Israel”, where she “was beaten, verbally abused, dragged by her hair and photographed in front of an Israeli flag.”

The Commission also “received reports from the Palestinian Authority about the rape of two female detainees”, reports whose veracity it was, at the time of publication, “attempting to verify.”

Murders in Israeli custody

Discussing deaths in Israeli custody, the Commission stated that, as of July 15, “at least 53 Palestinian detainees had died in Israeli detention facilities since 7 October 2023” — 44 from Gaza, including 36 who died in Sde Teiman, and nine from the West Bank, with, suspiciously, most of their bodies not returned to their families for burial. The Commission chose not to use the word “murder”, as it cannot be verified at present that these 53 individuals died as a result of their treatment, although it takes quite a wild suspension of disbelief not to conclude that they were killed, if not deliberately, then through the exacerbation of pre-existing health conditions brought about through their sustained abuse.

One example cited by the Commission was Thaer Abu Assab, from Qalqilya in the West Bank, who had been imprisoned since 2005, and who died in Negev Prison on 18 November 2023 “after he was reportedly subjected to severe beatings by guards from the Keter Unit of the Israel Prison Service and his medical evacuation was delayed.” The Israeli authorities subsequently “opened a criminal investigation, but only limited disciplinary action was reportedly taken against the guards involved.”

In addition, two senior Palestinian doctors from Gaza have also died in Israeli detention. The first, Dr. Iyad Rantisi, the director of a women’s hospital in Bayt Lahya, “was arrested on 11 November at an Israeli security forces checkpoint and died six days later in the Israel Prison Service-operated Shikma Prison, where he was reportedly interrogated by the Israel Security Agency (also known as Shin Bet).”

The second, Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, the head of the orthopaedic department at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, “was arrested in December and died at Ofer Prison in April”, when his death sent shockwaves around the world, as he was well-known and well-respected internationally for his work — and, of course, because Shifa Hospital had been so publicly besieged by Israeli forces, and then violently invaded, with medical staff killed and/or “disappeared” into Israel’s prisons, and with mass graves later discovered in the hospital’s grounds.

The Commission added that a released detainee had told them that “he had seen Dr. Al-Bursh in Sde Teiman in December 2023 with bruises on his body and complaining of chest pain”, and also explained that the Israeli government had “provided no evidence that investigations into deaths in custody were being conducted, with a view to ensuring accountability.”

In the final section of the report, the Commission, very appropriately, analyzed the treatment of the hostages seized by Palestinian armed groups on October 7, which is worth reading, although, just as I refuse to dwell solely on the 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals killed on October 7 to the exclusion of the 50,000 (or, almost certainly, many more) Palestinians killed in the last year and three weeks, so I find myself unable to focus on 251 hostages to the exclusion of the nearly 20,000 Palestinians detained, brutally and unlawfully, in Israeli prisons. This is not to say that either group doesn’t deserve sympathy, because they do, but it is my choice not to comply with the Israelis’ insistence that only their own lives have value, and that it is justified in slaughtering or barbarically imprisoning 50, 100 or 200 times more Palestinians either as revenge, or as an excuse to implement a genocide.

Conclusions

In its conclusions, the Commission correctly noted that the “[m]ass arbitrary detention of Palestinians has been a long-standing practice over the course of the 75-year-long Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank”, “characterized by widespread and systematic abuse, physical and psychological violence, sexual and gender-based violence, and death in detention”, and that “[t]he frequency and severity of those practices have increased since 7 October.”

The Commission added that the mistreatment of Palestinian detainees “is the result of an intentional policy”, with acts of physical, psychological, sexual and reproductive violence “perpetrated to humiliate and degrade Palestinians”, concluding that “Israeli security forces committed those acts with the intent to inflict pain and suffering, amounting to torture as a war crime and a crime against humanity and constituting a violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”, and adding that “[t]he deaths of detainees as a result of abuse or neglect amount to the war crimes of wilful killing or murder and violations of the right to life.”

The Commission also linked this “systematic abuse”, “directly and causally” to statements made by Israeli officials, including Itamar Ben-Gvir, as well as “other members of the Israeli coalition Government legitimizing revenge and violence against Palestinians.” They lamented “[t]he lack of accountability for actions of individual members of the Israeli security forces and the increasing acceptance of violence against Palestinians”, which “have allowed such conduct to continue uninterrupted and become systematic and institutionalized.”

The Commission also noted that “[l]arge-scale arrests of Palestinian men and boys have been carried out with little or no justifiable cause, in many cases apparently simply because they were considered to be of ‘fighting age’ or they did not follow evacuation orders”, concluding that “[t]he detention of thousands of Palestinians for prolonged periods, even when they clearly posed no security risk, was arbitrary, unlawful and constitutes collective punishment and gender persecution.”

The Commission added that “[t]he Israeli policy of deliberately withholding information regarding the names, whereabouts and status of detainees amounts to the crime against humanity of enforced disappearance”, while “[t]he mental suffering of the families of detainees amounts to torture.”

Regarding the treatment of children, the Commission noted that “Israeli security forces intentionally, unlawfully and arbitrarily deprived Palestinian children of their liberty”, subjecting them to “severe mistreatment, humiliation and torture”, and noting that, when released, they “have shown signs of serious physical injury, extreme psychological distress and trauma.”

The Commission also condemned the use of detainees as human shields, and condemned “the prevalence and types of sexual and gender-based violence committed”, noting aspects of “sexualized torture”, and condemning the rape of prisoners as “a war crime and a crime against humanity”, adding that “[s]uch acts of sexual violence, causing severe physical and mental suffering, also amount to torture.”

Regarding forced nudity and “other acts of sexual violence committed for the purpose of humiliation or degradation”, the Commission found that such acts “constitute the war crimes of inhuman treatment and outrages upon personal dignity and the crime against humanity of other inhumane acts”, and, in some cases, “amount to the war crime and crime against humanity of torture.”

Finally, the Commission condemned the prohibition on released detainees returning to their places of residence in the north of Gaza as constituting “forced displacement”, while “[a]ttacks against civilians attempting to return to their families” amount to “forcible transfer”, both of which “are war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Two days ago, on October 30, the Commission presented its report at the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York. Documentation is here, a statement by Navi Pillay, the Chair of the Commission, is here, and there is also a video here of Navi Pillay’s presentation to the UNGA, and another video here of a press conference coinciding with the presentation of the report.

Predictably, no mainstream media bothered to cover the presentation of the report, although, as evidence of Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, it joins a growing body of evidence that must, one day, lead to Israel being held accountable for its actions, if the UN is to survive as a viable international body capable of enforcing international law. 

Cynics may decry the UN as toothless, but the graver reality is that it is a functional forum for the countries of the world to come together, stymied only by Israel and the US, with the support of other western countries, and it is no surprise therefore, that voices are now being raised calling for Israel to be suspended from the UN, and that a simmering battle remains ongoing to reconfigure the UN so that the US can no longer wield its veto in the Security Council that it has regularly used to defend Israel against the wishes of almost all of the UN’s other member states.

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Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.

Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.