Israel continues to bar the International Committee of the Red Cross from visiting Palestinian detainees despite concerns about poor conditions and mistreatment.
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in October that the ban on ICRC prison visits, imposed since the start of the war in Gaza, would continue “in order to return all the abducted and fallen to Israel” – a reference to the hostages Hamas seized from Israel during its attack on October 7, 2023.
The ruling, seen by The National, was issued after Hamas had returned all living hostages under the terms of a ceasefire that began earlier that month.
“That means, they were referring to the dead hostages too,” said Noa Sattath, who leads the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, one of the Israeli rights groups that filed the petition. “This is a moral equivalency that is against Israel's interest. Plus, international humanitarian law isn't reciprocal,” she told The National.
Although the Israeli army recovered the body of the last remaining hostage last month, the ICRC remains barred from visiting prisoners. “With no independent international observers and no family contact, conditions inside Israeli detention facilities have been hidden from public view,” the ACRI said.
Mounting concern
Concerns about Israeli prison conditions and the treatment of detainees have mounted in the past two years as Palestinians who have been released consistently report extreme overcrowding, unhygienic conditions, deprivation of food and medical care, and physical abuse.
Access to prisons allowed the ICRC to monitor the well-being of detainees, bring them news of their families and provide them with assistance. The ICRC was also able to check whether Palestinians reported missing by their families had been detained, as Israeli authorities often make arrests without notifying the detainee’s relatives.
“The obligation is on Israel to allow communication between families and those who are detained,” ICRC spokesman Patrick Griffiths told The National, speaking from Gaza.
“Now that we've lost access, we haven't been able to facilitate that, and those visits to loved ones haven't been able to continue either,” he added, referring to the suspension of family visits after the October 7 attacks.
The number of Palestinian security detainees in Israeli prisons has nearly doubled since then, from about 5,200 to a peak of more than 10,000, as Israel launched a military offensive on Gaza and raided occupied West Bank towns and refugee camps in search of suspected militants.
Unlike criminal detainees, security detainees are accused of offences related to terrorism. “This could be murder, or a Facebook post,” Ms Sattath said.
The ICRC visits offered detainees a way to raise concerns about prison conditions, as they could meet in private, away from guards. “Then we have a dialogue with the authorities detaining them, on violation of laws of war or standards and protections of those detained,” Mr Griffiths said.
Israel's Prison Service did not respond to The National’s request for comment about ICRC access or the conditions in which detainees are being held. The head of its counter-terrorism department, Netanel Shimson, said in September that ICRC access to prisons is “liable to damage prison security and, therefore, national security”.
However, for the first time since the war, the ACRI managed to access reports that public defenders, who have access to Palestinian detainees, routinely file with the court system. The reports cover four detention centres from May to September 2024.
“Detainees have reported persistent hunger and dramatic weight loss” of as much as 20kg to 30kg, the ACRI said, quoting the reports obtained under freedom of information laws.
One report quotes a detainee describing marginally improved conditions after a court issued an order for adequate food. “It's better than it was before. We're still hungry, but we don't faint any more,” he said.
A public defender who visited the Ktsiot prison said: “In the three wings we visited during the two visits, all the prisoners we spoke with reported severe food deprivation, constant hunger, and many of them said they suffer from physical weakness, dizziness, headaches and fainting as a result of nutritional deficiencies.”
The reports also confirmed findings of violence by prison staff and limited access to medical care. Doctors make rounds only once a week, providing “temporary treatment” that leaves patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension without proper care.
Deliberate assault on rights
ACRI attributed the deterioration in prison conditions since the October 7 attacks to “a deliberate assault on prisoners' rights” by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Mr Ben-Gvir has repeatedly called for Palestinian detainees to be held under difficult conditions. In July 2024, he said canteens in prisons had been closed and a “pampering food menu” had been replaced with a “minimal menu”.
The minister has also said he ordered limited access to showers. This, along with eliminating laundry services, caused hygiene conditions to deteriorate to the point that many detainees were contracting scabies, which was also mentioned in the public defenders' reports.
In response to reports about cramped prison conditions, Mr Ben-Gvir suggested imposing the death penalty on detainees to “solve the overcrowding issue”.
The conditions described in the reports “are not an unavoidable consequence of wartime pressures” but rather “deliberate policy decisions" by Mr Ben-Gvir, the ACRI said.
