Inside the prison walls: Palestinian rights are stripped away in detention

Over the past two years, Israeli forces have arrested around 18,500 Palestinians, according to the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs. Since 1967, at least 1 million Palestinians have been imprisoned by Israel. This means that nearly every Palestinian household has had a relative in prison. The number of arbitrary arrests has escalated dramatically in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, targeting not only detainees but also human rights groups advocating for Palestinians.

Between October 7, 2023, and August 31, 2025, at least 75 Palestinians, including minors, have died in Israeli detention or custody — some as a result of lethal force by authorities — according to the UN Human Rights office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Meanwhile, hundreds of videos have emerged showing Israeli soldiers mistreating, humiliating, or abusing Palestinian detainees — shared by the soldiers themselves.

Israel’s detention system functions as a broader mechanism of control on Palestinian life, extending far beyond security concerns, punishing nearly any form of dissent.

The severity of detentions has also escalated, with punishments of starvation, beatings, public humiliation, sexual violence, and prolonged solitary confinement. In interviews with Raseef22, many Palestinians described carceral detention in Israel as a “silent genocide” and a method for collective punishment.

Israel’s detention system functions as a broader mechanism of control on Palestinian life, extending far beyond security concerns, punishing nearly any form of dissent — implicit or explicit — criminalizing self-expression, targeting civil associations, and restricting freedom of movement. Well before October 7, Palestinian detainees were incarcerated for merely chanting slogans, waving Palestinian flags, displaying political symbols, and speaking out against the injustice. Resistance and activism are among the last tools of self-determination left for Palestinians. It is precisely their ongoing liberation struggle that Israel seeks to eliminate inside its prisons, a systematic effort to destroy individuals’ morale and a people’s shared identity through physical and psychological torture.

Raseef22 spoke to a former Palestinian detainee determined to speak up about the abuse he endured in Israeli prisons to demand justice. Upon release, prisoners are often warned by Israeli authorities to remain quiet and face threats of re-arrest if they share what they’ve experienced. This censorship serves the central purpose of maintaining Israeli apartheid.

Advocates have warned that drawing a blind eye to Israel’s ongoing violations of international law allows it to operate their prisons with impunity. The situation has become dire after Israel’s National Security Committee advanced a bill in late September that would allow the death penalty for Palestinian detainees.

Detention for dissent

Munther Amireh, 50, was detained several times throughout his life. Now working in a youth center in Bethlehem’s Aida refugee camp, established in 1950, Amireh continues to protest against the genocide in Gaza and settlement expansion in the West Bank. Sumud, or steadfastness, is the matter that makes up Palestinian life, said Amireh. He knows that his activism gets him into jail with the many others who have dedicated themselves to resisting Zionist occupation.

In December 2023, Amireh was arrested by Israeli soldiers in a night raid on his home. To pressure him into surrendering, they brought in his brother — handcuffed and unconscious — to his house. The soldiers also handcuffed his 13-year-old son and sliced his shirt, which was imprinted with the Palestinian map. Amireh was then forcibly taken and deliberately shuttled between different military bases to leave him disoriented. He was kept blindfolded and handcuffed for 12 hours.

During interrogations, Amireh recalled soldiers stepping on his body, then being stripped naked and searched with a magnetometer.

“I was on the ground. They told me to stand, and I didn't. I couldn’t feel anything,” Amireh told Raseef22. He was eventually transferred to Ofer prison in the West Bank — a place he knew well from his previous detention at the jail in 2018 — but conditions had dramatically worsened this time.

Meals were reduced to once a day, according to Amireh. Two spoons of jam for 13 men. A handful of vegetables floating in hot water. In four months, Amireh lost 33 kilograms (72 pounds). Even the most basic items and care, fought for over decades of political struggle and hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners, were stripped away this time. There were no windows, no books, no pens, no paper, and not enough blankets to keep warm. Sometimes, lights would be left on all night or switched off during the day.

Before October 7, prisoners had up to four hours a day to move around, breathe fresh air, and converse with each other, noted Amireh. This time, detainees were only given 15 minutes every three days to leave their cells, and cells remained separated. A single detainee’s delay would trigger collective punishment: the entire cease well as and the one next door, would lose their thereby provoking tension and resentment among them.

Meals were reduced to once a day, according to Amireh. Two spoons of jam for 13 men. A handful of vegetables floating in hot water. Even the most basic items and care, fought for over decades of political struggle and hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners, were stripped away this time.

“They are using everything at their disposal to torture us,” said Amireh.

Guards stormed into the cells with their dogs, forcing detainees into the corner, forbidden to look up or at each other. These “checks” were to confirm the number of detainees being held, and they often occurred in the middle of the night, when detainees were asleep. Amireh, who suffers from high blood pressure and prostatitis, was barred from receiving the necessary medication for weeks. The right medicine arrived just a week before his release.

After a while, Amireh began having intrusive thoughts, paranoia, and constant nightmares about his family. “Any time they brought in new detainees, I would try to figure out if any of them were my sons. I just had this feeling that they would bring them there,” Amireh recalls.

Prisoners are kept in isolation, cut off from the outside world. They receive no news, and, even in the rare cases when a lawyer is allowed to visit, the meeting takes place under the supervision of Israeli officers, who listen in on everything exchanged between the detainee and their legal representative. At the time of writing, Amireh has yet to be informed of the charges for all the times he spent in jail.

When asked how he persevered each day, Amireh said it was about keeping his mind active and keeping his memories intact. When guards brought bread in packages, he would take scraps of cardboard to craft a backgammon board to play with other prisoners. He and his cellmates were caught and beaten for it.

Sharing moments of connection with his cellmates, listening to and sharing stories about their loved ones who were waiting for them on the outside, and the work and passions that gave them a sense of purpose, helped Amireh stay anchored and supported.

“This is what helped us survive,” Amireh said.

Censoring accountability and protecting impunity

Administrative detention is often used as a valid charge by Israeli officials to detain Palestinians for three- to six-month stretches without filing charges or presenting evidence in court. These terms can be — and are — extended repeatedly with no clear end, lasting anywhere from months to years. The allegations are buried in classified documents that are kept from detainees’ lawyers, and families are not informed whether their loved ones have been detained and where they are being held.

While international law allows administrative detention in exceptional cases of emergency, Israel uses it routinely. Before the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinians in the recent prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, more than 11,000 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons. Currently, around 9,100 remain detained, of which 3,500 are under administrative detention, including minors.

Administrative detention acutely affects Palestinian residents in the West Bank. Gazans are held in separate wings of the same prisons, or in Israeli military camps in Gaza under the Unlawful Combatants Law. Conditions are similar and sometimes harsher than those Amireh described in his experience. An 'unlawful combatant' is someone who takes part in hostilities or belongs to an armed group, may be considered a threat to state security, and can be detained, sometimes indefinitely.

Human rights groups reported that Israel continues to use the law for arbitrary detention without trial against thousands of Gazans, violating fundamental human rights. Gazans are systematically tortured, imprisoned without a court order, denied access to a lawyer, while Israeli authorities withheld information about their location and condition. Detainees taken under the unlawful combatants law from Gaza include medical staff, hospital patients, and civilians fleeing the genocide, according to a Human Rights Watch report released in March.

Before the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinians in the recent prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, more than 11,000 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons. Currently, around 9,100 remain detained, of which 3,500 are under administrative detention, including minors.

Human rights groups are also targeted without any evidence to support the allegations against them. For years, Addameer, a leading Palestinian nonprofit providing legal aid and documenting human rights violations inside Israeli jails, gathered testimonies from detainees, their families, and lawyers. In its reports, Addameer documents that all detainees, whether sentenced or held without charge, face widespread violence. Hunger strikers are subjected to forced feeding, and abuse is reported in every prison, including towards women, children, the elderly, and disabled detainees as well.

“There are no longer isolated cases; these practices are systematic,” explained Tala Nasir, a lawyer at Addameer speaking to Raseef22 from Ramallah.

The group’s work exposing repeated abuses and violations at the hands of Israeli authorities has rendered it a target of the military. In 2022, Israeli soldiers raided the organization’s offices after outlawing it and five other Palestinian civil societies. In June, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on Addameer, claiming alleged ties to a “terrorist organization,” without providing any evidence. Amnesty International and other international bodies rejected these claims.

Sanctions have severely affected Addameer’s operations: staff salaries are frozen, and employees live in constant fear of arrest. “Israeli authorities raid whenever they want to, arrest whoever they want, and shoot whenever they want,” explained Nasir, highlighting the mounting risks faced by human rights defenders.

“We are working to hold them accountable,” said Nasir. “They want to prevent us from doing so.”

In June, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on Addameer, claiming alleged ties to a “terrorist organization,” without providing any evidence. Amnesty International and other international bodies rejected these claims. 

Most prisons holding Palestinian detainees are located in Israeli territory. This creates a major obstacle for legal assistance, as many lawyers, including Palestinian attorneys holding West Bank IDs, are barred from entering these facilities. As a result, access to legal representation for Palestinian prisoners is intentionally limited.

“We work inside an illegal apparatus,” added Nasir. “We need international laws that aren’t just words on paper, but a shield for the oppressed. Justice will not come from within the system.”

Collective punishment and apartheid

Discrimination and apartheid are entrenched in Israeli institutions’ design and objectives. Its legal apparatus traces back to emergency laws imposed by the British colonial authorities, elements of which were later incorporated into Israeli legislation. Unlike settlers living in the same territory, who are protected by Israel’s civilian judicial system, Palestinians are only prosecuted under military orders in military courts that override standard legal protections.

According to the rights group Military Court Watch, an organization monitoring Israeli treatment towards children held in detention, 95 percent of cases involving Palestinians held in Israeli military courts end with a conviction.

Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory, Franseca Albanese, has denounced a fundamental lack of separation between powers in Israel's military legal system that allows officials to act with complete impunity. Military judges allow arbitrary detentions, provide cover for the inhumane treatment perpetrated within the apparatus, and make legal defense for Palestinians practically impossible. Military trials are also conducted in Hebrew, and detainees are often pressured to sign documents they cannot read, which are later used as key evidence, according to Addameer.

During interrogation, all Palestinians, regardless of age, are subjected to threats and coercion. Save the Children reports that Palestinian minors are the only children in the world subjected to a military court system. Minors are interrogated by military or intelligence officers, without a lawyer or parent present. Some children have reported sexual harassment, strip searches, and severe physical harm. The usual charge is stone-throwing, which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. According to the rights group Military Court Watch, an organization monitoring Israeli treatment of children held in detention, 95 percent of cases involving Palestinians held in Israeli military courts end with a conviction. “They are enjoying the culture of impunity,” Nasir concluded. “They're not afraid at all.”

The genocide in Gaza has demonstrated the West’s complicity in Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity. It’s difficult for many to see what meaning international law still holds. Still, it remains the benchmark that exposes the scale and severity of these violations, which explains why those committed to accountability continue to document them, forcing the world to look at what it has deemed acceptable.

“They want to break us,” he said. “If I stop, then they’ve succeeded. That’s why I call them out, without hiding. If we stop, they win.”

After his release in March 2024, Amireh shared that he still carries not only his own suffering and trauma, but also that of those who remain behind bars.

“Part of our struggle is learning to coexist with a pain you know will never go away. But living with it is a form of resistance, too.”

Amireh was recently threatened again with arrest at an Israeli checkpoint. He insists that he will continue to resist in whatever way he can to teach his children that they have rights, just like everybody else: the right to freedom, movement, self-determination, and the right to return to their homeland.

“They want to break us,” he said. “If I stop, then they’ve succeeded. That’s why I call them out, without hiding. If we stop, they win.”