RAMALLAH, (PIC)
Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups said on Friday that thousands of Palestinian prisoners and detainees are subjected daily to crimes of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment inside Israeli prisons and camps, which, since the start of the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people, have turned into an organized system for producing torture, through policies of starvation, humiliation, dehumanization, and inflicting physical and psychological suffering on detainees.
The Commission of Prisoners Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners Society, and Aldameer added, in a joint statement on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, which falls on June 26 of each year, that the crimes of torture have affected all categories of prisoners, including children, women, the elderly, the wounded, and the sick, in blatant violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, emphasizing that the level of crimes committed since the start of the genocide has exceeded the traditional concept of torture in terms of its scope, brutality, and multiplicity of tools.
They pointed out that hundreds of documented testimonies and accounts confirm that torture is no longer individual violations, but has become an official, systematic policy implemented by various levels of the Israeli system, from soldiers, prison guards, interrogation officers, and prison administration, leading up to the political level that provided cover for the continuation of these crimes.
They clarified that torture begins from the moment of arrest, through physical assault, threats, enforced disappearance, and painful binding, and continues inside prisons using multiple methods, including stress positions, electric shocks, deprivation of sleep, food, water, and medical treatment, and deliberate humiliation, in addition to documented sexual abuse and assaults.
The groups emphasized that detention conditions, including starvation, deprivation of healthcare, and the spread of diseases, chief among them scabies, have turned the detention environment into a continuous tool of torture aimed at destroying the detainees physically and psychologically, noting that testimonies of detainees from the Gaza Strip revealed atrocities committed inside the Israeli army camps, including amputation of limbs without anesthesia, deprivation of treatment, sexual assaults, field executions, and the use of detainees as human shields.
They noted that United Nations reports and mechanisms during the years 2025 and 2026 confirmed the existence of a systematic pattern of torture and ill-treatment against Palestinian detainees, pointing out that the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory Francesca Albanese, and the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry, all concluded that there are gross violations, including torture and sexual violence, which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
They added that the continued prevention of the International Committee of the Red Cross and independent international bodies from accessing detainees, along with the restrictions imposed on lawyers and human rights organizations, represents an attempt to hide evidence and obscure the features of the crimes, stressing that the absence of accountability and impunity have contributed to establishing the system of torture as part of the policy of repression and persecution practiced by the Israeli authorities against the Palestinian people.
The groups renewed their call to the international community and the United Nations to take urgent action to activate the principle of universal jurisdiction to prosecute Israeli officials involved in crimes of torture, ensure their accountability, impose effective international sanctions on Israel, enable the International Committee of the Red Cross and independent international bodies to have immediate access to all places of detention, provide international protection for Palestinian prisoners and detainees, and ensure the victims’ right to justice, equity, and redress.
They emphasized that the prohibition of torture is a peremptory norm in international law, and it may not be justified under any circumstance, including war, emergency, or security considerations, calling for effective measures to prevent this crime, investigate it, and hold its perpetrators accountable.