Two former Palestinian prisoners recount sexual abuse in Israeli detention

Two former Palestinian prisoners have recounted horrific abuse in Israeli detention, describing routine beatings, sexual assault, and torture. 

The BBC reported that Sami al-Saei, 46, a former journalist from Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank, was detained without charge for 16 months. He said that during his imprisonment in Megiddo prison, the regime's guards partially stripped him, beat him daily, and on one occasion, raped him with a baton.

“There were five or six of them,” he told the BBC. “I was hoping to die and be done with that, as the pain was not only caused by the rape, but also from the severe and painful beating.”

Another former detainee, identified as Ahmed, described similar abuse, including being stripped naked, beaten, and sexually humiliated using a dog.

“I could feel its breath… then it jumped on me… I started to scream. The more I screamed, the more they beat me until I almost lost consciousness,” he told the BBC. He was released 12 days later.

Currently, over 9,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli detention, many without formal charges. Human rights groups say the arrests and abuses form part of a broader campaign of repression against Palestinians living under occupation.

In October, five Israeli human rights organizations — Adalah, HaMoked, Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), and Parents Against Child Detention — submitted a report to the UN Committee against Torture.

They documented “a dramatic escalation in torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment across all detention facilities, carried out with near total impunity and implemented as state policy targeting Palestinians.”

The groups said that Israeli authorities had dismantled existing safeguards and that senior officials sanction these abuses while judicial and administrative mechanisms fail to intervene.

The report cited at least 94 Palestinian deaths in custody between the start of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023 and the end of August 2025.

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Survivors and advocacy groups continue to call for international oversight and accountability for abuses in Israeli detention facilities. Israel's prison authorities, however, claim that no such incidents have occurred under their responsibility.

Israeli legal advocates say the mass imprisonment of Palestinians has been accompanied by a sharp deterioration in detention conditions, which they describe as a deliberate policy choice.

According to Tal Steiner, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, the scale and severity of abuse in Israeli prisons and military camps have surged since the regime's far-right minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, assumed control of the prison system in 2023.

“The amount and scale of torture and abuse has skyrocketed, and we see this as part of a policy driven by Israeli decision-makers, including Itamar Ben-Gvir,” she said, referring to Ben-Gvir, who has recently defended harsher conditions against Palestinian prisoners. 

He said in a July social media post that Palestinian prisoners would receive only the “minimum of the minimum” in food and basic necessities.

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