GENEVA (Dispatches) – In the shadow of the war raging in Gaza, record numbers of Palestinian detainees are filling Israeli prisons, where they face “systemic abuse” and torture, rights advocates warn, calling for international action.
Members of several Israeli NGOs travelled to Geneva this week to raise concerns before the United Nations about a major “crisis” inside the regime’s prisons.
“We are extremely, extremely concerned,” said Tal Steiner, the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI).
“What we’re looking at is a crisis,” she told AFP.
She said nine people had allegedly died behind bars since October 7, according to Israeli sources.
And “there are almost 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli custody right now, ... a 200-percent increase from any normal year”.
While the UN and others have long raised concerns about conditions for Palestinian detainees in the Zionist regime’s prisons, Steiner said the situation had worsened dramatically since war erupted in Gaza.
The Zionist regime’s carnage inside Gaza has since killed more than 31,000 people, mainly women and children, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
“During the military onslaught on Gaza, there’s been a crisis within Israeli detention facilities and prisons that has been really left ignored,” said Miriam Azem of the Adalah legal center. The center is dedicated to protecting the rights of the Zionist regime’s Palestinian citizens.
Her organization had managed to document “19 clear cases” of torture within the Israeli prison system just since October 7, including sexual violence, she told AFP.
“We’re seeing really widespread and systemic use of many, many tools in order to inflict torture and ill-treatment on Palestinians.”
This crisis, she said, “requires the immediate intervention of the international community”.
Steiner agreed, warning that this was “an ongoing crisis.
“People are (suffering) in detention right now... An urgent intervention is very much needed.”