Unveiling Injustice: The Plight of Gaza Detainees Under Israeli Occupation
The issue of Gaza detainees poses a significant challenge to human rights institutions today, amidst escalating cases of torture and violations suffered by detainees in Israeli prisons and detention camps. These violations have been exposed through testimonies of released individuals, journalistic investigations, and international reports, highlighting the severity of the current situation.
Israeli authorities persist in the enforced disappearance of most Gaza detainees, preventing the International Red Cross committee from visiting them and verifying their detention conditions. Despite some partial legal amendments, available information remains limited and subject to manipulation.
The international community must address this critical issue despite the major obstacles imposed by the Israeli authorities, which ignore calls for investigations into human rights abuses. The Israeli judiciary continues to be part of a system used to justify these crimes.
Sdeh Taiman camp is not the sole location witnessing violations; several other prisons and camps have been used for similar purposes. Human rights institutions persist in their efforts to uncover facts and demand accountability.
Since the onset of the genocidal war against Gaza and the unprecedented wave of arrests, Israeli forces have detained thousands of civilians across Gaza, including women, children, and medical teams targeted during military assaults, alongside Palestinian hospitals.
The Israeli authorities persist in carrying out enforced disappearances against detainees, preventing full disclosure of their identities and places of detention, and denying the International Committee of the Red Cross access to visit them.
The Israeli authorities deliberately withhold release of prisoners in Gaza whose sentences have ended, with some being released recently from Nafha prison, yet some have died after their families suffered casualties during the war.
Testimonies of Gaza detainees have exposed unprecedented levels of brutality within the Israeli system, including torture, maltreatment, starvation crimes, and systematic medical abuses resulting in the deaths of numerous detainees. Additionally, Israeli forces have conducted extrajudicial executions of some detainees. Despite specialized institutions announcing the deaths of only six Gaza detainees among the 18 prisoners and detainees who have died since the start of the genocide war, the Israeli authorities continue to conceal the identities of the remaining detainees who have died in camps and prisons. Israeli media revealed the death of another doctor, Iyad al-Rintissi, with no official notification to any Palestinian authority on the matter.
Thousands of families still know nothing about the fate of their detained children, and the Israeli authorities are working to adapt laws to entrench this crime.
Palestinian human rights institutions, including those from territories occupied since 1948, are making efforts to reveal the locations of detainee confinement and to seek visitation rights, despite significant challenges and strict restrictions.
Recently, several lawyers managed limited visits to some Gaza detainees, including visits to Sdeh Taiman camp, which witnessed torture and medical crimes, as journalistic reports exposed aspects of these events, despite other detainees being held in central prisons such as Negev and Ofer.