Recently revealed reports from the Public Defender’s Office of the Justice Ministry show that Palestinian security detainees held in Israeli prisons have suffered from severe and systematic violence from prison guards, deprivation of food, and medical neglect, while also having been subjected to unsanitary conditions that caused and exacerbated outbreaks of disease in the prisons.

Inspectors from the Public Defense Office who visited four prisons in 2024 documented seeing skeletal prisoners and witnessing physical evidence of beatings and medical neglect on the bodies of prisoners they interviewed.

The reports were made public after a year-long legal battle by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), which filed a freedom of information request to gain access to the documents, after the Justice Ministry refused to release them.

The inspectors described the conditions in one prison they visited as “not fit to hold human beings,” and said of another that their findings showed “unnecessary and unjustified violence against prisoners” carried out “on a regular basis and on numerous occasions.”

Although the public defender’s reports provided a broad picture of the stark conditions for Palestinian detainees and prisoners in Israel’s prisons, they did not include details of specific allegations that could be criminal in nature, since inspectors file such allegations in confidential reports directly to the Attorney General’s Office.

But the reports do corroborate the testimony of numerous Palestinian detainees who have been interviewed by legal aid organizations while in detention, or who have spoken to human rights groups after being released from the prisons during the course of the war with Hamas in Gaza, and who alleged that they had been subject to severe violence and abusive conditions while in prison.

“These reports we received have confirmed the testimony of prisoners and the reports of human rights groups and international organizations about widespread abuses in Israel’s prisons,” said Oded Feller, an attorney with ACRI who worked on obtaining the Public Defender reports.

“They show that these sadistic outrages are indeed taking place in Israeli prisons.”

Feller alleged that similar reports from the same human rights groups and international organizations during 2025 have demonstrated that the abuses have not stopped since the Public Defender’s Office drew up its reports from its visits in 2024.

The commanders of the prisons where the worst abuses were reported denied there was systematic violence towards detainees, and insisted that there were “no gaps” in the provision and availability of hygiene and cleaning products required to maintain sanitary conditions in the facilities.

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has authority over the Israel Prison Service and its policies, has, however, repeatedly boasted of the harsh conditions he has imposed on Palestinian detainees and prisoners.

And numerous allegations have been made, both by Palestinian detainees speaking to lawyers while in prison and detainees who have been released, of severe mistreatment in Israeli prisons, including beatings, unsanitary conditions, inadequate and insufficient food, and psychological torture.

The High Court of Justice ruled in September last year that the state had failed to fulfill its legal obligations to adequately feed Palestinian security prisoners.

Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion and atrocities, the government barred what had been routine and customary visits by the Red Cross to Palestinian prisoners, something that gave the Public Defender’s reports increased importance in efforts to understand the current conditions in Israel’s prisons.

The Justice Ministry initially refused to comply........

© The Times of Israel