Israel is holding dozens of Palestinians from Gaza remoted in an underground jail the place they by no means see daylight, are disadvantaged of ample meals and barred from receiving information of their households or the surface world.
The detainees have included at the very least two civilians held for months with out cost or trial: a nurse detained in his scrubs, and a younger meals vendor, in accordance with attorneys from the Public Committee Towards Torture in Israel (PCATI) who characterize each males.
The 2 males had been transferred to the subterranean Rakefet advanced in January, and described common beatings and violence in line with well-documented torture in different Israeli detention centres.
Rakefet jail was opened within the early Nineteen Eighties to accommodate a handful of probably the most harmful organised crime figures in Israel however closed a number of years in a while the grounds that it was inhumane. The far-right safety minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, ordered it again into service after the 7 October assaults in 2023.
The cells, a tiny train “yard” and a attorneys’ assembly room are all underground, so inmates stay with none pure gentle.
The jail was initially designed for a small variety of high-security inmates occupying particular person cells, holding 15 males when it shut in 1985. In current months, about 100 detainees have been incarcerated there, official information obtained by PCATI exhibits.
Underneath the ceasefire agreed in mid-October, Israel launched 250 Palestinian prisoners who had been convicted in Israeli courts, and 1,700 Palestinian detainees from Gaza who had been held indefinitely with out cost or trial. The younger dealer held at Rakefet was amongst them.
Israeli troopers stand by a truck used to move Palestinian detainees, who’ve been stripped, certain and blindfolded. {Photograph}: Moti Milrod/AP
Nevertheless, the dimensions of detentions has been so huge that even after that mass launch, at the very least 1,000 others are nonetheless held by Israel beneath the identical situations, together with the nurse represented by PCATI.
“Although the warfare is formally over, [Palestinians from Gaza] are nonetheless imprisoned beneath legally contested and violent wartime situations that violate worldwide humanitarian legislation and quantity to torture,” PCATI stated.
The 2 males who met PCATI attorneys in September had been a 34-year-old nurse detained whereas at work in a hospital in December 2023 and a younger dealer seized in October 2024 as he handed by an Israeli checkpoint.
“Within the instances of the purchasers we visited, we’re talking about civilians,” stated the PCATI lawyer Janan Abdu. “The person I spoke to was an 18-year-old who labored promoting meals. He was taken from a checkpoint on a street.”
Ben-Gvir had advised Israeli media and a member of parliament that Rakefet was being rehabilitated to carry Nukhba – that means “elite” – Hamas fighters who led massacres inside Israel Oct seventh, and Hezbollah particular forces fighters captured in Lebanon.
Israeli officers stated no Palestinians concerned within the 2023 assaults had been launched beneath the ceasefire deal that resulted within the teenage prisoner being returned to Gaza.finish new
The Israeli Jail Service (IPS) didn’t reply to questions concerning the standing and id of different prisoners held at Rakefet, which suggests “cyclamen flower” in Hebrew.
Categorised Israeli information signifies the vast majority of Palestinians taken prisoner in Gaza in the course of the warfare had been civilians. Israel’s supreme courtroom dominated in 2019 that it was lawful to carry the our bodies of Palestinians as bargaining chips for future negotiations, and rights teams have accused it of doing the identical with dwelling detainees from Gaza.
Distinctive abuse
Circumstances for Palestinians had been “horrific by intention” in any respect prisons, stated Tal Steiner, the manager director of PCATI. Present and former detainees, and whistleblowers from the Israeli army, have all detailed systemic violations of worldwide legislation.
Nevertheless, Rakefet imposes a novel type of abuse. Holding folks under floor with out daylight for months on finish has “excessive implications” for psychological well being, Steiner stated. “It’s very arduous to stay intact if you end up held in such oppressive and troublesome situations.”
It additionally impacts bodily well being, impairing primary organic capabilities from circadian rhythms wanted for sleep to vitamin D manufacturing.
Regardless of working as a human rights lawyer, and visiting prisons on the advanced in Ramla, south-east of Tel Aviv, the place Rakefet is positioned, Steiner had not heard of the underground jail earlier than Ben-Gvir ordered it again into service.
It was closed earlier than PCATI was based, so the authorized staff turned to outdated media archives and the memoir of Rafael Suissa, the pinnacle of the IPS within the mid-Nineteen Eighties to seek out out extra concerning the jail.
“[Suissa] wrote that he understood being held under floor 24/7 is simply too merciless, too inhumane for any particular person to endure, no matter what their actions have been,” Steiner stated.
This summer time, PCATI attorneys had been requested to characterize two males held within the underground jail, so Abdu and a colleague had been in a position to go to for the primary time.
They had been led underground by masked, closely armed safety guards, down a flight of soiled stairs right into a room the place the stays of lifeless bugs dotted the ground. The bathroom was so soiled it was in impact unusable.
Surveillance cameras on the partitions violated the fundamental authorized proper to a confidential dialogue, and guards warned that the assembly could be minimize quick in the event that they talked about detainees’ households or the warfare in Gaza.
“I requested myself, if the situations within the attorneys’ room are so humiliating – not simply personally to us but additionally to the career – then what’s the scenario for the prisoners?” Abdu stated. “The reply got here quickly, once we met them.”
The purchasers had been introduced in bent over, with guards forcing their heads to the bottom, and remained shackled at their palms and toes, she stated.
Saja Misherqi Baransi, the second PCATI lawyer on the journey, stated the 2 detainees had been in Rakefet for 9 months, and the nurse started the assembly by asking: “The place am I and why am I right here?” The guards had not advised him the title of the jail.
Israeli judges who authorised the detention of the lads at very temporary video hearings, throughout which the detainees had no lawyer and didn’t hear proof in opposition to them, stated solely that they might be there “till the warfare ends”.
The boys described windowless cells with no air flow, holding three or 4 detainees, and reported usually feeling breathless and choking.
Prisoners advised the attorneys they confronted common bodily abuse together with beatings, assaults by canine with iron muzzles, and guards stepping on prisoners, along with being denied ample medical care and given starvation-level rations. Israel’s excessive courtroom dominated this month that the state was depriving Palestinian prisoners of ample meals.
They’ve very restricted time outdoors the cell in a tiny underground enclosure, generally simply 5 minutes each different day. Mattresses are taken away early within the morning, often at about 4am, and solely returned late at night time, leaving detainees on iron frames in in any other case empty cells.
Their descriptions matched photographs from a televised go to to the jail made by Ben-Gvir to publicise his determination to reopen the underground jail. “That is terrorists’ pure place, beneath the bottom,” he stated.
He has repeatedly boasted about mistreatment of Palestinian detainees, rhetoric that former hostages taken in the course of the 7 October assaults say prompted an escalation of Hamas abuse after they had been in captivity.
This included holding hostages in underground tunnels for months, depriving them of meals, isolating them from information of family and the surface world, and violence and psychological torture, together with being ordered to dig a grave on digicam.
Israel’s intelligence companies have warned that the therapy of Palestinian prisoners places the nation’s wider safety pursuits in danger.
Misherqi Baransi stated the detained nurse final noticed daylight on 21 January this yr, when he was transferred to Rakefet, after a yr passing by different jails together with the army’s infamous Sde Teiman centre.
The nurse, a father of three, has had no information of his household since his detention. The one fragment of non-public info attorneys can share with detainees from Gaza is the title of the relative who authorised them to tackle the case.
“Once I advised him: ‘I talked to your mom and she or he authorised me to satisfy you,’ then I’m giving him this tiny factor, at the very least telling him that his mom is alive,” Misherqi Baransi stated.
When the opposite detainee requested Abdu if his pregnant spouse had given beginning safely, the guard instantly minimize off the dialog to threaten him. Because the guards took the lads away, she heard the sound of an elevator, suggesting their cells had been even deeper underground.
{The teenager} had advised her: “You’re the first particular person I’ve seen since my arrest,” and his final request to her was: “Please come see me once more.” His attorneys had been later knowledgeable he was launched to Gaza on 13 October.
The IPS stated in an announcement that it “operates in accordance with the legislation and beneath the supervision of official comptrollers” and added that it “shouldn’t be accountable for the authorized course of, classification of detainees, arrest coverage, or arrests”.
The justice ministry referred questions on Rakefet and detainees to the Israeli army. The army referred inquiries to the IPS.
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This text was amended on 8 November 2025. Info offered to the Guardian meant an earlier model recommended each Rakefet detainees represented by PCATI had been nonetheless in Israeli custody. PCATI offered new info after publication to say one in all them had been launched beneath the October ceasefire settlement.
