B’Tselem Report: “Welcome To Hell”
Aug 6, 2024

Report By B’Tselem: “Welcome to Hell” is a report on the abuse and inhuman treatment of Palestinians held in Israeli custody since 7 October 2023. The Israeli Information Center In The Occupied territories (B’Tselem) collected testimonies from 55 Palestinians held during that time and released, almost all with no charges.

Their testimonies reveal the outcomes of the rushed transformation of more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, military and civilian, into a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates as a matter of policy. Facilities in which every inmate is deliberately subjected to harsh, relentless pain and suffering operate as de-facto torture camps.

“We were taken to Megiddo. When we got off the bus, a soldier said to us: “Welcome to hell.”

From the testimony of Fouad Hassan 45, from Qusrah in Nablus District

The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps
August 2024: Executive Summary

When we got off the bus, a soldier said to us: “Welcome to hell.”

From the testimony of Fouad Hassan, 45, a father of five and resident of Qusrah in Nablus District,
who was held in Megiddo Prison. Read the full testimony here

This report concerns the treatment of Palestinian prisoners and the inhuman conditions they have
been subjected to in Israeli prisons since 7 October 2023.

B’Tselem’s research for the report included collecting testimonies from 55 Palestinians who were incarcerated in Israeli prisons and detention facilities during this time. Thirty of the witnesses are residents of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; 21 are residents of the Gaza Strip; and four are Israeli citizens.1

The testimonies were given to B’Tselem after the witnesses were released from prison, the overwhelming majority of them without being tried.

The testimonies clearly indicate a systemic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel:

Frequent acts of severe, arbitrary violence; sexual assault; humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation; forced unhygienic conditions; sleep deprivation, prohibition on, and punitive measures
for, religious worship; confiscation of all communal and personal belongings; and denial of adequate medical treatment – these descriptions appear time and again in the testimonies, in horrifying detail and with chilling similarities.

Over the years, Israel has incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in its prisons, which have always served, above all, as a tool for oppressing and controlling the Palestinian population.

The stories presented in this report are the story of thousands of Palestinians, residents of the Occupied Territories and citizens of Israel, who have been arrested since the beginning of the war, as well as Palestinians already incarcerated on 7 October who experienced the massive increase in hostility from prison authorities since that day.

In early July 2024, there were 9,623 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and detention facilities almost double the number just before the war began. Of these, 4,781 were detained without trial, without being presented with the allegations against them, and without access to the right to defend themselves, in what Israel terms “administrative detention.”

Some were jailed simply Since October 7, hundreds of Palestinian citizens of Israel have been arrested for suspected incitement and support of terrorist organizations, sometimes over minor acts such as expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people or criticizing Israel, the war and so on.

While the political persecution of Palestinians, and particularly Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the rampant incitement against them by public officeholders have grown steadily worse since 7 October and as the war continues, these lie beyond the scope of this report. Nevertheless, the report does present testimonies by three Israeli citizens who were incarcerated under the same conditions as Palestinian residents of the West Bank and faced abuses similar to those described by other inmates (from the West Bank, East Jerusalem included, and the Gaza Strip).

In this report, the terms “Palestinian inmates” and “Palestinian prisoners” refer to Palestinian detainees, convicted prisoners and administrative detainees classified as “security prisoners” by the state.

See HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual website. Among the 4,781 prisoners held without trial, 3,379 are defined as “administrative detainees,” and 1,402 are defined as “illegal combatants.”  For expressing sympathy for the suffering of Palestinians. Others were taken into custody during military activity in the Gaza Strip, on the sole grounds that they came under the vague definition
of “men of fighting age.”

Some were imprisoned over suspicions, substantiated or not, that they were operatives or supporters of Palestinian armed groups. The prisoners form a wide spectrum of people from different areas, with varying political opinions ...