Israel Faces Mounting Pressure Over Detaining Palestinians In Alleged Torture Camps

Israel is facing mounting pressure from the international community and human rights groups as more evidence surfaces of the military’s severe punishment of Palestinians held in what are being described as torture camps, including a notorious prison in the desert where soldiers have for months been accused of sexual abuse.

The Israeli Supreme Court said on Wednesday that it will consider a petition from rights groups to close down Sde Teiman, the main military facility holding Palestinians captured in large-scale raids during the past 10 months of Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Whistleblowers and dozens of Palestinian captives who have since been released told the rights groups and media outlets of the inhumane treatment they faced while incarcerated with no formal charges, no trial and often no legal counsel.

“Given the political function that Israel’s prison system fills in the context of the accelerated dehumanisation of Palestinians in Israeli discourse, a radically right-wing government, a weak judicial system swept up in public sentiment and a minister in charge of prisons who takes pride in violating human rights ― this system has become an instrument for the widespread, systematic and arbitrary oppression of Palestinians through torture,” Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem said in its report earlier this week on the network of what the group calls torture camps.

Throughout this year, many rights groups and news outlets released their own investigations of Israel’s prison system, including Sde Teiman. The camp sits about 18 miles from Gaza in the Negev desert, and is split into two areas ― one that serves as a kind of pen for dozens of physically restrained Palestinians, and another area that serves as a field hospital where doctors say wounded captives are strapped down to the bed while forced to wear diapers and consume food through straws.

Public criticism of the facilities increased after the Israeli military arrested nine reservists accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman. Many hardline Israeli supporters angrily protested the July arrest, which the accused soldiers initially resisted. The officers also had the backing of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ― whose office oversees the Israel Prison Service ― and Likud party member Hanoch Milwidsky, who came under fire for justifying the rape and abuse of Palestinians.

A graphic video that aired on Wednesday on Israel’s Channel 12 appeared to show a group of masked soldiers at Sde Teiman taking one of the many bound Palestinian men and allegedly raping him. Captives appear to be lying face down in a fenced-in pen with their arms tied above their heads when several soldiers pull a blindfolded man from the group and take him to a darker corner of the pen, according to the footage. The soldiers are then shown with a dog and the captive, mostly hidden by shields propped up by some of the guards ― the moment Channel 12 says captures the alleged rape.

An Israeli doctor who worked at the Sde Teiman medical wing said last week that he was the one to report the Palestinian man’s case to military authorities, confirming previously reported information that the captive showed signs of severe beating and of forced insertion that led to an injured, bleeding rectum and a tear in the lower part of his intestines.

The doctor, anaesthesiologist Yoel Donchin, told Israeli public broadcaster Kan that he believed the Palestinian man’s life was in danger and that he needed emergency surgery. The detainee was transferred to a civilian hospital because his injuries were too severe for Sde Teiman, according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, which is managing the man’s case.

The sexual abuse case is being heard by an Israeli military court, which is separate from the Israeli Supreme Court that’s overseeing whether to close down Sde Teiman.

Prosecutors said that evidence in the sexual abuse case shows “a reasonable suspicion of the commission of the acts,” the Israeli military said Tuesday, according to The Associated Press. The military did not mention the video. So far, five of the soldiers are no longer under investigation, AP reported.

“Prisoners’ human rights need to be respected in all cases,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Wednesday regarding the case, confirming he has seen the video. “And when there are alleged violations, the government of Israel needs to take steps to investigate those who are alleged to have committed abuses and, if appropriate, hold them accountable.”

The US, which helps fund the Israeli military, has normally responded with calls for Israel to investigate itself when presented with allegations of abuse. It is extremely rare that Israel holds its soldiers accountable for acts of violence ― in fact, less than 1% of complaints against Israeli soldiers between 2017 and 2021 actually led to prosecutions, according to Israeli rights group Yesh Din.

Israel has repeatedly denied that detainees are being held in deplorable conditions, or that such inhumane treatment goes beyond a few bad apples. But amid the allegations that resulted in the court case, Israel has begun transferring most of the captives out of the shadowy facility so it can upgrade it.

But Sde Teiman is not the only so-called torture camp Israel is running, according to investigations by the United Nations, B’Tselem, CNN, AP and Haaretz, among others. The reports, citing whistleblowers and former detainees, talk of extreme overcrowding, physical and sexual violence, humiliation, sleep deprivation, denial of medical treatment, starvation, waterboarding, burning skin with cigarettes, prolonged exposure to the cold, electrocution, amputation, hourslong suspension, forced consumption of hallucinogens and no sanitation. 

“We were taken to a room which had a lot of clothes, shoes, rings and watches scattered in it. We were stripped naked and even had to take off our underwear. We were searched with a hand-held metal detector. They forced us to spread our legs and then sit half-crouching. Then they started hitting us on our private parts with the detector,” 41-year-old Palestinian captive Sami Khalili told B’Tselem.

“They rained blows down on us,” he continued. “Then they ordered us to salute an Israeli flag that was hanging on the wall.”

In May, Israeli lawmakers amended the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants law to give the military the authority to detain people for 45 days without an arrest warrant or trial, after which suspected militants must be transferred to Israel’s official prison system, and captives who aren’t militants must be released. As of early July, there were more than 9,600 Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons and camps ― almost double the number just before the war began, according to B’Tselem.

“The transition from what appears to have initially been spontaneous acts of vengeance to a permanent, systematic regime stripping away all protections designed to uphold and ensure the most basic rights of Palestinian prisoners was made possible when the government exploited its powers to enact draconian, injurious ‘emergency regulations’ and applied them in a brazen, gross violation of multiple norms and obligations under Israeli law, international human rights law, the laws of war and humanitarian law,” the group said in its prison report, “Welcome to Hell.”

“The violations included the widespread, systematic and prolonged commission of the crime of torture.”

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