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Aside from the images from Gaza of Palestinians stripped naked and hauled onto military trucks, and testimonies from released prisoners and human rights lawyers, Israel’s sprawling incarceration regime remains for the most part a dark secret. The Israeli authorities prohibit family visits as well as inspections by the International Red Cross and other international bodies, while often also threatening those they release not to speak to the press. Still, what little we do know is horrifying enough: systematic torture, starvation, sexual abuse, and underground cells where prisoners never see the light of day.
On this episode of The +972 Podcast, we are joined by Sahar Francis, a Palestinian lawyer and human rights defender with decades of experience advocating for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Informed by her daily work with Palestinian prisoners, Sahar breaks down the architecture of the mass arrest campaign that Israel launched in Gaza after October 7. She details the widespread abuse inside prisons and military detention centers, and the weaponization of the legal system to hold detainees in inhumane conditions — often without charge or trial — and to protect their abusers.
Francis emphasizes that Israel has always used arbitrary arrests and cruel prison conditions as part of its broader system of occupation and apartheid, yet the scale and nature of abuse since October 7 is unlike anything she had seen in her decades of work. She argues that putting an end to this institutionalized brutality against Palestinian prisoners requires a political solution that guarantees Palestinian rights –- which will require pressure on Israel from both inside and outside.
Additional Reading:
- ‘It would’ve been better if they shot us’: Palestinians recount prison abuse
- Inside Israel’s torture camp for Gazan detainees
- The writing was on the wall for Israel’s torture of Palestinian prisoners
- ‘More horrific than Abu Ghraib’: Lawyer recounts visit to Israeli detention center
- ‘My hands are paralyzed from torture’: Gazans reveal horrors of Ofer Camp
- Israeli intelligence data: Militants account for only 1 in 4 Gaza detainees
- New data reveals 98 Palestinian deaths in Israeli custody since October 7
- ‘I cannot help my clients’: The impossible task of representing Palestinian detainees
- ‘His only crime is that he is a Palestinian doctor’
