Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, told his lawyer earlier this month: "This is the end. I don't see myself surviving. They brought me here to kill me." Seized by Israeli forces 18 months ago, he has been held without charge or trial, reporting strikes with hammers and batons, daily beatings, and loss of consciousness. Recent images show him gaunter than when he was the voice of besieged healthcare workers in Gaza.
Administrative detention and conditions
In June, Abu Safiya was transferred to Rakefet prison, an underground facility originally built for senior organised crime figures, closed as inhumane, and reopened in late 2023 by far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Palestinian prisoners there never see daylight, violating the Geneva conventions. Across Palestinian territories and Israel, about 3,500 prisoners are held under "administrative detention," renewable every six months indefinitely. Nearly 200 are children. Once detained under these rules, they are essentially abducted by the state.
Ali al-Samoudi, a Palestinian journalist released earlier this year, lost 60kg (about half his body weight). "Prison today is hell in every sense of the word," he told CNN. "Everything they practised with us was punishment and revenge."
Documented abuse and Abu Ghraib echoes
The scale of abuse, torture, and death in Israeli prisons is well documented. Earlier this month, an Israeli soldier posted a photo on social media showing a Palestinian man from Gaza face down, stripped to his underwear, bound with ropes to a plank and an iron rod, with the caption "good morning" in Hebrew. The echoes of Abu Ghraib are evident: sinister gloating, sexualised humiliation, and trophy photos.
These incidents are not isolated but part of a longstanding system that severs Palestinians from human rights, designed to terrorise, break morale, and collectively punish. For decades, Israel has refused to hand over bodies of Palestinians for burial; some are buried in numbered graves in sealed military zones, others held in freezers. Among them are 100 Palestinians who died in Israeli custody, with no information on how they died.
Enforced disappearances and missing persons
According to the Israel-based human rights organisation HaMoked, there are "enforced disappearances" of Palestinians in Gaza detained by Israeli authorities but never recorded. HaMoked is tracing the whereabouts of almost 2,000 people. These are only snippets of a state where Palestinians live under a regime of torment, signalling that their lives and even corpses belong to the Israeli state.
Detainees include journalists, doctors, and civil society members—those with roles suggesting leadership or expressing community values. This network underlies a state or society, shattered to communicate that there is no such thing as Palestine or a Palestinian people.
Lack of accountability and international response
What is remarkable is how much of this happens in plain sight, documented by rights groups, posted by Israeli soldiers, bragged about by Israeli politicians, yet little protested within Israel or moving Israel's allies to real outrage or action. In the UK, focus on settler violence and sanctioning settlers seems to locate the main problem away from the heart of the Israeli state.
The UK deputy permanent representative to the UN recently expressed concern about "the documented sexual violence perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinian detainees" and called on Israel to investigate. But as Nesrine Malik writes, "I suspect everyone knows that will not happen." What is taking place is not an aberration but a norm enacted and blessed explicitly by successive generations of Israeli politicians and Israeli society. Until that fact is confronted, Palestinians will continue to be detained, disappeared, tortured, and sexually abused, with abusers asked politely to investigate themselves.
