Israeli occupation authorities continue to face serious accusations of committing grave abuses against Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip, as fresh evidence confirms that prisoners have been subjected to torture and ill-treatment since February 2024, without any accountability or legal repercussions.
In this context, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, stated on Monday that the emerging findings point to widespread torture practices against detainees, while Israel continues to evade international legal scrutiny, further deepening the culture of impunity it has maintained in the occupied territories for decades.
Her remarks follow a report by The Guardian, which revealed the existence of a secret underground prison known as “Rakevet,” where dozens of Palestinians from Gaza are held under conditions described as harsh and inhumane.
In this facility, detainees are denied sunlight and sufficient food, completely cut off from the outside world, with no contact with family or legal representation—constituting a clear violation of international humanitarian law and the Convention Against Torture, according to The Guardian.
Testimonies collected by lawyers from the Public Committee Against Torture in the Israeli occupation show that many detainees are not combatants but entirely civilian individuals arrested arbitrarily during military operations in Gaza.
Nonetheless, Israeli occupation’s courts have extended their detention through brief virtual hearings lasting only a few minutes, where no defence is allowed, and the repeated justification is simply: “Until the end of the war.”
These accounts suggest a systematic pattern of abuse that extends beyond cruel treatment to the realm of institutionalised torture—a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Furthermore, the ongoing detention of civilians in inhumane conditions amounts to enforced disappearance and undermines the most basic standards of justice and due process.
The absence of accountability, coupled with the Israeli occupation’s refusal to cooperate with international investigative mechanisms, further exacerbates the justice crisis and raises serious questions about the effectiveness of the international system in protecting Palestinian civilians from documented and repeated violations.
The pressing question remains: How long will the Israeli occupation remain above the law while the rights of Palestinian detainees are crushed in the darkness of its prisons?
