Palestine

While news reports and testimonies have emerged of the torture of Palestinian prisoners held in detention camps like Sde Teiman—where there are frequent beatings, starvation, forced stress positions, rape, and death—there has been less recognition that these conditions are prevalent across all Israeli prisons and detention centers. There are 19 carceral facilities in Israel, and Ofer Prison, which operates in the West Bank.

“The first thing [the Israeli Prison Services] began to do was to fully isolate detainees,” Jaghoub said. After October 7th, isolation of detainees was not limited to solitary confinement, but included cutting prisoners off from any communication with family, lawyers, or the outside world, including stripping them of radio, television, and access to phone calls.

“One of the worst things of the isolation practices was even cutting us off from time. The confiscation of watches meant we are completely and fully cut off from the world entirely—that we were denied any piece of information, even knowing what time it,” Jaghoub told Drop Site.

The isolation of detainees cut the world off from detainees, rendering them invisible and allowing Israel to continue its practices against them without challenge. Only when prisoners were released could they fully reveal the degree of abuse inside, though some did manage to communicate from their prison cells.