Israel accused of intensified torture and abuse of Palestinian detainees

Reporters from the British Guardian and the Wall Street Journal say Israel’s prison system has escalated physical, sexual and psychological abuse of Palestinian prisoners since the Oct 7 Gaza war. The coverage cites documented cases of beatings, deprivation of food and medical care, scabies outbreaks, partial paralysis and sexual assault, with estimates of 9,300 administrative detainees—many held without charge—and more than 200 children among roughly 3,500 prisoners under administrative orders.

The Guardian article links the harsh treatment to historic abuses such as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, noting images of detainees stripped, bound to metal rods and humiliated in ways that echo past atrocities. It also reports that around 100 Palestinians have died in custody, bodies are sometimes stored in “numbered graves” or refrigerated, and roughly 2,000 people are missing after being taken into “unrecorded” detention.

A separate incident involved Palestinian political activist Mervan Bergusi, who was shot in the leg with a plastic bullet by an Israeli guard while in a solitary cell. Prisoner organisations describe the attack as part of a systematic policy targeting Palestinian inmates, and condemn the broader campaign of isolation, torture, starvation and medical neglect that has led to dozens of deaths in Israeli prisons.