What we know about over 9,000 Palestinians detained in Israel
More than 9,000 Palestinians imprisoned under Israel’s military and national security laws are being held in Israeli detention facilities, the highest figure in more than a decade, according to rights groups, who say that many of the detainees are being held without charges and have been abused while in custody.
The number of Palestinians in Israeli prisons has swelled since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s subsequent invasion of the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Israeli troops have arrested hundreds of people in the search for fighters, the Israeli military says, while security forces in the occupied West Bank have conducted an enormous crackdown that they say is intended to root out militants.
But rights groups say that the arrests are often arbitrary, that the conditions in which Palestinians are held can be inhumane and that the spike in the number of reported deaths is concerning. Israel says the imprisoned Palestinians, who include avowed senior militants convicted of brutal attacks, are treated in accordance with international standards.
The detainees are a focus of one of the war’s most watched issues: negotiations for a cease-fire in Gaza. Hamas has made the release of thousands of prisoners, many of them convicted on terrorism-related charges, a condition for a cease-fire and for the exchange of the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza.
According to Hamoked, an Israeli human rights group, more than 9,000 Palestinians are in Israeli prisons.
Many were detained in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military says, where Israeli forces have conducted large raids since Oct. 7. An unknown number of Palestinians are being held in military facilities.
More than 3,500 Palestinian detainees are being held without formal charges, according to Hamoked. That practice, known as administrative detention, was in place before the war, but Israel has increased its use. Before Oct. 7, about 1,300 Palestinian administrative detainees were held in Israel, according to data provided by Israel’s prison service to Hamoked.
Activists say the practice effectively annuls due process, while Israel calls it a necessary tool to detain those it says pose an imminent threat to national security. The Israeli military said it had been operating “several detention facilities” for people apprehended during the Oct. 7 attacks and the ground invasion. It said that after questioning, detainees “found to be unrelated to terrorist activity” would be returned to Gaza.
A spokesperson for Israel’s prison service said in a statement that all of the prisoners were detained lawfully and all of their basic rights were being upheld.
Israel says its arrest campaign has picked up senior members of organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. But Israeli forces also have detained children and women whose families deny their involvement in armed groups.
As of this month, an estimated 200 minors and 68 women accused of militancy are in Israeli prisons, according to Qadura Fares, a Palestinian official who heads the Ramallah-based Commission for Detainees and Exprisoners’ Affairs.
Imprisoned Palestinians generally are split into two groups. Palestinians from the West Bank are funneled into Israel’s civilianrun prison system, which is overseen by a person nominated by Itamar Ben-gvir, the far-right national security minister.
Many hundreds of Palestinians have been sent to at least three detention facilities run by the Israeli military, according to Israeli officials. Those prisoners include hundreds detained during the Oct. 7 attack, as well as many others arrested in Gaza during the war. Images of those battlefield captures, in which men often are seen blindfolded and bound at the wrists, have generated international outrage.
The Sde Teiman military base is the closest known military detention site to Gaza, about 18 miles from the border. Information about the base is scant: Prisoners are cut off from the outside world, said Tal Steiner, who directs the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, a rights group.
Rights groups, the United Nations’ Palestinian refugees agency and external U.n.-appointed experts known as special rapporteurs are looking into accusations of abuse inside Israeli facilities.
An unpublished investigation by the main U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees accuses Israel of abusing hundreds of Palestinians captured during the war with Hamas, according to a copy of the report reviewed by The New York Times.
UNRWA researchers gathered testimonies from released detainees who said they had been beaten, stripped, robbed, blindfolded, sexually abused and denied access to lawyers and doctors.
Such treatment, the report concluded, “was used to extract information or confessions, to intimidate and humiliate and to punish.”
The report was compiled by UNRWA, the U.N. agency that is the focus of an investigation after accusations that at least 30 of its 13,000 employees in Gaza participated in the Oct. 7 attack.
The Times was unable to corroborate the entirety of the accusations in the report, but parts of it match the testimony of former Palestinian detainees interviewed by the Times. Palestinian detainees from Gaza have been stripped, beaten, interrogated and held incommunicado for several weeks, according to accounts by nearly a dozen of the detainees or their relatives interviewed by the Times.
The Israeli prison service spokesperson said in the statement, “We are not aware of the claims you described, and as far as we know, no such events have occurred.” However, she added, “prisoners and detainees have the right to file a complaint that will be fully examined and addressed by official authorities.”