AhlulBayt News Agency: The Israeli regime is holding dozens of Palestinians from Gaza, including civilians, in an underground prison called the Rakefet complex, where they are deprived of daylight, adequate food, and contact with the outside world, according to lawyers representing detainees.
According to a report from The Guardian on Saturday, two Palestinian civilians from Gaza are being held without charge in a notorious, subterranean Israeli detention facility reopened by a far-right minister, where they face systematic abuse and conditions lawyers describe as torture.
The detainees include at least two civilians who are being held without charge or trial: a nurse detained in his scrubs, and a young food seller, according to lawyers from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) who represent both men.
The two men have been kept in the subterranean Rakefet complex since January, and described regular beatings and violence consistent with well-documented torture in other Israeli detention centres.
Rakefet prison was opened in the early 1980s to house a handful of the most dangerous organised crime figures in Israel, but closed a few years later on the grounds that it was inhumane. The far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, ordered it back into service after the 7 October attacks in 2023.
The cells, a tiny exercise “yard”, and a lawyer’s meeting room are all underground, so inmates live without any natural light.
The jail was initially designed for a small number of high-security inmates occupying individual cells, holding 15 men when it shut in 1985. In recent months, about 100 detainees have been incarcerated there, official data obtained by PCATI shows.
Under the ceasefire agreed in mid-October, Israel released 1,700 Palestinian detainees from Gaza who had been held indefinitely without charge or trial, as well as 250 Palestinian prisoners who had been convicted in Israeli courts.
However, the scale of detentions has been so vast that even after that mass release, at least 1,000 others are still held by Israel under the same conditions.
“Though the war is officially over, [Palestinians from Gaza] are still imprisoned under legally contested and violent wartime conditions that violate international humanitarian law and amount to torture,” PCATI said. They include the two Rakefet detainees who are represented by PCATI lawyers.
Classified Israeli data indicates the majority of Palestinians taken prisoner in Gaza during the war were civilians. Israel’s supreme court ruled in 2019 that it was lawful to hold the bodies of Palestinians as bargaining chips for future negotiations, and rights groups have accused it of doing the same with living detainees from Gaza.
Conditions for Palestinians were “horrific by intention” at all prisons, said Tal Steiner, the executive director of PCATI. Current and former detainees, and whistleblowers from the Israeli military, have all detailed systemic violations of international law.
However, Rakefet imposes a unique form of abuse. Holding people below ground without daylight for months on end has “extreme implications” for psychological health, Steiner said. “It’s very hard to remain intact when you are held in such oppressive and difficult conditions.”
It also affects physical health, impairing basic biological functions from circadian rhythms needed for sleep to vitamin D production.
The IPS said in a statement that it “operates in accordance with the law and under the supervision of official comptrollers” and added that it “is not responsible for the legal process, classification of detainees, arrest policy, or arrests”.
The justice ministry referred questions by The Guardian about Rakefet and detainees to the Israeli military. The military referred questions to the IPS.
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