We at Femena are extremely concerned about Israel’s arbitrary, wide scale detention and mistreatment of thousands of Palestinians, especially hundreds of Palestinian women, as it continues its brutal military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
In an interview with Femena, a Palestinian Woman Human Rights Defender (WHRD) shared the harrowing details of her arrest from her West Bank home and her subsequent three month detention in overcrowded and unhygienic conditions, during which she endured physical and verbal abuse. According to M[1], a swarm of over sixty Israeli soldiers broke down the door, raided and ransacked her home at 2:00am. M was then blindfolded, handcuffed and thrown onto the floor of the vehicle which the Israeli military used to transfer her to a detention facility. After being shuttled among different detention facilities, M spent the bulk of her three month detention at Damon Prison, outside the city of Haifa, where the majority of women detainees from the West Bank are reported to be detained. M was never informed of the actual reason for her arrest, and she was not charged with a crime. She was an “administrative detainee,” a form of preventive detention that Israel has routinely carried out and justified on security grounds for decades.
During her detention at Damon prison, M bore witness to the dire situation of many other women detainees, including one who was eight months pregnant, and another who suffered from depression and other health issues arising from an infection in her leg, and who was detained shortly after having given birth.
The Israeli government has justified its sweeping arrests on grounds of security. According to M, many of the women detained were arrested due to social media posts about the war in Gaza.
Administrative Detention as a Tool of Further Oppression
Under administrative detention, the Israeli state detains individuals for up to six months at a time, renewable virtually indefinitely without trial. Thousands of Palestinians have been administratively detained for periods ranging from several months to several years. Although the law requires that administrative detainees be brought before a judge within eight days, many human rights organizations have noted that the proceedings are mostly a façade of judicial review, since judges typically defer to the prosecution, including their demand that evidence remain confidential for reasons of national security. The secrecy of evidence renders detainees and their legal counsel incapable of mounting a defense against the allegations.
Administrative detention continues to be an abusive and arbitrary tool of oppression, as does the legal framework that Israel has deployed in the Occupied Territories. This legal framework which was established in 1967 pursuant to Military Order No. 378, has instituted military courts, in which the functions of police, prosecutor and judge are vested in the same institution – the Israeli military.
This draconian penal and judicial system applies to Palestinians alone and is in clear violation of international law. The illegality of this legal framework, has long been decried by Palestinians, criticized through multiple U.N. resolutions and condemned widely by international and Israeli human rights organizations.
Unlawful Combatants Law Grants Israeli Military Sweeping Powers
Also of serious concern is the expansive and sweeping powers that the Israeli Knesset has granted to the military. In December of 2023, the Israeli Knesset amended the “Unlawful Combatants Law,” originally adopted in 2002, to grant even more sweeping powers to the military to detain anyone suspected of engaging in hostilities against Israel, or of posing a threat to state security. The amendment extends the time the military is permitted to detain Palestinians without a detention order from 96 hours to 45 days. It also increased the maximum time a detainee can be held before being brought before a judge to review the detention order from 14 days to 75 days and extended the period a detainee can be held without seeing a lawyer from 21 days to up to six months (later reduced to three months).
Such vast powers make it much easier to engage in abuse, as evidenced by reports demonstrating that Israel is using the law to “arbitrarily round up Palestinian civilians,” and detaining them for prolonged periods, without providing any evidence of their wrongdoing. According to these reports, detainees recounted being blindfolded and handcuffed for the duration of their detention and forced to remain in stress positions for prolonged periods of time.
Additionally, Physicians for Human Rights in Israel has stated that since October 7, Israel’s prisons have become an “apparatus of retribution and revenge,” with incarceration conditions having deteriorated far below the minimums required by law, which is endangering the lives of those in custody.
Sexual Assault and Degradng Detention Conditions for Women
A group of UN experts have expressed grave concern over credible allegations of sexual assault and other inhuman and degrading treatment to which women prisoners and detainees have been subjected. For instance, the UN experts have cited reports of Palestinian women being stripped naked and searched by male army officers and threatened with rape and sexual violence.
Since the statement by the UN experts, more reports of abuse in Israeli prisons have surfaced, including a recent report by B’Tselem, one of the most prominent Israeli human rights organizations, where testimony collected from 55 recently-released Palestinian detainees reveals a systemic, institutional policy of torture and abuse. The Associated Press interviewed detainees who appeared “emaciated and emotionally scarred,” with one detainee barely having the strength to stand and able to only speak for a few minutes after months in Israeli detention. Recent videos leaked showing the alleged rape of a Palestinian detainee by nine Israeli soldiers has has shocked many and underscores the need for independent investigations into these abuses.
These reports are all consistent with the experiences M recounted to Femena, stating that she was subject to humiliating strip searches and taunted with sexually explicit language and sexually explicit gestures meant to humiliate her throughout her detention[2]. Likewise, other released women who spoke to the Associated Press described similar treatment, including one woman who said that she was commanded to kiss an Israeli flag and when she refused, a soldier pulled her by the hair and smashed her face into a wall.
While in Damon prison, M also became aware of the presence of many other women detainees, including prominent WHRDS and activists such as Khalida Jarrar, Hadeel Shatara, Diyala Ayesh, LIan Kaid, Lian Nasser, and Yara Abu Hashish. It is, however, very difficult to obtain accurate numbers on the number of Palestinians who have been detained since October 7. M has shared with Femena the names of some 60 women detainees who were detained at the same time as her in Damon Prison.
Itis especially difficult to obtain accurate numbers for those detained from Gaza, as both the scale of detention is larger, and the process takes place with much less transparency and scrutiny given the violent, destructive context. The fact that under the new regulations detainees remain in detention for longer before facing judges and are essentially incommunicado and unable to communicate with their families and the outside world also makes it much more difficult to ascertain precise figures. According to a report by the Palestinian NGO Committee of Detainee and Ex-Detainee Affairs (CDA), since the beginning of Israeli’s military offensive in Gaza, approximately 9,700 Palestinians have been arrested in the West Bank alone, of which 330 are women. As of July 2024, the Israeli NGO HaMoked estimates the number of Palestinians detained inside Israeli prisons to be approximately 9,600.
The information that is being reported from released detainees clearly shows, however, that Israel is using detention as yet another tool in the war it is waging against the people of Palestine.
Conclusion
This vicious war has, by the most conservative estimates, cost the lives of over 39,000 Palestinians, 23,000 of them are women and children according to UN Women. This war has also and resulted in the utter destruction and devastation of Gaza’s infrastructure, including vital health services. While attention is mostly focused on Gaza, more than 500 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 7, as a result of raids by the Israeli military, as well as attacks by Israeli settlers, who have been emboldened by the extremist government’s inciteful rhetoric.
Femena urges the international community, and especially those countries directly aiding and abetting these violations through the provision of military and financial aid to cease all such assistance and once and for all call for a ceasefire and to enforce the interim rulings of the International Court of Justice, which not only call for an end to the current hostilities, but for an end to Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories.
[1] To protect her, Femena is withholding M’sidentity.
[2] Women Human Rights Defenders across the SWANA have reported sexual violence during interrogation and detention. This account is in line with experiences of WHRDs in the region. For more on this issue, see Femena’s report “Silent No More: WHRDs in SWANA Speak Out on Sexual Violence by State Security.”