Tal Steiner, Opinion Column in Haaretz Newsaper English Edition
Earlier this month, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee held an urgent debate on an amendment to the law for imprisoning unlawful combatants. The discussion was held without hearing from civil society organizations or human rights experts, and without scrutinizing basic data such as the number of detainees, their prison conditions, how many had been released and under which circumstances.
Less than a day after approval by the committee, whose debate turned out to be purely for the record, the Knesset passed the bill 30 to 6, just a week before the law, which was originally crafted as an ordinance to be extended every four months since the war in Gaza broke out, was set to expire. This has all the appearances of legislation designed to retroactively legalize what has already been happening: the mass detainment of Gazans in Israel under conditions raising serious concerns about crimes against humanity.
According to the law that passed, Israel will be able to detain Gazans for months, even years, without indicting them, presenting evidence justifying their detainment or allowing them access to a lawyer. Weeks into their confinement, detainees are brought before a “judicial review,” though not in front of a judge in open court. Rather, it’s by video conference, which doesn’t allow the detainee to speak directly to the judge, or allow the judge to get an impression of the detainee’s physical or mental condition.
In fact, most detainees aren’t represented at all – and, as far as we know at the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, a court has never ordered a detainee’s release. These proceedings appear to be judicial proceedings, but they’re not. They only rubber-stamp a policy of a mass infringement of liberty.
The law for imprisoning unlawful combatants is applied across the board on Palestinians in Gaza, with 2,850 people currently detained under it. Around 450 of them are being held at detainment facilities at the Ofer, Naftali and Sde Teiman bases, while the rest are in civilian prison facilities. Since the war started, nearly half of the people detained under this law have been released.
That is, even the state admits that many of them never posed any danger. Still, Israel continues to detain hundreds of people for many months, sometimes for over a year, without indictments and without allowing them to defend themselves.
Dozens of reports by soldiers, doctors and former detainees paint a harsh picture of inhumane prison conditions. This includes testimonies about prisoners being chained, beaten and deprived of sleep, amid hunger and dehydration. Sick people are detained without basic medical care, and there are deaths.
As a result of judicial and public pressure, including the petition that the Public Committee Against Torture has been championing since February 2024, the state introduced into the bill a mechanism of “official visitors” – state representatives who would monitor detainment facilities.
But the state still refuses to release data that would prove that the mechanism is working; it has not reported the number of visits by “official visitors,” or revealed their identity. It has also not released figures on deaths in custody. Not even the Red Cross is allowed to visit facilities. Instead, the number of dead is rising every month as the abuse and starvation continue.
If this weren’t enough, the new amendment makes it possible to send detainees back to solitary confinement and deny them access to a lawyer, even if they have already met with one. This means they could remain without legal representation and contact with the outside world for extended periods at any stage of their detention. This is a severe infringement of their right to legal defense and increases the risk of them undergoing torture or other inhumane treatment – just when they are at their most vulnerable.
In addition, to implement these harsh ordinances, the government is no longer required to declare a state of emergency, and the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee isn’t required to approve such a declaration – removing one more check on the arbitrary use of a law that gravely harms human rights. The government seems to be preparing for a situation where even if the war ends tomorrow, it will be able to keep detaining prisoners from Gaza for months and years, when all claims about “urgent operational need,” for which the law was passed in the first place, are empty.
The damage isn’t confined to Israel’s borders. According to many former Israeli hostages in Gaza, the reaction to the brutal treatment of Palestinian detainees resulted in physical revenge against them. The systematic violation of the rights of Palestinian prisoners isn’t just a moral crime, it’s a policy that puts Israeli citizens at danger and widens the circle of violence.
Tal Steiner is executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel.