(October 2025) The ceasefire and the exchange of hostages and prisoners between Israel and Hamas are as vital to all of us as air to breathe. Yet October 7 and the war in Gaza will continue to accompany us for a long time to come. The horrific moral low to which we have sunk – and which we have experienced both in Gaza and in Israel – demands a profound restoration of the value of human life, human dignity, and human rights, as well as a thorough restructuring of legislation and of the conduct of military and law enforcement bodies.
The Israeli hostages who returned from Hamas captivity recount a harrowing ordeal of torture and prolonged detention under conditions of hunger, violence, fear, denial of medical treatment, and complete isolation from anyone other than their captors. The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) stands beside the survivors and their families, ready to support them through our accumulated legal and forensic expertise – documenting the atrocities they endured and ensuring the realization of their rights.
In exchange for the release of the hostages, about 1,700 detainees from Gaza – held in Israel under the “Unlawful Combatants Law” – and around 250 prisoners from the West Bank were released from prisons and military facilities. One after another, the released Palestinians describe being arrested arbitrarily and without cause, imprisoned for extended periods in conditions of isolation and hunger, subjected to torture and humiliation, denied medical care and access to legal counsel, and deprived of any information about the fate of their loved ones. Some of them we have represented – and continue to represent – in legal proceedings to obtain recognition and justice, and to hold perpetrators accountable, including in cases involving families of several dozen detainees who died in Israeli prisons and detention facilities over the past two years.
The war may have ended, but the policy of torture against Palestinian detainees remains firmly in place. More than 9,000 “security” prisoners are still held in Israeli prisons. Among them are 3,544 administrative detainees from the West Bank and East Jerusalem – individuals against whom no evidence exists and no indictment has been filed. About a thousand others are held under the Unlawful Combatants Law, which deprives them of the right to due process and effectively constitutes another form of administrative detention. At least 300 of these detainees are minors, of which over 100 are held under administrative detention.
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