Israeli Prison Forces Raid Damon Prison Women’s Section 10 Times, Palestinian Prisoners Society Says

Israeli prison forces carried out at least 10 raids on sections holding Palestinian women prisoners at Damon Prison in March and April, the Palestinian Prisoners Society said, with the raids involving “beatings, forcing prisoners to lie on the ground and handcuffing them behind their backs.”

“The Palestinian Prisoners' Club accused the Israeli prison administration of carrying out 10 suppression operations in Damon Prison, where 88 female prisoners are held, including two minors and three pregnant detainees, during March and April of the past year”

Al-Jazeera Net

The Palestinian Prisoners Society said Damon prison holds the majority of the 88 Palestinian female detainees, including two girls and three women in the early months of pregnancy detained over what Israeli authorities describe as “incitement.”

Al-Jazeera Net

WAFA said the repression raids took place on February 28, March 5, March 10, March 17, March 30, April 1, April 3, April 17, April 21, and April 23, and that detainees were beaten and assaulted by prison guards while their hands were tied behind their backs.

The Palestinian Prisoners Society said the raids were accompanied by intensified solitary confinement, with at least six women subjected to isolation, some for periods exceeding two weeks, and that severe overcrowding forced many to sleep on the floor.

Nasrin Begum, a sewing machine operator who escaped by jumping from a second-floor window, described workers pounding on locked metal doors as smoke filled the stairwells, and said, “We could hear them screaming but we could not reach them.”

In a statement, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club accused the Israeli prison administration of carrying out 10 suppression operations in Damon Prison, where 88 female prisoners are held, and said the operations were accompanied by “beatings and forcing the prisoners to lie on the ground, and handcuffing their hands behind their backs.”

Al-Markaz al-Filastini lil-I'lam

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said wardens and female guards deliberately attacked detainees while restrained, causing some to suffer bruises, and it said the suppression operations were carried out during March and April.

The club also said the policy of solitary confinement against female prisoners “has escalated” since the start of the war on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, and that at least six female prisoners were subjected to isolation, some for two weeks or more.

Amnesty International France said Palestinians in Gaza are “victims of arbitrary detention and torture,” and it described the Law on the Incarceration of Illegal Combatants as allowing Israeli authorities to detain indefinitely “without indictment or trial.”

“Living under the threat of bombs is not the only scourge Palestinians have faced daily since October 7, 2023”

Amnesty International France

Amnesty International France said the law was enacted in 2002 and invoked for the first time in five years following the attacks carried out by Hamas and other armed groups on October 7, 2023 in southern Israel, and it said a December 2023 amendment tightened conditions of detention in secret.

The Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS), and the Addameer Association for Prisoner Support and Human Rights reported that the number of Palestinians identified as held in central prisons, military camps, interrogation and detention centers of the occupation exceeds 10,100 people at the start of May 2025, including 3,577 Palestinians in administrative detention.

Amnesty International France said it has collected testimonies of 27 detainees, including a 14-year-old boy, who report torture, and it called for the law to be repealed while warning that secret detention and denial of fair trial violate international law.