Palestinian Prisoner Institutions Say Israel Tortures Thousands Daily in Israeli Prisons and Military Camps

Palestinian prisoner institutions said that thousands of Palestinian prisoners and detainees are subjected daily to torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment inside Israeli prisons and military camps, describing it as an organized system of starvation, humiliation, and dehumanization.

In a statement marking the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture observed on June 26 each year, the institutions said torture crimes have affected categories including children, women, the elderly, the wounded, and the sick, and they called it a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

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They said torture begins from the moment of detention through physical assault, threats, enforced disappearance, and painful restraints, and continues inside prisons through methods including stress positions, electric shocks, burning, and deprivation of sleep, food, water, and medical treatment.

The institutions also said imprisonment conditions, including starvation, denial of healthcare, and the spread of diseases, particularly scabies, have turned imprisonment into a continuous tool of torture aimed at physically and psychologically destroying detainees.

They renewed their call on the international community and the United Nations to activate universal jurisdiction to prosecute Israeli officials involved in torture crimes and to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross and independent international bodies immediate access to all detention facilities.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a report published on Thursday, February 19, 2026 that systemic violence committed against Palestinian journalists detained in Israeli prisons continues.

The NGO said it revealed testimonies of 58 torture victims imprisoned between October 2023 and January 2026, with witnesses describing physical assaults, forced stress positions, sensory deprivation, sexual violence, and medical neglect.

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CPJ’s executive director Jodie Ginsberg said, "These abuses reveal a deliberate strategy designed to intimidate and silence journalists, and to destroy their ability to testify," linking the prison treatment to efforts to prevent testimony.

The same CPJ reporting described a system to prevent dissemination of information, saying that between October 2023 and January 2026 it tallied the detention of at least 94 Palestinian journalists and one media employee.

In the account of journalist Mohammad al-Atrash, Israeli authorities ordered him to cease all journalistic activity, and he recalled, "They told me that if I wrote even a simple hello on social networks, they would know it," shortly before his release.

WAFA reported that Palestinian prisoner institutions said UN bodies, including the Committee Against Torture, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that serious violations, including torture and sexual violence, may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The institutions said the scale of crimes committed since the start of the genocide exceeded the traditional concept of torture in terms of scope, brutality, and variety of methods used, and they described torture as systematic official policy implemented by levels of the Israeli occupation system.

They also said the continued denial of access to detainees by the International Committee of the Red Cross and independent international bodies, along with restrictions imposed on lawyers and human rights organizations, represents an attempt to conceal evidence and erase the traces of crimes.

In a separate joint statement, Palestinian institutions said Israeli prisons have become a central arena for manifestations of genocide through practices including starvation, humiliation, denial of medical treatment, and inflicting physical and psychological suffering.

That same Al-Jazeera Net account cited Palestinian data that since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Israel has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians and injured more than 173,000 others in the Gaza Strip, and it said widespread destruction has affected 90 percent of civilian infrastructure.