section_path: Spillover/West Bank and Israel/Israeli prisons and detention camps
section_name: Israeli prisons and detention camps
paragraph_text: Israeli prisons and detention camps
  
  Israel has increased its administrative detention of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel, since the start of the war. Administrative detention was already at a 20-year high before October 2023. More than 11,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli jails, not counting detainees taken from Gaza during the war. At least 60 Palestinians have died in Israeli detention since 7 October. They are held without charge or trial, which violates international law.
  
  In December 2023, a military base at Sde Teiman in the Negev Desert was converted to a detention camp by the IDF. Whistleblowers and detainees reported beatings and torture of Palestinian detainees at the camp, as well as amputations of limbs due to injuries sustained from handcuffing, medical neglect, arbitrary punishment and sexual abuse. Prisoners have been coerced to make confessions that they are members of Hamas. After conditions in the camp came to light in May 2024, the Supreme Court of Israel held a hearing and the IDF began transferring 1,200 of the prisoners to Ofer Prison. Detainees have reported severe instances of violence during transfers between prisons.
  
  Several Palestinian healthcare workers have been abducted from Gaza hospitals during sieges by Israeli forces. On 5 December, Israeli forces abducted the adult men present at Al-Awda hospital and took them to Sde Teiman camp. Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh was detained and later died in Israeli custody. In March, Israeli forces abducted Khaled Alser, lead author of the first Lancet paper on trauma among Gazan ER patients and doctors, from Nasser Hospital. As of 31 August, he remains in detention and his whereabouts are unknown.
  
  Al-Araby TV correspondent Mohammed Arab was abducted from the Gaza strip in March 2024 and transferred to Ofer prison in July. After reports of his treatment were leaked to al-Araby, he was beaten, threatened and tortured. According to Arab's testimony, prison guards used dogs and fire extinguishers to enact sexual violence on other prisoners.
  
  In July 2024, military police raided Sde Teiman to arrest ten soldiers "suspected of the serious sexual abuse" of a Palestinian detainee. Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and other members of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party condemned the arrests. Supporters of the arrested soldiers including Ben Gvir, Amihai Eliyahu, Zvi Sukkot, and Nissim Vaturi stormed Sde Teiman that night in protest. Hours later, protestors broke into Beit Lid where the soldiers were being held.
  
  On 7 October 2024, American journalist Jeremy Loffredo and three other international and Israeli journalists were detained at a checkpoint in the West Bank on suspicion of "assisting an enemy in war" for their reporting on the October 2024 Iranian strikes against Israel. The journalists' cameras and phones were confiscated. Loffredo was released after four days in detention, and barred from leaving the country until 20 October.
  
  As of February 2025, at least 160 healthcare workers from Gaza were believed to be held in detention by Israel, with another 24 missing after being taken from hospitals in Gaza. Al-Shifa hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia, who was detained for 7 months and released without charges, detailed many of the abuses he faced and said that "no day passes without torture" in Israeli prisons.