Israel holds many Palestinians from Gaza isolated in a dungeon where they do not see the dawn, deprived of adequate food and restricted to adequate meals and ban on news of their families or the outside world.
The detainees were accompanied by at least two civilians who were held without charge or trial: a nurse who was caught in her riots against the torture committee against torture in Israel (PCATI) which represents men.
The two men have been kept in the subterranean rigure complex since January, and describe regular beatings and violence in accordance with the central Israeli documents.
Progefet prison was opened in the early 1980s to deal with a dangerous organized crime figures in Israel but closed a few years ago on the grounds. The far-right Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, ordered it back into service after the attack in October of 2023.
The cells, a small exercise “yard” and a lawyer’s meeting room are all underground, the prisoners live without natural light.
The prison was originally designed for a small number of high-security prisoners occupying individual cells, which held 15 men when about 100 prisoners were imprisoned in the PCITi show.
Under a ceasefire agreed in mid-October, Israel released 1,700 Palestinian detainees from Gaza without charge or trial, as well as 250 Israeli prisoners convicted in Israeli courts.
However, the scale of the detentions was so great that even after the mass release, at least 1,000 were still being held in Israel under the same conditions.
“Although the war is official, [Palestinians from Gaza] Still incarcerated under the legal contract and cruel conditions during the violation of international humanitarian law and amount tortured by PCATI lawyers.
Ben-Gvir told the Israeli Media and a member of Parliament that RAFEFET was restored to Nukhba – meaning “wounds” – Hamas Fighters inside Israel, and Hezbollah Special fighters captured in Lebanon.
But the two men visited by lawyers from PCati in September a 34-year-old nurse was pinched while working with a teenager in October 2024 when he passed through a checkpoint in Israel.
“In the cases of the clients we visit, we speak about civilians,” said PCatihan lawyer Janan Abdu. “The person I’m talking to is an 18-year-old who works as a food vendor. He was taken from a checkpoint on a road.”
The Israeli prison service (IPS) did not respond to questions about the condition and identity of other prisoners held in Rafet, which means “Cyclamen flower” in Hebrew.
Classified Israeli data indicate most Palestinians taken prisoner to Gaza during the war were civilians. The Supreme Court of Israel ruled in 2019 that the bodies of Palestinians can be trusted as bargaining chips for future negotiations, and rights groups from Gaza have accused it.
Extreme Abuse
Conditions for Palestinians are “terrible by intent” in all prisons, said Tal Steiner, the Executive Director of PCati. Current and former detainees, and whistleblowers from the Israeli military, have all detailed systematic violations of international law.
However, Rakefet inflicted a unique form of abuse. Holding people underground without daylight for months on end has “serious implications” for psychological health, Steiner said. “It is very difficult to remain intact when you are held in such oppressive and difficult conditions.”
It also affects physical health, the deterioration of basic biological functions from the circadian rhythms necessary for sleep to the production of vitamin D.
Despite working as a human rights lawyer, and visiting prisons in the complex of Ramla, South-downstairs of Tel Aviv, where the Rafet of Ben-Gvir did not feel that it was returned to the service.
It was closed before PCati was founded, so the legal team turned to old media archives and the Memoir of Rafael Suissa, the subject of IPs in the mid-1980s to learn more about the prison.
“[Suissa] writes that he understands being held underground 24/7 is very cruel, not very bad for any person to survive, regardless of what their actions say,” said Steiner.
This summer, PCati lawyers were asked to represent two men held in an underground prison, so Abdu and a colleague visited for the first time.
They were led under masked, heavily armed security guards, up a flight of dirty stairs to a room where dead insects littered the floor. The toilet was so dirty it was unusable.
The surveillance cameras on the walls violated the basic legal right to a confidential discussion, and the guards warned that the families could be reduced to families or to the war in Gaza.
“I ask myself, if the conditions in the lawyers’ room are so shameful – not only for us personally but also professionally – then what are the conditions for the prisoners?” Abdu said. “The answer will come soon, when we meet.”
The clients were bent over, with guards forcing their heads to the ground, and remained shackled at the hands and feet, he said.
Saja Misherqi Baransi, the second PCati lawyer on the trip, said that the two prisoners had been in Rquefet for nine months, and the nurse began the meeting by asking: “Where am I here and why am I here?” The guards did not tell him the name of the prison.
Israeli judges who allow the detention of men in very short video hearings, where the detainees do not have a lawyer and do not hear the evidence against them, that they come alone “.
The men described the windowless room with no ventilation, which held three or four inmates, and was often reported to be suffocating and choking.
Prisoners told lawyers they faced regular physical abuse including beatings, attacks by dogs with prisoner muzzles and were further denied adequate medical care. High Court of Israel Controls It was this month that the state released Palestinian prisoners with enough food.
They have limited time outside the cell in a small underground tunnel, sometimes only five minutes per day. The mattresses were removed early in the morning, usually around 4am, and returned only at night, leaving the detainees in iron frames.
Their descriptions correspond to images from a televised visit to the prison that Ben-Gvir made to announce his decision to open the prison underground. “This is the natural habitat of terrorists, underground,” he said.
He repeatedly boasted of the mistreatment of Palestinian detainees, rhetoric that former hostages captured during the 7 October prompted an increase in the abuse of Hamas when they were in captivity.
This includes holding hostages in underground tunnels, depriving them of food, removing them from news of relatives and the outside world, including torturing a grave on camera.
Israel Intelligence Services It has warned that the treatment of Palestinian prisoners puts the country’s security interests at risk.
Misherqi Baransi said that the detained nurse last day on the 21st of January this year, when he was transferred to Rafet, after a year of passing through the military prisons SDE Teiman Center.
The nurse, a father of three, has not heard from his family since his arrest. The only piece of personal information lawyers can share with detainees from Gaza is the name of the relative who allowed them to take the case.
“When I told him: ‘I spoke to your mother and I allowed him to see you,’ it was as if I told him that his mother is alive,” said Miserqi Baransi.
When other detainees asked ABU if his pregnant wife was safe, the guard immediately interrupted the conversation to threaten him. As the guards took the people away, he heard the sound of an elevator, suggesting their cells were deeper underground.
The teenager told him: “You are the first person I have seen since my arrest,” and his last request to him was: “Please look at me again.”
The IPS said in a statement that it “acts in accordance with the Law and under the supervision of official comptrollers” and added that it is “not responsible for details, classification of details, or arrests”.
The justice ministry refers to questions about Rakefet and Israeli military prisoners. Military questions on IPs.