ISRAELI AUTHORITIES MUST end the practices of indefinite incommunicado detention and torture of Palestinians taken captive from Gaza, Amnesty International has said.

Amnesty has documented the cases of 27 Palestinian former detainees, including five women, 21 men and a 14-year-old boy, who were detained for periods of up to four and a half months “without access to their lawyers or any contact with their families”, under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants law.

All those interviewed by the human rights NGO said that during their detention, Israeli military, intelligence and police forces “subjected them to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”.

Israel has a history of indefinite and arbitrary detention but it has ramped up the practice since the beginning of the latest war on the Gaza Strip that began in October last year following the Hamas-led attacks.

The legal instrument used in the detention of Gazans is Israel’s Unlawful Combatants law, which Amnesty says has been used to capture and detain at least 1,402 Palestinians under the law. That number does not include those held for an initial 45-day period without a formal order.

According to Amnesty, those detained have included doctors taken into custody at hospitals for refusing to abandon their patients; mothers separated from their infants while trying to cross the so-called “safe corridor” from northern Gaza to the south; human rights defenders, UN workers, journalists and other civilians.

‘Black hole’

The Unlawful Combatants Law grants the Israeli military sweeping powers to detain people from Gaza whom they suspect of engaging in hostilities against Israel. Amnesty said the law, which has been on the books since 2002 but was brought back into use for the first time in five years after the 7 October attack, must be repealed. 

Under the law, detention can be indefinitely renewed without Israeli authorities having to produce evidence to substantiate claims made against detainees.

“This law enables rampant torture and, in some circumstances, institutionalises enforced disappearance,” said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International.  

“Our documentation illustrates how the Israeli authorities are using the Unlawful Combatants Law to arbitrarily round up Palestinian civilians from Gaza and toss them into a virtual black hole for prolonged periods without producing any evidence that they pose a security threat and without minimum due process.”

Gazans released from detention in military barracks and Israeli prisons have reported – to Amnesty and others – inhumane conditions, strip searches, beatings, sexual assault, humiliation, torture and stolen property. 

Mock execution

One woman who spoke to Amnesty, arrested from her home in December, said she was separated from her two children- a four-year-old and a nine-month-old baby – and held initially alongside hundreds of men.

She was accused of being a Hamas member, beaten, forced to remove her veil and photographed without it, something that many Muslim women never do. 

She also described being subjected to the mock execution of her husband.

“On the third day of detention, they put us in a ditch and started throwing sand. A soldier fired two shots in the air and said they executed my husband and I broke down and begged him to kill me too, to relieve me from the nightmare,” she said. 

“I was terrified and scared for my kids all the time,” another released woman said, adding that her repeated requests for information about her children were ignored by prison guards whom she overheard laughing and mocking her.

She told Amnesty that after three weeks in prison she was informed she would be released but in fact ended up in a different facility. 

She was handcuffed, blindfolded and had her feet shackled and was taken to the other location.

Upon arrival, she was “violently strip-searched” by guards who used a knife to rip off her clothes. 

She told Amnesty that she was threatened by prison guards who said: “We will do to you what Hamas did to us, we will kidnap and rape you”. She was never informed of the reason for her detention.

Rejection of a Palestinian state

Meanwhile, the Knesset (Israeli parliament) passed a resolution today opposing the recognition of a Palestinian state. Only nine members opposed the resolution – all of the Arab Israelis – while the Labour Party MKs abstained. 

The declaration stated that “a Palestinian state would pose an existential threat to the State of Israel and its citizens”. 

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote on X: “With a decisive majority of 68 to 9, the Knesset voted against the establishment of an Arab terror state in Israel, not now, not in the future, not unilaterally, and not within an agreement.”

The resolution was proposed by the right-wing opposition party New Hope-United Right.

It states that “the establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel would constitute an existential threat to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilise the region.”

Party chairman Gideon Sa’ar said, “the resolution decision is intended to express the blanket opposition that exists among the [Israeli] people to the establishment of a Palestinian state, which would endanger Israel’s security and future”.

He said the resolution “signals to the international community that pressure to impose a Palestinian state on Israel is futile”. 

A number of countries, including Ireland, have recognised the State of Palestine this year – something that has drawn public condemnation from Israeli politicians, with Finance Minister Smotrich threatening to ramp up the expansion of illegal settlements in occupied West Bank in Palestine. 

Israel recently officially recognised colonial outposts in the West Bank as settlements, in what was described as its largest land grab in decades.