OUTSIDE OFER PRISON, West Bank (AP) — Frequent beatings, overcrowding, withholding of basic rations. Released Palestinians have described to The Associated Press worsening abuses in Israeli prisons crammed with thousands detained since the war in Gaza began 10 months ago.
Israeli officials have acknowledged that they have made conditions harsher for Palestinians in prisons, with hard-line National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir boasting that prisons will no longer be “summer camps” under his watch.
Four released Palestinians told the AP that treatment had dramatically worsened in prisons run by the ministry since the Oct. 7 attacks that triggered the latest war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Some emerged from months of captivity emaciated and emotionally scarred.
A fifth prisoner, Muazzaz Abayat, was too weakened to detail his experience soon after his release in July following six months at southern Israel’s Naqab prison. Frail-looking and unable to focus, he could only muster the strength to speak for several minutes, saying he was regularly beaten.
Now at home outside Bethlehem, the 37-year-old can hardly leave his armchair.
“At night, he hallucinates and stands in the middle of the house, in shock or remembering the torment and pain he went through,” said his cousin, Aya Abayat. Like many of the detained, he was put under administrative detention, a procedure that allows…