A Palestinian lawyer has exposed shocking testimonies of sexual torture, rape, and systematic abuse of Gaza detainees in Israeli prisons, warning that Israel is using such practices to intimidate Palestinians and defy international law.
In an exclusive interview with Anadolu, Khaled Mahajna, a lawyer with the Palestinian Authority’s Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, said one of the most disturbing cases involved an Israeli female jailer who stripped a Palestinian prisoner in a prison courtyard and raped him while mocking him, despite his hands being shackled.
“She stripped him of his clothes in the courtyard of one of the detention camps and raped him. She continued for several minutes using methods and tools that cannot be described, acts that surpassed brutality and reached pure sadism,” Mahajna said, adding that the episode was worse than the infamous Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq in 2004 during the US invasion.
Notorious prisons
Mahajna revealed that since Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, Israel has reopened underground detention centres, including the notorious Rakefet facility at Ayalon Prison in Ramla, central Israel.
The facility was originally built in 1948 but was deemed uninhabitable and later shut down.
“Hundreds of Gazans, and later Lebanese and Syrians, were thrown into Rakefet under inhuman conditions,” he said, describing cells meant for six people crammed with 25 detainees, with no sunlight, insufficient food, and prisoners forced to sleep on the floor without blankets.
He stressed that lawyers only managed to secure extremely limited visits after months of legal battles.
“Every visit is a battle. Both the lawyer and the prisoner are surrounded by jailers, with the detainees terrified of revealing what happens to them for fear of further torture,” he explained.
Sexual assaults
According to Mahajna, the abuse is not about extracting information but about collective punishment.
“Even the youngest jailer has a green light from the government to do whatever he wants to Gaza detainees, not to interrogate them but purely to torture and humiliate. This path is particularly focused on sexual abuse,” he said.
He cited testimonies of female prisoners from Gaza describing rape, sexual assault, and coercion, as well as cases of men subjected to sexual torture.
“One elderly prisoner from Gaza was tied, stripped, and assaulted with a stick inserted into his body. They filmed it and shared it among themselves for pride,” he recalled.
Another case involved a young man with cancer who was dragged and forced to drink from a toilet simply because he asked for clean water.
Mahajna said Israeli doctors are complicit in the abuse.
“I heard of a prisoner whose hand was amputated without anaesthesia after months of being shackled caused severe decay. Others have died for the same reason.”
Israel’s message
Mahajna argued that Israel’s use of rape and torture sends two messages.
“The first is a challenge to the world; Israel does not care about human rights groups or international courts,” he said.
“The second is intimidation, showing Palestinians that anyone who resists will face unimaginable torture, to break entire generations.”
He noted that the infamous “Unlawful Combatant Law,” passed in 2002 but dormant for years, has been enforced aggressively since October 2023, allowing Israel to detain Palestinians, as well as Lebanese and Syrians, indefinitely without charges.
Since the start of the war, he said, Israel has detained over 10,000 Palestinians without trial or charge under its administrative detention policy, including 500 children.
Death camps
Despite systematic obstruction in Israeli courts, Mahajna said his team continues filing complaints and appeals.
“Some detainees have not changed their underwear for months. Even this basic right has been denied. The Israeli courts are part of the machinery of torture,” he said.
He confirmed that Israel fears potential civil lawsuits in international courts, especially from released prisoners who suffered sexual violence and torture.
Mahajna cited the case of five Israeli soldiers charged for sexual abuse of a Gaza prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman camp in southern Israel, though he warned they were being tried while free and could escape with light punishments.
He concluded with a stark warning: “Every prisoner I meet tells me the same thing: save us from these death camps.”
