Long before October 7, prison guards in Israel’s military prisons, such as Sde Teiman and Israel Prison Service (IPS) facilities have been known to abuse incarcerated Palestinians, and Palestinian prisoners taken from the occupied Palestinian territories are subject to military, rather than civil, courts .

This is a fact that has contributed to findings from organisations like the International Court of Justice that the Israeli legal system is a form of apartheid.

Mack said he has represented a Palestinian man from the occupied West Bank who experienced this abuse while in an IPS prison: An Israeli guard grabbed him by the neck, picked him up, and threw him on the floor of his cell, breaking a bone around his eye.

Even so, IPS facilities historically tended to have better living conditions compared to their military counterparts, such as more adequate beds, food and ability to move, compared to their military counterparts. Since the war in Gaza began, however, Mack and Pelli noted that IPS prisons have shut Palestinians off from the outside world. Detainees have been kept from communicating with their families or attorneys. IPS prisons were placed on lockdowns, restricting movement within the facilities.

Pelli, along with her group, ACRI, filed a separate petition to the Supreme Court that sought to allow the Red Cross into prisons and military camps to offer medical treatment to prisoners, which is required under Israeli and international law. The Red Cross has been denied access to all prisons since the start of the war. The petition cited the deaths of at least two detainees in military camps and another six in IPS prisons with two of them showing “signs of severe violence on their bodies.”

The court has yet to rule on the issue as the government continues to ask for extensions in the case.

In April, Pelli filed yet another petition, for the Israel Prison Service to end “a policy of starvation towards Palestinian prisoners and detainees,” which it argued was a form of torture and violated international law. Since October 7, the petition said the policy has left prisoners to suffer from constant and extreme hunger and poor quality of food. The petition included testimony from formerly incarcerated Palestinians who lost dozens of pounds, and a diabetic prisoner who was forced to eat toothpaste to raise his blood sugar.

Since October 7, the number of imprisoned Palestinians has nearly doubled, from 5,192 before the war to 9,623 as of early July, exacerbating a preexisting issue of overcrowding, according to human rights group HaMoked, which tracks Israel’s prison population and was among the groups who petitioned to close Sde Teiman.

More than 4,000 detained Palestinians are under administrative detention, in which individuals are infinitely held without being charged. Many are released after weeks of detention without any charges.

The B’Tselem report cited Pelli’s and her group’s petitions, calling the prisons a “normative black hole” where “Palestinians have no rights or protections.”

The report said most of the incarcerated are men and boys, although women and children are among those imprisoned by Israel since October 7. “Some were jailed simply for expressing sympathy for the suffering of Palestinians,” the report read. “Others were taken into custody during military activity in the Gaza Strip, on the sole grounds that they came under the vague definition of ‘men of fighting age.’ Some were imprisoned over suspicions, substantiated or not, that they were operatives or supporters of armed Palestinian organisations.”

The report highlighted firsthand accounts of 55 Palestinians who were previously detained in Israeli prisons, including 21 Gazans and four Israeli citizens. They shared instances “of frequent acts of severe, arbitrary violence; sexual assault; humiliation and degradation; deliberate starvation; forced unhygienic conditions; sleep deprivation; prohibition on and punitive measures for, religious worship; confiscation of all communal and personal belongings; and denial of adequate medical treatment.”

One Palestinian who was formerly detained in Sde Tieman told B’Tselem that he and others were led into a warehouse where he was forced to kneel prostrate and naked while soldiers beat them during interrogations. While on the way to another facility, he and other detainees were beaten if they talked or made any noise. During the beatings, he said his left leg was injured. As his leg pain intensified over the next several days, soldiers ignored his complaints and would strike his injured leg. His leg eventually had to be amputated. Even then, the torture continued, the man said, as he was forced to stand on his remaining leg for hours, preventing him from sleeping. He was later released to his family in Gaza with no formal charges against him, the report said.

B’Tselem alleged in the report that the abuses are a part of a systemwide policy meant to torture Palestinians, implemented by Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the Israel Prison Service and with the support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government.

“The main problem is that it’s not only just the military facilities [like Sde Teiman],” Pelli said. “Nowadays, under these conditions and with this minister, everything is terrible.”

Sde Teiman resurfaced in the public eye in late July when a right-wing mob broke into the base after military investigators showed up to question soldiers suspected in the rape of a Palestinian prisoner. The mob also broke into a separate base where the soldiers were brought for questioning. Ben-Gvir referred to the “spectacle” of police coming to question soldiers, which he called “our best heroes,” as “nothing less than shameful.” The incident highlighted the increased polarisation between the prime minister’s far-right government and the country’s military command.

The arrests do not signal any increased accountability within the government, Mack believes, but were political decisions by Maj-Gen Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the head military prosecutor in both cases. Even before the video leak, the rape victim received medical treatment in a public, civilian hospital where the medical staff found injuries consistent with sexual assault, Mack said, forcing the military’s hand to investigate.

“It shows a total failure,” he said, blaming Tomer-Yerushalmi for what he saw as a soft response to earlier allegations of prisoner abuse throughout the war.

Hearings around the petition to close Sde Teiman continued on Wednesday, during which right-wing protesters disrupted the proceedings. Throughout the case, demonstrators have regularly criticised Pelli and her colleagues as being “traitors” or defenders of Hamas militants, Pelli said.

At the hearing, lawyers for the military argued that there are no longer any issues at Sde Teiman as they have reduced the prison’s population from more than 700 to as few as 30 for short-term, temporary holds. The military said the remaining prisoners were not security risks and were no longer bound or blindfolded, unlike previous detainees at the facility.

Pelli argued to the court that their living conditions were still in violation of international law, as prisoners continued to be kept in cages with no beds or proper sanitation and were still being denied access to the Red Cross or attorneys. She also warned the prison population could increase again at any point during the ongoing war.

“You cannot take this snapshot of this day, if it’s extremely dynamic,” Pelli said. “Because if tomorrow, the IDF will enter [a village] in Gaza and detain all men there, take 200 people … what limits it? The war is not over.”

• The Intercept report