Sd Teiman prision camp   /   July 2024.    Photo: X/ @ApexEpisodes

Tel Aviv, August 8 (RHC)-- Leaked video footage has exposed the appalling conditions of Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons, showing a group of Israeli forces sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee at a detention center in the southern part of the 1948 occupied lands.

The footage from surveillance cameras, aired by Israeli Channel 12, shows several Israeli troops picking a detainee out of more than 30 others, who are all laid on the ground blindfolded.  The detainee is then taken to a corner.

“It is clear that they know about the surveillance cameras, and try to hide their act with shields,” the report said, adding: "The video contains documentation to the felony of the reservists."

The report said the detainee was bleeding and was taken to hospital after several hours, where his condition was described as “complex.”  “The injury was caused by the insertion of an object,” the channel said, quoting a medical report.

This comes as leading Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says thousands of Palestinian prisoners are facing systematic abuse and torture in Israeli jails and detention centers ever since the Tel Aviv regime unleashed its brutal Gaza onslaught in early October last year.

The experts also confirmed they had received “documented information” about numerous cases of torture.
B'Tselem said in a report on Tuesday that testimonies from 55 former Palestinian detainees revealed “inhuman conditions,” and that more than a dozen prison facilities were being used as “de facto torture camps.”

“The testimonies clearly indicated a systematic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel,” the report said.  Former inmates described “frequent acts of severe, arbitrary violence; sexual assault; humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation; forced unhygienic conditions (and) sleep deprivation,” it added.

The B'Tselem dossier comes a week after a United Nations report said Palestinian prisoners were subjected to treatment that may amount to torture.

On Monday, a panel of UN experts also warned of the “escalating use of torture” by Israel against Palestinian prisoners since the war in Gaza began.  The Israeli military is believed to have detained thousands of Palestinians, including women, children and medics, ever since it started its devastating ground and aerial offensives against Gaza.  Those released have shown signs of torture.

CNN television news channel and the New York Times are among the American media that have reported on the abuse of Palestinians in Israeli detention since the bombing of Gaza began.  Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express outrage at their illegal detention.

Israel keeps Palestinian inmates under deplorable conditions without proper hygienic standards. Palestinian inmates have also been subject to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.

Human rights organizations say Israel continues to violate all rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention and international laws. 

According to the Palestine Detainees Studies Center, around 60 percent of the Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails suffer from chronic diseases, a number of whom died in detention or after being released due to the severity of their cases.