RAMALLAH, (Palestine Foundation Information Center), Palestinian prisoner advocacy organizations, together with several former detainees, launched an international campaign on Tuesday to combat sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli detention facilities.
The campaign was announced during a press conference at the Al-Bireh Municipal Hall, attended by representatives of Palestinian prisoner organizations, human rights groups, and several former prisoners who said they had experienced sexual violence while in Israeli custody, including rape.
The organizations said the campaign comes amid an unprecedented escalation in abuses committed within Israel’s prison system against Palestinian detainees, particularly since the outbreak of the genocidal war on Gaza. They stated that detention facilities have become sites of torture, starvation, humiliation, and physical and psychological abuse, in addition to acts of sexual violence that, according to the organizations, have been documented through hundreds of testimonies and witness accounts.
The groups affirmed that the abuses inside Israeli prisons should not be viewed as isolated incidents or the actions of individual personnel. Instead, they described them as a systematic policy carried out by Israeli authorities through various state institutions with the aim of degrading Palestinian detainees, stripping them of their dignity, and breaking their resilience as part of a broader pattern of abuses against Palestinian prisoners and the Palestinian people.
According to the prisoner organizations, the campaign seeks to break the silence surrounding sexual violence against detainees by amplifying the voices of survivors, providing a safe space for former prisoners to share their experiences, and ensuring that these testimonies are documented and pursued through legal and human rights mechanisms with the goal of holding those responsible accountable.
