WEST BANK, (Palestine Foundation Information Center), Israeli far‑right security minister Itamar Ben Gvir stormed Ofer jail near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Friday morning in a visit marked by threats and violent practices against Palestinian detainees.
Ben Gvir was accompanied by senior police officials, just days before the start of the holy month of Ramadan. According to Israel’s Channel 7, stun grenades were fired near cells, and prisoners were brutalized during his tour of the prison.
Ben Gvir, notorious for inflammatory videos targeting Palestinian detainees and repeated threats against them, has openly bragged about tightening prison conditions since taking office in late 2022.
He declared that the changes made in prisons so far were “not enough” and pledged to push for legislation enabling the execution of Palestinian prisoners.
In November 2025, Israel’s parliament passed at first reading a bill introduced by Ben Gvir’s far‑right Otzma Yehudit party that would permit the death penalty for Palestinians accused of killing Israelis. The measure still requires second and third readings before becoming law, and no date has been set for a final vote.
‘This is not a luxury hotel. It is a real prison,” Ben Gvir told journalists during his tour, expressing satisfaction with what he called a “drastic change” in incarceration conditions.
Since Ben Gvir took office, conditions for Palestinian prisoners have been marked by severe restrictions, torture, and visible weight loss among detainees. Dozens of prisoners have died or been killed under his administration.
Rights groups report that former prisoners released in recent months described systematic torture, sexual violence, starvation, and medical neglect, with many showing signs of profound psychological trauma.
At least 84 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli jails since October 2023 after being subjected to systematic abuse, including physical and psychological violence, inhuman conditions, deliberate starvation and denial of medical treatment, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says.
Israeli authorities are still holding the bodies of 80 martyred Palestinian prisoners and refusing to return them to their families, B’Tselem said in a report released last January, which listed the names of the 84 deceased prisoners, including one minor, and the facilities in which they died.
B’Tselem executive director Yuli Novak said Israeli authorities had turned the prison system into a network of “torture camps” as part of “a coordinated onslaught on Palestinian society intended to destroy their existence as a collective.”
“The genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank are the most blatant manifestations of this policy,” Novak said in a statement.
