The right of every person not to be subjected to ill-treatment or torture (physical or mental) is one of the few human rights that are considered absolute. Therefore, it is forbidden to balance it against other rights and values, or suspend or restrict the right, even in the harsh circumstances of the struggle against terrorism. This right now enjoys the highest and most binding status in international law.

Until the end of the 1990s, the Israel Security Agency [formerly the General Security Service] routinely used interrogation methods that constituted ill-treatment and even torture. The government, in reliance on the report of the state commission headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau, allowed the ISA to use these methods. The Commission had held that, in cases of hostile terrorist activity, ISA agents are permitted to use "psychological pressure" and a "moderate degree of physical pressure" in cases of hostile terrorist activity. This permission was grounded, in the Commission's opinion, in the "necessity defense" in the Penal Law.

In a precedent-making decision in September 1999, the High Court of Justice ruled, contrary to the opinion of the Landau Commission, that Israeli law does not empower ISA interrogators to use physical means in interrogation, and that the specific methods discussed in the petitions were illegal. However, the court also held that ISA agents who exceed their authority and use forbidden "physical pressure" may not be criminally responsible if it is subsequently found that the methods were used in a "ticking-bomb" case.

The court's decision led to a meaningful drop in the number of reports of torture and ill-treatment in ISA interrogations. However, relying on the "ticking-bomb" exception, ISA agents have continued to use forbidden interrogation methods, albeit in much smaller numbers. For example, in July 2002, Ha'aretz quoted a senior ISA official who said that, since the High Court's decision, ninety Palestinians had been declared "ticking bombs" and "exceptional interrogation means," torture in other words, had been used against them.

In an interview with three ISA interrogators that was published in Ma'ariv in July 2004, one of the interrogators admitted that the ISA uses "all the manipulations possible up to shaking and beating." The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel took dozens of affidavits from Palestinians who were interrogated by the ISA and claimed that violent methods of interrogation were used against them.

In May 2007, B'Tselem and HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual filed a comprehensive report, based on a survey sample of seventy-three detainees whom the ISA interrogated between July 2005 and January 2006. The report examined the interrogation methods used against them by security forces who came in contact with them, from the moment they were detained to the end of the interrogation, the most important being ISA agents.

According to the findings, ISA interrogations routinely included mental and physical ill-treatment. The main aspects of the interrogation regime were severance of the detainee from the outside world, use of incarceration conditions as a means of psychological pressure and to physically weaken the detainee, binding the detainee in a painful position, degradation, and threats.

In a small number of the cases, apparently those the ISA classifies as "ticking bombs," the ISA also used violent methods, which amount to torture, among them beatings, tight fastening of cuffs, sudden pulling of the body, and bending of the back.

Also, a substantial number of the detainees reached the interrogation facilities after they had been "softened up" by the soldiers who arrested them and held them before handing them over to the ISA. This "softening" included beatings, painful cuffing, degradation, and preventing the detainees from receiving basic needs. The research did not examine whether the motive of the soldiers and their commanders was to "soften-up" the detainees in advance of their interrogation, but this was the practical effect.

From time to time, B'Tselem receives testimonies of Palestinian detainees who underwent ill-treatment and torture by Israeli police officers. Some of these cases involved detainees who were suspected of terrorist activity, and some involved Palestinians who were suspected of entering Israel without a permit.