Publications

“Living Hell” follows on B’Tselem’s August 2024 report “Welcome to Hell.” Building on the extensive research and analysis carried out for the previous report, it provides updated figures and new testimonies from 21 Palestinians released from Israeli prisons in recent months, and draws on data from other Israeli and international human rights organizations. The updated information indicates that Israeli prisons continue to function as a network of torture camps for Palestinians, with the systematic abuse even more extensive than before. This includes physical and psychological abuse, inhuman conditions, deliberate starvation and denial of medical care, all of which has led to numerous deaths. Some witnesses also described undergoing or witnessing sexual violence and abuse. The transformation of prisons into a network of torture camps is part of the Israeli regime’s coordinated onslaught on Palestinian society, aimed at dismantling the Palestinian collective.

For nearly two years, Israel has been committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, acting in a systematic, deliberate way to destroy Palestinian society there through mass killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm and creating catastrophic conditions that prevent its continued existence in Gaza. Israel is openly promoting ethnic cleansing and the destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure for individuals and the group, with 2 million people starved, displaced, bombed and left by the world to die. The genocide must be stopped.

For over a year, Israel has been waging an unrestrained war against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and within the State of Israel. The violence that has always characterized the Israeli apartheid regime’s treatment of Palestinians is now appearing in its most direct and exposed form. B’Tselem gathered 25 testimonies from Palestinians who were abused by Israeli soldiers in central Hebron between May and August 2024. The testimonies describe acts of violence, humiliation, and abuse by soldiers directed by soldiers at men, women, teenagers and children. The scale of the violence revealed in these testimonies—carried out openly and, in some cases, filmed by the soldiers themselves—demonstrates that this is not merely the result of personal vendettas or isolated incidents. Instead, it reflects a particularly brutal manifestation of a systematic, long-standing policy of oppression, expulsion and dispossession that lies at the root of the Israeli apartheid regime.
 

“Welcome to Hell” is a report on the abuse and inhuman treatment of Palestinians held in Israeli custody since 7 October 2023. B’Tselem collected testimonies from 55 Palestinians held during that time and released, almost all with no charges. Their testimonies reveal the outcomes of the rushed transformation of more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, military and civilian, into a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates as a matter of policy. Facilities in which every inmate is deliberately subjected to harsh, relentless pain and suffering operate as de-facto torture camps.

For decades, Israel has employed a slew of measures designed to make life in dozens of Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank miserable. This is part of an attempt to force residents of these communities to uproot themselves, seemingly of their own accord. Once that is achieved, the state can realize its goal of taking over the land. To advance this objective, Israel forbids members of these communities from building homes, agricultural structures or public buildings. It does not allow them to connect to the water and power grids or build roads, and when they do, as they have no other choice, Israel threatens demolition, often delivering on these threats...

Average Israeli daily water consumption is 247 per person – three times the amount used by Palestinians in the West Bank, which is 82.4. Only 36% of the latter have daily running water. The shortage is not a force majeure but an outcome of Israel’s policy since the Interim Agreement, which treats water as another aspect of the mechanism controlling Palestinians. Israel has become a water superpower that no longer depends on natural sources, yet continues to deprive the rapidly growing Palestinian population of water. 

Some 15 million people live under one regime between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, about half Jews and half Palestinians. Yet all Palestinians – whether defined citizens, residents or subjects – are excluded, fully or in part, from the coming elections. The regime is organized around a single principle: cementing the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians. Jews have the monopoly on political power, and only they have a true seat at the table where the fate of all who live here is determined. This is apartheid.

A joint report by the Palestinian Centre for Human rights (PCHR) and B’Tselem which analyzes the investigations Israel claims to have conducted following the Great March of Return protests, which were held for about a year and a half in the Gaza Strip as of March 2018. The report shows how Israel worked to whitewash the truth and protect the political and military officials responsible – instead of taking action against the individuals who devised and implemented the unlawful open-fire policy, which resulted in the killing of more than 200 Palestinians and the injury of some 8,000 others.

Settler violence against Palestinians is a daily matter in the West Bank. Instead of taking preventive action, the Israeli authorities aid and abet the settlers in harming Palestinians and using their land. The report shows how settler violence is an unofficial arm of the state violence Israel uses to drive Palestinians off their land. By downplaying it as a fringe phenomenon while keeping up a pretense of law enforcement, Israel enjoys the best of both worlds: maintaining room for “plausible deniability” while taking over more West Bank land.

The horror in the Gaza Strip has been going on for so many years. We have reported on the blockade, the poverty, the wars. We have shared stories of life without water, without electricity, without hope. We have explained what international law requires and what conscience dictates. Now, words fail us. Eleven days of incessant airstrikes on or near civilian homes. With nowhere to run and no safe place. Dozens of people killed, thousands injured, thousands more bereft of their homes and all their earthly possessions. This is not a mistake, these are no “exceptional cases”. It is the policy. B’Tselem’s field researchers in the Gaza Strip spoke with people who lost their loved ones, their homes, literally everything. These are their words.

The report by B’Tselem and Kerem Navot exposes the mechanisms Israel uses to encourage its citizens to move into the occupied territory. The report also reviews developments on the ground over the last decade, focusing on the spatial impact of the two large settlement blocs.

The entire area Israel controls between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is governed by a single regime working to advance and perpetuate the supremacy of one group over another. By geographically, demographically and physically engineering space, the regime enables Jews to live in a contiguous area with full rights, including self-determination, while Palestinians live in separate units and enjoy fewer rights. This qualifies as an apartheid regime, although Israel is commonly viewed as a democracy upholding a temporary occupation.

B'Tselem's Position paper: As part of normalizing ties with the United Arab Emirates, Israel has decided not to officially annex the West Bank as yet. De facto, it annexed the West Bank long ago, treating the area as sovereign Israeli territory while acting unilaterally to establish and perpetuate control. The uproar over official annexation has subsided, but the reality remains unchanged: the international community has welcomed Israel back with open arms – legitimizing its continued policy of dispossession with no price.

The report describes life in the Palestinian neighborhood of al-‘Esawiyah 53 years after East Jerusalem was annexed to Israel. Over the past year, al-‘Esawiyah has become a flashpoint due to a police operation designed primarily to harass residents. In the report, B'Tselem analyzes Israel’s policy of dispossession, deliberate neglect, lack of planning and police violence in the neighborhood, which is an extreme example of its actions throughout East Jerusalem.