The New Dark Age

A 21-year-old Palestinian detainee died in an Israeli rape and torture dungeon on Wednesday, raising the number o Palestinians who have been killed in Israeli prisons to at least 98 since the start of the genocide in the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.

Moataz al-Atrash, 21, who died in Ofer Prison, is the latest victim of barbaric Israeli practices in its dungeons, as crimes against detained Palestinians continue to mount.

Basel al-Atrash, the brother of detainee Moataz, told Ultra Palestine that the occupation police station in the Kiryat Arba settlement in Hebron called their father on Wednesday and summoned him.

The police told his father that Moataz had died but provided no further details or information about the circumstances of his death. They also asked him to sign papers authorising the transfer of Moataz’s body to the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine.

The family, however, had received no confirmation of Moataz’s death from any Palestinian source. Basel said the family was astonished by the development, particularly because a detainee from Hebron who had been held in the same cell as Moataz at Ofer Prison was released on Tuesday and had confirmed to them that Moataz was in good health.

Basel explained that Moataz had been detained in October last year and placed under administrative detention. He was due to complete his second period of administrative detention on October 7.

Systematic killings

Moataz’s death in the Israeli dungeon follows an established pattern of relentless abuse and deprivation that has taken a huge toll on Palestinian detainees, especially since October 7, 2023.

Nearly 100 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli dungeons due to severe beatings, food deprivation, and medical neglect, a report by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) revealed last November.

The report, which listed the killings of 94 Palestinians (68 from Gaza and 26 from the occupied West Bank), added that its numbers are likely to be a significant undercount:

Israeli politicians take pride in the torture they inflict on Palestinians in captivity.

Ben-Gvir, the Israeli minister in charge of these dungeons spread across the length and breadth of occupied Palestine, has been sharing videos of these abuses with his fellow genocidal Israelis, much to their delight.

Relentless abuse

The Israelis have not spared even women detainees from their savage treatment.

A detainee who was imprisoned in April despite being pregnant was forced to give birth on Monday while still incarcerated. Two more pregnant detainees remain confined in the Israeli dungeons.

More than 9,400 Palestinians are currently in Israeli captivity, including nearly a hundred women and more than 350 children.

Despite widespread reports of abuse, deprivation, and killings of Palestinian detainees by the Israelis, no international organisations or governments are pressuring the Israeli authorities to release them.