Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons were repeatedly left without access to drinking water for stretches of up to 12 hours, a practice a new report described Wednesday as collective punishment linked to Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.
The report by the public defender’s office of the Israeli Justice Ministry said that Palestinian "security prisoners” were prevented from accessing drinking water during the war, sometimes for several hours and in some cases for half a day, Haaretz newspaper said.
The findings were based on reports by public defender representatives who inspected Israeli prisons in 2024.
In January, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel filed a petition with a Jerusalem district court demanding the disclosure of the reports. The state initially refused, arguing that publication would harm national security, particularly because Israeli captives were still being held in Gaza at the time.
On Tuesday, the Justice Ministry submitted six reports to the organization, citing changed circumstances that now allowed their release, the newspaper said.
The findings were based on three visits by public defender representatives to Ketziot Prison in southern Israel in May, June and September 2024.
According to the report, findings from the first two visits showed that a policy of restricting access to water was implemented in at least some prison wings, where detainees were deprived of continuous access to drinking water during parts of the day.
The denial of drinking water was sometimes imposed as "collective punishment,” while in other facilities it appeared to be a routine practice for nearly half the day, the report said. The policy was halted before a September 2024 inspection, it said.
In response, the Israel Prison Service denied the report’s findings, saying claims that prisoners were deprived of drinking water or subjected to collective punishment were "incorrect.”
Haaretz previously reported on worsening detention conditions for Palestinian prisoners. In November, the newspaper said prisoners were suffering from hunger and receiving only minimal amounts of food, despite a court ruling.
In September, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled by a majority that there were "indications the prison service was violating its obligation to provide basic living conditions for security prisoners, including sufficient and nutritionally adequate food to maintain their health.”
That ruling followed a petition filed in April by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the human rights group Gisha against the Israel Prison Service, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the government’s legal adviser Gali Baharav-Miara.
The petition was submitted after Ben-Gvir introduced changes to detention conditions for Palestinian prisoners following the outbreak of the war. According to Haaretz, those measures applied to all Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, not only those captured during fighting in Gaza.
Before Oct. 7, 2023, Palestinian prisoners were allowed to independently purchase food from prison canteens and prepare most of their meals themselves. After the war began, prisons shifted to an emergency mode, prisoners were cut off from access to canteens and cooking equipment, and the prison service assumed full responsibility for providing food, the report said.
More than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, where they face torture, starvation and medical neglect, according to Palestinian and Israeli human rights and media reports.
The Israeli army has killed more than 71,200 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 171,200 others since October 2023 in Gaza in a brutal assault that also left the enclave in ruins.
