[B’TSELEM->http://www.btselem.org/] – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories was established in February 1989 by a group of prominent academics, attorneys, journalists, and Knesset members. It endeavors to document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the Israeli public, and help create a human rights culture in Israel.
Since October 2023, Israel has shifted its policy toward the Palestinians. Its military onslaught on Gaza, underway for more than 21 months, has included mass killing, both directly and through creating unlivable conditions, serious bodily or mental harm to an entire population, decimation of basic infrastructure throughout the Strip, and forcible displacement on a huge scale, with ethnic cleansing added to the list of official war objectives.
For two months now, Israel has been blocking the entry of food and humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, deliberately starving over two million people, including more than one million children. On 16 April, Defense Minister Katz declared Israel would continue to block the entry of food and aid into Gaza, effectively admitting it is using starvation as a method of warfare. On 25 April, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced that its food warehouses in Gaza were now empty.
B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak said: “Israel’s complete disregard for international law in the war in Gaza is now being replicated to the West Bank, at this stage mainly in the north. The military activity there, as yet on a smaller scale than in Gaza, is already causing indiscriminate and disproportionate killing and destruction. In 15 months of war in Gaza, the government’s actions made it clear that Israel has no intention of fulfilling its obligations under international law. It is likely to continue blatantly flaunting its duty to protect lives and human rights, and to uphold basic moral and humanitarian standards, unless the Israeli leadership is held truly accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian people”.
Israel continues to perpetrate crimes, flouting every law, norm and moral principle. Now, it is seeking to hide its crimes and silence those who document and report them. We will continue our work to resist the occupation and apartheid and champion a future of freedom, equality and full human rights for everyone between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
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. This report focuses on one facet of this violence: recurring instances of severe abuse of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in the center of Hebron throughout the summer of 2024.
For a year now, since the war began, the international community has shown utter impotence to stop the indiscriminate attack on civilians in the Gaza Strip. Now, when it is clearer than ever that Israel intends to forcibly displace northern Gaza’s residents by committing some of the gravest crimes under the laws of war, the world’s nations must take action.
“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.
Everyone in Gaza is going hungry. About 2.2 million people are surviving day by day on almost nothing, routinely going without meals. The desperate search for food is relentless, and usually unsuccessful, leaving the entire population – including babies, children, pregnant or nursing women and the elderly – hungry.
On Saturday, 2 December 2023, Israel bombed the neighborhood of Shuja’iyeh in Gaza City. The IDF Spokesperson declared that the goal was to kill Wissam Farhat, defining him as “the commander of Hamas’ Shuja’iyeh Battalion” who “led the battalion in Operation Protective Edge,” participated in planning attacks on Israelis, “took part in planning the ruthless attack in Israeli territory on 7 October, and sent the Nukhbah terrorists to the kibbutz and outpost of Nahal Oz that day.”
We, the undersigned human rights and civil society NGOs in Israel, call on the international community to act urgently to stop the state-backed wave of settler violence which has led, and is leading to, the forcible transfer of Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
