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Instead of being at school, Khalil Hamdan, 16, has been in Israeli prisons since last July. His family is growingly concerned for his life in light of theÌýunprecedentedly harsh and deteriorating conditions forÌýPalestinian prisonersÌýheld by Israel.

Since October 2023, the number of Palestinian detainees has reached 11,500, according to the Palestinian Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Authority. Among the Palestinian prisoners are 94 women and 270 children under the age of eighteen, including 100 in administrative detention.

The data don't include detainees in the Gaza Strip, whose numbers are estimated in the thousands, including women and children, against whom Israel practices the crime of forced disappearance in secret prisons.

Severe abuses

On 9 July, an Israeli army force raided Hamdan's home in the town of Idna, west of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. The soldiers destroyed the contents of the house and arrested Khalil and his father.

His father, Jamal, told us that the soldiers started beating Khalil without any reason, arrested the two of them, and took them to military vehicles.

"They put us out in the open and started beating me in front of him and beating him in front of me for hours. He was bleeding, and I couldn't do anything to him as we were tied up," he said.

After 20 hours of detention, the father was released, but Khalil remained detained and was transferred to Ofer Prison, where he remains in administrative detention for a period of six months, subject to indefinite renewal.

Khalil suffers from a constant headache due to sinusitis. His doctor had scheduled surgery for him before his arrest, and now his family is experiencing a state of anxiety about him because of his health condition.

"Only God knows how we feel. He is a child and cannot bear all of that. The bad prison conditions, beatings, humiliation, cold, and starvation are making us cry every day for him," Jamal added.

These feelings are shared by every Palestinian family that has someone in Israeli prisons, but their concerns are increasing as more of the horrific conditions they face there are revealed.

The pictures taken of the prisoners after their release reveal the extent of what the abuses are subjected to, in a clear difference from their appearance before arrest. Their testimonies also show another side of the war against the Palestinians.

Hanan Al-Barghouthi, 60, from the town of Kobar, north of Ramallah, was released a few days ago after administrative detention that lasted nine months.

A clear weight loss shocked her family immediately after her release. She lost 26 kg due to the starvation policy implemented by the Israeli prison administration, as she told °®Âþµº.

According to her, there are "no red lines" inside the prison. Beatings, insults, strip searches, and solitary confinement are all policies that Israel follows against women detainees.

"On 25 September, the jailers stormed the prisoners' rooms and took us out in handcuffs to the prison yard. We were beaten, harassed, and humiliated. The scene was repeated with weapons on 7 October and on 20 November, without any justification," she said.

As an example of the harsh conditions that Palestinian prisoners live in, the Prisoners and Ex-Detainees Affairs Authority revealed on Monday that many prisoners in the Etzion detention centre suffered cases of poisoning as a result of spoiled meals provided to them by the prison administration.

The authority noted in a press statement that after difficult attempts to visit the detainee, which its lawyer was able to do on Sunday, the prisoners informed him that they felt severe abdominal pain, diarrhoea, vomiting, weakness, emaciation, and a yellow face. They lost a lot of fluids in their bodies and became unable to stand, and many of them fainted.

In addition, the prison administration punished anyone who objected to this with severe beatings and isolation.

"The Etzion Detention Center, which is located in the south of the West Bank, is listed among the worst detention centres in the world," the statement added.

Approved by the Israeli government

Since October 2023, 49 Palestinian prisoners from the West Bank and Gaza Strip have died, and according to the Prisoners’ Affairs Authority, these are the only ones whose identities are known.

This significant increase in the death of prisoners raises several questions about Israel's actions inside its prisons and the international silence regarding that.

Amani Sarahneh, spokeswoman for the Palestinian Prisoners Club Association, told us that this number is considered shocking in a relatively short period of time.

She confirmed that talking about nearly 50 deaths inside Israeli prisons, of whom their identities were known, was considered a disaster in the history of the Palestinian prisoner movement.

"There is deprivation of [humane] treatment, deprivation of food, deprivation of clothing in the extreme cold, there is torture to death, solitary confinement for long months, and continuous violations that cannot be described and are unprecedented in Israeli prisons," she said.

According to her description, all of these practices that happen to Palestinian prisoners are not individual, but systematic, and are not accidental incidents, but rather within a policy approved by the Israeli government to break the dignity of detainees and their families.

"The crimes committed against detainees in investigation basements and inside prisons are an extension of a long history of organised Israeli policies against the Palestinians, but the prisoners have not faced them with such intensity in years," Sarahneh added.