UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has slammed draft Israeli legislation that would allow civilians to work as voluntary prison guards, suggesting it could increase the abuse of Palestinian detainees.
The draft bill, approved by a ministerial committee on Sunday, aims to expand Israel's prison workforce to manage the increasing number of Palestinians imprisoned in the country's detention facilities.
"This is so sickening. Israel must be stopped: starting with its politicians, its soldiers, its settlers, and its ideological fanatics," Albanese wrote in on Sunday.
"We must save the Palestinians from the depravity of the century."
The legislation was introduced to the Knesset by Zvika Fogel, a member of the far-right Jewish Power party known for his support for violence against Palestinians.
The aim of the legislation is not just to increase the prison service's workforce but to expand the number of settler extremists inside detention facilities, according to Itay Epshtain, an expert in international humanitarian law.
"The political motivation is to bring violent extremists into the Israeli Prison Service, where they can torment Palestinian detainees and prisoners," he .
Thousands of Palestinians are held indefinitely in Israeli prisons where they are subjected to practices of abuse and torture which UN human rights experts have called "widespread and systemic".
The number of Palestinians detained in facilities run by the Israeli prison service almost doubled to 11,000 between October 2023 and June 2024, according to data collected by Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.
The prison service is under the authority of the extremist national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has presided over a significant worsening of living conditions in prisons since the 7 October attacks.
Ben-Gvir, the head of Jewish Power, has also called for Palestinian prisoners to be executed and publicly defended Israeli soldiers accused of sexually abusing detainees at the notorious Sde Teiman military detention facility.
Israel has killed 45,541 Palestinians in Gaza and injured more than 108,000 since 7 October, when Hamas launched its cross-border attack in southern Israel.
The International Criminal Court in November issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges.