“This is the end. I do not expect to live through this. They brought me here to end my life.” Those statements came from Dr Hussam Abu Safiya to his attorney earlier this month. Abu Safiya led the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza. He was taken by Israeli troops eighteen months ago and remains held without any charge or trial. He describes repeated strikes using hammers and batons, routine assaults and repeated blackouts. Recent photos reveal a far thinner figure than the one who once spoke for medical staff under siege in Gaza, carrying out their duties amid extreme hardship.

In June, Abu Safiya moved to Rakefet prison, a subterranean site originally constructed for high-level crime bosses and later shut down for its harsh conditions. It reopened in late 2023 under far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Abu Safiya and fellow Palestinian inmates there never see daylight, breaching Geneva conventions. Throughout Palestinian territories and Israel, roughly 3,500 detainees like him sit under administrative detention renewable every six months without limit. Close to 200 are minors. Once held under these rules, a Palestinian is effectively taken by the authorities.

“Real hell” describes the experience after detention. Ali al-Samoudi, a Palestinian reporter, gained release earlier this year and was barely recognizable. He had shed 60kg, around half his weight. “Prison today is hell in every sense of the word,” he said to CNN. “Everything they practised with us was punishment and revenge.”

The extent of mistreatment, torture and fatalities in Israeli facilities is thoroughly recorded, yet periodically an image surfaces that recalls Abu Ghraib in its open cruelty. Earlier this month, a photo shared by an Israeli soldier appeared online. It depicts a Palestinian man from Gaza prone, stripped to underwear, secured with ropes to a plank and metal rod. The caption read “good morning” in Hebrew. The parallels to Abu Ghraib stood out clearly: the dark mockery, the sexual humiliation of naked captives, the trophy-style photographs.

These events form part of an established pattern rather than isolated acts or responses limited to the present conflict, though they have intensified recently. Administrative detentions and mistreatment belong to a long-running system that strips Palestinians of basic protections and seems intended to instill fear, erode spirits and impose collective punishment. For years the Israeli state has withheld Palestinian remains, denying families proper burial. Some rest in numbered graves inside restricted military areas, others stay in cold storage. Among them lie 100 Palestinians who perished in custody. No details have emerged on the circumstances of their deaths.

There are also the unaccounted for. Individuals in Gaza whom witnesses saw taken by Israeli forces but who never appeared in records. These cases amount to enforced disappearances, according to the Israel-based rights group HaMoked, which seeks to locate nearly 2,000 people.

These examples offer only fragments of a wider system under which Palestinians endure constant torment. The outcome produces varied and deep trauma that conveys to Palestinians that their lives and remains fall under Israeli control. The physical setup of abuse is disturbing enough, yet an added psychological layer appears at work, a steady erosion of any sense of personal agency.

Many detainees hold positions suggesting leadership or community roles: reporters, physicians and civil society figures. These individuals form part of the fabric supporting a society or state, which must be dismantled to convey that Palestine and its people do not exist.

What stands out is how openly much of this unfolds. How frequently it appears in images, whether footage of apparent sexual abuse of a Palestinian captive or the man in underwear bound to a rod. How extensively rights organizations record it, Israeli soldiers share it and Israeli politicians boast of it. And how seldom it draws protest inside Israel or prompts Israel’s western allies to voice strong condemnation or seek concrete steps. In the UK attention centers on settler attacks, sanctions against settlers and, as Andy Burnham recently proposed, trade restrictions with illegal settlements. Yet that approach seems aimed at placing the core issue outside the Israeli state itself.

As fading Palestinian prisoners in underground cells come into global view, their deaths anticipated, I recall Abu Ghraib and how those images stirred shock and came to symbolize an age of unchecked authority, prejudice and brutality. For that shift to occur, media and political voices had to press for inquiry and responsibility.

Where can such voices be found now, inside Israel or among those able to exert influence from abroad? Some hope lies in the UK deputy permanent representative to the UN recently noting concern over documented sexual violence by Israeli forces against Palestinian detainees and urging Israel to investigate. Yet most expect no such probe will follow.

Because the practices underway represent not exceptions but standard procedure, openly endorsed by successive Israeli leaders and, it appears, by Israeli society at large. Until this reality is addressed directly, Palestinians will keep facing detention, disappearance, torture and sexual abuse, while the perpetrators receive only polite, occasional requests to examine their own actions.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

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