A disturbing investigation by The Guardian has exposed that the Israeli occupation is holding dozens of Palestinians from Gaza in an underground prison where they are deprived of sunlight, adequate food, and any contact with their families or the outside world.
According to lawyers from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), the facility — known as Rakefet — currently detains prisoners who have not been charged for months. Among them are a nurse arrested while wearing his medical uniform and a young food vendor taken from the street. Both men were transferred to the underground compound in January and described severe, repeated beatings consistent with torture methods previously documented in other Israeli detention centres.
Originally built in the 1980s to house so-called “dangerous criminals,” Rakefet was shut down within a few years for being “inhumane.” It was later reopened by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir after October 7, 2023.
Total Isolation Underground
Every part of the Rakefet complex — its cells, the small exercise yard, and even the lawyers’ meeting room — lies entirely beneath the surface, cutting prisoners off from all natural light and air.
Official data obtained by PCATI shows that while the prison was originally built to hold 15 inmates before its closure in 1985, it now contains nearly 100 detainees.
During the October ceasefire agreement, Israel released 250 convicted Palestinian prisoners and around 1,700 Gazans held without charge, among them the young man previously imprisoned in Rakefet. Yet over 1,000 detainees remain under the same harsh conditions — including the nurse represented by PCATI.
In its statement, the committee declared:
“Although the war is officially over, Palestinians from Gaza continue to be detained in violent, unlawful conditions that violate international humanitarian law and amount to torture.”
The nurse, aged 34, was seized from the hospital where he worked in December 2023, while the 18-year-old food vendor was arrested at a military checkpoint in October 2024. “We are talking about ordinary civilians,” said attorney Jinan Abdu from PCATI. “One of them was just a young man selling food — kidnapped from the road.”
Ben Gvir’s Claims
Ben Gvir claimed to Israeli media that Rakefet had been “rehabilitated” to hold “elite Hamas fighters” involved in the October 7 operations, as well as alleged Hezbollah members captured in Lebanon.
However, classified Israeli data reviewed by rights groups reveals that the vast majority of detainees from Gaza are civilians. Human rights organisations accuse Israel of using these detainees as “living hostages” for political leverage — a practice the Israeli Supreme Court itself legitimised in 2019 when it ruled that Palestinian bodies could be withheld “for negotiation purposes.”
Following a visit to the facility, Ben Gvir boasted, “This is the natural place for terrorists — underground.”
Torture by Design
PCATI director Tal Steiner described the prison’s conditions as “deliberately horrific.”
“Keeping people underground for months without light inflicts devastating psychological damage. It is a unique form of both physical and mental torture.”
The underground confinement deprives inmates of ventilation, consistent sleep, and exposure to sunlight — preventing their bodies from producing vitamin D and causing permanent physical harm.
When PCATI’s legal team was first allowed to visit Rakefet this summer, they were escorted by masked guards down a filthy corridor, infested with dead insects and lined with broken, foul toilets. Even the lawyers’ meeting room, Abdu said, “was unbearably degrading — imagine the state of the cells.”
Meetings with detainees were held under constant surveillance, with guards issuing threats and cameras eliminating any legal confidentiality. The prisoners were chained, hunched over, and forced to the floor throughout the session.
Lives in Darkness
Attorney Saja Mashraki Bransi recounted that the nurse, upon seeing her, asked in confusion:
“Where am I? Why am I here?”
He did not even know the name of the prison holding him.
Military judges who approved their continued detention did so through brief video hearings, without defence lawyers present, merely ordering that the prisoners “remain in custody until the war ends.”
The detainees described windowless, airless cells crowded with three or four people, causing constant suffocation. They reported routine beatings, dog attacks, stomping, and denial of medical care and adequate food. Even Israel’s own Supreme Court admitted this month that the state “is depriving Palestinian prisoners of sufficient nutrition.”
They are allowed into a tiny underground courtyard for only five minutes every two days. At 4 a.m., guards confiscate their thin mattresses, forcing them to lie on bare metal frames until nightfall.
One prisoner asked a visiting lawyer whether his pregnant wife had given birth safely — a guard immediately cut him off and threatened him. The sound of an elevator returning him to his cell suggested he was held deeper underground than the meeting room itself.
That same prisoner was later released in the October 13 prisoner exchange.
A System Below Ground and Above the Law
The Rakefet revelations expose more than an isolated abuse — they illustrate a systemic policy of dehumanisation underpinning Israel’s occupation. By burying detainees out of sight, the state not only hides the evidence of torture but symbolically places Palestinians beneath the surface of humanity itself.
The reopening of such a prison under the authority of an extremist minister confirms that the occupation’s war on Gaza never truly ends — it merely changes form. Whether by airstrikes or underground cells, the machinery of oppression continues to operate in defiance of every moral and legal boundary.
