Israel’s Genocidal Prison Regime: The Systematic Torture of Palestinian Prisoners and Detainees and Third-State Obligations under International Law

This policy brief highlights Israel’s systematic use of torture, ill-treatment, sexual violence, starvation, denial of medical care, deaths, and enforced disappearance against Palestinian prisoners and detainees in its custody. These practices, which constitute serious breaches of international law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, and when accompanied by the requisite specific intent, to genocide, occur within a context of structural impunity, a prolonged illegal military occupation, and apartheid regime. 
As Israel continues to commit widespread and systematic violations, including through the enactment of discriminatory legislation such as the “Death Penalty for Terrorists Bill” targeting Palestinians, the deliberate obstruction of independent monitoring and humanitarian access, and the criminalisation of human rights organisations seeking to protect prisoners, the silence, lack of action, and complicity of third-party States becomes ever more unconscionable, and further erodes the credibility and universality of international law.
The brief first outlines the widespread use of torture, sexual violence, inhumane living conditions, starvation and denial of medical care, death in detention, enforced disappearance and the withholding of bodies, based on United Nations and civil society documentation. It then presents a legal analysis and concrete recommendations centred on the Kingdom of Belgium’s relevant obligations under international law. 
Intended as a tool for mobilisation, the brief calls on Belgium to take meaningful and urgent steps to protect Palestinian prisoners and detainees. It also calls on Belgian civil society to urge their government to meet these obligations towards Palestinian prisoners and detainees. The brief further urges Belgium to apply and give effect to its obligations arising from the ICJ’s findings on the illegality of the occupation and the “plausible risk” of genocide. 
In doing so, Belgium can begin to cease its direct and indirect contribution to Israel’s colonisation, illegal occupation, apartheid, and genocide, and uphold its legal and moral duties towards the Palestinian people, including those held in Israeli prisons, detention centres, and torture camps.