New horror at Rakefet: Palestinians kept in total darkness, no trial
5 Min Read
Rights groups reveal that Palestinians are being detained in a secret Israeli underground prison without charges, sunlight, or contact with families, raising alarm over inhumane conditions.
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Ben-Gvir threatens Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons with execution while they were forced to lie on the ground with their hands cuffed on October 23, 2025. (Social media/X)
"Israel" is detaining dozens of Palestinians from Gaza in a secret underground facility where they are denied sunlight, proper food, and any contact with the outside world, a report by The Guardian revealed.
Human rights lawyers say the detainees include at least two civilians: a nurse abducted while still in his hospital scrubs and a young food vendor, both held for months without charge or trial. The men are represented by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), whose lawyers say their clients endured severe abuse consistent with previously documented torture in Israeli prisons.
The detainees were transferred in January to the Rakefet complex, a subterranean prison near Ramla originally opened in the 1980s for "dangerous criminal offenders" but shuttered a few years later for being unfit for human confinement. Far-right Police Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ordered its reopening following October 7, 2023.
All parts of the prison, the cells, a small exercise space, and even the meeting room for lawyers, are underground, meaning that detainees live entirely without natural light. Once designed for 15 "high-risk prisoners", the facility now holds around 100 Palestinians, according to official data obtained by PCATI.
Ceasefire releases fail to end arbitrary detention
Although "Israel" released 250 Palestinian detainees who had received sentences and 1,700 others held without charge under a mid-October ceasefire, PCATI says at least 1,000 others remain imprisoned under similar conditions. “Though the war is officially over, [Palestinians from Gaza] are still imprisoned under legally contested and violent wartime conditions that violate international humanitarian law and amount to torture,” the organization said.
One of the released detainees was the young trader held in Rakefet; however, the nurse remains imprisoned.
PCATI lawyer Janan Abdu emphasized that those detained are not combatants. “In the cases of the clients we visited, we are speaking about civilians,” she said. “The man I spoke to was an 18-year-old who worked selling food. He was taken from a checkpoint on a road.”
'Horrific by intention'
Neither the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) nor the Justice Ministry responded to The Guardian’s questions about the detainees’ identities or conditions at Rakefet. Classified Israeli data reviewed by rights groups suggests that most Palestinians detained during the genocide in Gaza were civilians.
Tal Steiner, PCATI’s executive director, described conditions across Israeli prisons as “horrific by intention.” She warned that Rakefet inflicts an additional layer of cruelty: long-term isolation underground. Such confinement, she said, has “extreme implications” for mental and physical health, disrupting circadian rhythms, impairing breathing, and even halting vitamin D production.
Buried from the world
Steiner said that despite decades of work visiting detention centers, she had never heard of Rakefet before Ben-Gvir revived it. To learn about the facility’s past, PCATI researchers turned to archives and the memoir of former Israeli prison chief Rafael Suissa, who once wrote that keeping people underground “24/7 is just too cruel, too inhumane for any person to endure.”
When PCATI lawyers Janan Abdu and Saja Misherqi Baransi were granted access this summer, they were escorted by masked guards into filthy underground chambers. The meeting room was covered in insect remains and had an unusable toilet. Surveillance cameras recorded every word, and guards warned the lawyers not to discuss detainees’ families or the war on Gaza.
“I asked myself, if the conditions in the lawyers’ room are so humiliating … then what is the situation for the prisoners?” Abdu said. “The answer came soon, when we met them.”
The detainees were brought in shackled and bent over, their heads forced down. One asked, “Where am I and why am I here?, revealing he had never been told the prison’s name. Judges had ruled in brief video hearings, without legal representation or evidence, that the men would remain detained “until the war ends.”
'You are the first person I have seen since my arrest'
The detainees described windowless, airless cells shared by three or four people, chronic suffocation, and regular abuse, including beatings, dog attacks, and starvation-level rations. Mattresses were removed at dawn and returned late at night. Their accounts matched footage from Ben-Gvir’s televised visit, where he declared, "This is terrorists’ natural place, under the ground.”
War criminal Itamar Ben-Gvir appeared in a video showing Palestinian detainees bound in handcuffs and sitting on the floor, accompanied by a shocking statement: "This is how we treat them, and all that remains is to execute them." The Prisoners’ Media Office condemned the act,… pic.twitter.com/TFeMfuyNYf
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) October 31, 2025
Lawyer Baransi said the detained nurse last saw daylight in January 2024, after being transferred from other Israeli jails, including the notorious Sde Teiman military center. The father of three has had no contact with his family. “When I told him: ‘I talked to your mother and she authorized me to meet you,’ then I am giving him this tiny thing, at least telling him that his mother is alive,” she said.
When the young trader asked if his pregnant wife had given birth safely, the guards immediately silenced him. As he was taken away, Abdu heard the sound of an elevator, suggesting their cells were even deeper underground. She came to this conclusion as he had told her, “You are the first person I have seen since my arrest." His last words to her were: “Please come see me again.” He was later released to Gaza on October 13.
