Phalapoem

By Vera Sajrawi, September 25, 2024

Source: 972 magazine

• Prison authorities are allowing scabies to spread by restricting Palestinian inmates’ water supply and depriving them of clean clothes and medical care.

Palestinian photojournalist Mo’ath Amarnih upon his release from nine months of administrative detention in Israeli prison. (Courtesy)

Pale and frail, with an unkempt beard and a prosthetic eye, his emaciated body testifies to the neglect and torture he experienced inside Israeli prison. “Stay away,” he shouts at the eager crowdsurrounding him upon his release. “I don’t know what disease I’m carrying — I have a rash and can’t risk shaking hands.” But his parents, overcome with emotion, move forward to embrace him. He shrinks away, fearfully insisting that he should remain untouched.

Mo’ath Amarnih, a Palestinian photojournalist from the occupied West Bank, was released from Ktzi’ot prison in July. Even before this, he was no stranger to Israeli state violence: in 2019, while covering protests against settlements, an Israeli soldier shot him in the face, causing him to lose his left eye. But nothing could prepare him for these nine months in administrative detention — imprisonment without charge or trial — during which he was held in dire conditions, subjected to abuse, and denied medical attention despite suffering from diabetes. 

Amarnih is one of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners recently released from Israeli jails whose skinny bodies have been marred by scabies — a parasitic infestation caused by mites, leading to severe itching and rashes that often worsen at night and are exacerbated by the summer heat. The outbreak has been reported in multiple prisons, including Ktzi’ot, Nafha, and Ramon in the Naqab/Negev, Ofer in the West Bank, and Megiddo, Shatta, and Gilboa in the north. Israel has not provided data on the number of prisoners infected. 

Over the past year, the total prison population has risen significantly: from 16,353 on Oct. 6, 2023, to over 21,000 by June of this year, according to Israel Prison Service (IPS) data. Around half of them, approximately 9,900 at the time of writing, are defined as “security prisoners,” of whom more than 3,300 are being held in administrative detention.

Palestinian photojournalist Mo’ath Amarnih before and after a period of nine months in administrative detention in Ktzi’ot prison. (Courtesy)

With this sharp spike in the prison population, conditions inside Israeli jails have worsened drastically. For 11 months, inmates — who have faced torture and abuse that has resulted in the deaths of at least 18 prisoners — have been restricted to a single item of clothing and barred from purchasing shampoo or soap, with limited access to showers and fully deprived of laundry facilities. The suspension of family visits, moreover, has eliminated the possibility of receiving clean clothes, sheets, and towels from outside.

On July 16, a coalition of five Israeli human rights organizations submitted a petition to the Israeli High Court, demanding urgent intervention from the IPS and the Health Ministry to address the alarming scabies outbreak plaguing Palestinian prisoners, primarily those in security units. Inmates, it says, are often denied medical care, and doctor visits to prisons have become increasingly rare. 

As dermatologist Dr. Ahsan Daka noted in the petition, scabies can be effectively treated, but containing the outbreak requires sanitary living conditions. The failure of the IPS to do so suggests that the spread of the disease among prisoners has become, in effect, a part of their punishment.

‘I came out of hell’

In May 2023, 38-year-old Mohammed Al-Bazz from Nablus was arrested and placed in administrative detention in Ktzi’ot prison in the Naqab, without being told why. He had previously spent more than 16 years in Israeli jails going back to the age of 17, but those experiences paled in comparison to what was to come after October 7. 

Shortly after the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel, the Knesset passed legislation enabling National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to declare a state of emergency in Israeli prisons. He had already started rolling out a harsher vision for incarcerated Palestinians upon taking office earlier last year. Still, armed with the new wartime emergency measures, he quickly moved to over-crowd IPS facilities and further slash the rights of Palestinian detainees

Newly appointed Israel Prison Service chief Kobi Yaakobi and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir at a ceremony at the National Security Ministry in Jerusalem, May 27, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Al-Bazz, who was released in May of this year, received little news about the outside world. The first thing the IPS did after October 7 was remove radios and televisions, cut off all electricity, and limit prisoners to just one hour of water per day, collectively. “Imagine 15 prisoners in a cell that gets water for only one hour through a faucet and a toilet, and you have to use it for all your needs,” he told +972. 

Like all prisoners, he was prohibited from leaving his cell; no longer were they afforded the usual hour outside. Laundry rooms were closed and converted into additional cells, and family visits were forbidden, preventing inmates from receiving new clothes from the outside.

“The sun and air did not touch my skin for eight months,” Al-Bazz said. “I slept on the same mattress without sheets or a pillow, showered in cold water without shampoo or a towel, and had to put my dirty clothes back on my wet body in the winter and summer. This shows a systematic intent to spread the disease among the prisoners through poor hygiene.”

The first case of scabies was reported to Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHRI) in mid-February, according to Naji Abbas, director of the NGO’s prisoners and detainees department. That prisoner, Mohammed Shukair, had been violently arrested in May and then given a prison shirt that he told PHRI was already dirty. Symptoms of the disease soon started to appear on his skin, and he was taken to the prison clinic and diagnosed. 

PHRI demanded the prison services provide him with medications, and he was given an ointment to treat the symptoms. But his environment was not disinfected and his cellmates were not treated, so it didn’t work. “Ointment alone isn’t enough, because the mites that cause the disease live on surfaces for up to 36 hours and the person can be reinfected,” Abbas explained. 

Al-Bazz also told +972 that when a prisoner showed symptoms of scabies, the IPS did not remove him from the cell or take any other measures to prevent the spread of the disease among his cellmates. “They even moved infected prisoners to cells that had healthy prisoners and caused everyone to become infected,” he said.

Soldiers and Palestinians are seen at a waiting area outside Ofer prison, occupied West Bank, August 27, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

“It is the worst disease, nothing like I’ve ever seen,” Al-Bazz continued, his voice stricken with grief. “It starts with small skin pimples that spread all over your body and you develop an unbearable itching. I bled all over my body from the continuous scratching. If you ask to go to the prison’s clinic, they spray you with tear gas [as punishment] or take you outside to beat you in front of all the cells.”

Al-Bazz told +972 that he didn’t receive any treatment for scabies throughout his entire year in Ktzi’ot; indeed, security prisoners have reported that there is no access to prison clinics or doctors for any medical conditions. “Under the pretext of the ongoing war, the [prison] authority deprives even cancer patients of crucial treatments for months,” he said.

Like Amarnih, Al-Bazz was nearly unrecognizable when he came out of prison: he had lost 60 kilograms of weight between October and May. He quickly sought medical care upon his release, but because he was still carrying the disease, he unintentionally infected his wife and twin babies.

Even as the scabies slowly disappears from his body, the torture Al-Bazz experienced in Ktzi’ot will have a lasting psychological impact. A particular incident on a cold night on Oct. 22 captures the horror: according to Al-Bazz, the guards stripped the prisoners naked, handcuffed their hands and bound their feet, before a guard urinated on them. 

“Most people are embarrassed to detail what we went through,” he said. “Many prisoners were raped with various objects; female guards watched, laughed, and toyed with our naked bodies. They took pleasure in torturing and humiliating us. It reminded me of Abu Ghraib, or even worse. They continuously beat us all day, taking turns from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m.. I cannot believe what they did to us. It will remain forever etched into my memory. I came out of hell.”

Mohammed Al-Bazz before and after spending a year in administrative detention in Israel’s Ktzi’ot prison. (Courtesy)

‘They saw guards who were infected’

According to PHRI, scabies has broken out across most Israeli prison facilities. “Lawyers say that in some prisons, when guards bring prisoners to meet with them, they are seen wearing gloves so as not to come into direct contact with the prisoners,” Abbas said. “We don’t have clear data, but prisoners said that they saw guards who were infected with the disease.

“The prison services claim that the disease was brought into prisons by those arrested from Gaza, which is not true because Gaza prisoners are separated from the rest of the prisoners,” Abbas continued. “And even if this was the case, this is not about who brought the infection into prisons — it is about what can be done to end the current outbreak.”

But rather than improving prison conditions, reducing overcrowding, and effectively treating the scabies epidemic, the IPS is further restricting outside visits. In a joint statement on Sept. 3, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club and the Committee of Detainees Affairs (CDA) noted that the IPS informed their lawyers that scheduled visits were canceled in Nafha and Ramon prisons, without specifying a period, under the pretext of imposing a quarantine on all sections of the prisons to control the spread of the disease.

“Court sessions after October 7 are generally held via Zoom,” Jameel Saadeh, the head of the legal unit at CDA, told +972. “For prisoners with scabies, the sessions are either canceled or the court holds the sessions without the prisoners.”

When +972 contacted an IPS spokesperson for comment, they denied the cancellation of outside visits and did not comment on the current spread of scabies in prisons.

Meanwhile, Al-Bazz is still coming to terms with the extent of the dehumanization he faced during his time at Ktzi’ot. “Prisoners are human beings,” he said. “They are not superhumans who can endure anything; they simply have to put up with abuse because they have no other option. 

“We are locked up over an honorable cause and we are fighting for our freedom,” he continued. “But at the end of the day, I’m flesh and bones, with dignity and emotions — a human being that gets tired and feels pain when beaten and feels despair when sick.”