TEHRAN - Fresh revelations about the dire situation of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have brought the regime’s heinous crimes back to the fore.

The director of al-Shifa Hospital has detailed the harrowing treatment of Palestinian detainees following his release from an Israeli jail. 

Muhammad Abu Salmiya said in a news conference on Monday upon his return to Gaza that Israeli doctors and nurses beat and torture Palestinian prisoners and treat the bodies of detainees as if they are inanimate objects.

Hamas said the condition of the prisoners released on Monday and their testimony “confirm the criminal behavior of the Israeli occupation”.He noted that Israeli forces have killed many prisoners in the interrogation cells. 

"The Israeli occupation arrests everyone, and medical staff have died in Israeli prisons due to torture and a lack of medical care," Abu Salmiya, who was in Israeli custody for more than seven months, told Anadolu. 

Abu Salmiya described the prisoners' conditions as "tragic, unprecedented in Palestinian history, with severe food shortages and physical humiliation”, noting that the hardships faced by the detainees are unparalleled since the Nakba.

He said every prisoner has lost about 30 kilograms of weight. 

Abu Salmiya is one of the 55 Palestinian detainees who was released on Monday because, according to the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, the regime’s prisons are full. 
 

Israel’s al-Shifa raid 

Israeli forces arrested Abu Salmiya on November 23 after they raided the al-Shifa medical complex, which is the largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip. 

The Israeli army accused him of allowing Hamas to use the hospital as an operation center.

The regime, however, fell short of providing any evidence to back up its claim that Hamas used the facility as a command hub. 

Israel claimed that five hospital buildings were directly involved in Hamas activities. It said the buildings sat atop underground tunnels used by the resistance movement and they could be accessed from inside hospital wards.

An official with the Palestinian monitor Addameer has told Al Jazeera that at least 40 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since October 7.A post-analysis of open-source visuals, satellite imagery and publicly released materials by the Israeli army found that none of the five hospital buildings appeared to be connected to the tunnel network, and there was no evidence that the tunnels could be accessed from inside hospital wards, that’s according to the Washington Post. 

Israel’s storming of al-Shifa Hospital which housed hundreds of sick and dying patients and thousands of displaced people has had no precedent in recent decades. The regime raided the hospital several times and committed massacres there which sparked a global outcry. 

Israel has also perpetrated massacres in other hospitals in Gaza after storming them.

Hundreds of bodies have been recovered from mass graves at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis and the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya over the past months following the withdrawal of Israeli troops. 

Palestinian officials and several international organizations have stressed that the Israeli army committed war crimes at these medical sites. 
 

Israel violates intl. law 

International law has stipulated that torture and other kinds of ill-treatment against protected persons in an occupied territory are instances of war crime. 
Nonetheless, Israel has shown utter disregard for international law. 

Since declaring war on Gaza on October 7, Israel has slaughtered about 38,000 Palestinians and injured more than 80,000 others, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza. 

The regime stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. 

The ICJ found in January that there was a risk of violation of the rights of the Palestinian people to protection from genocide.

It ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to desist from killing Palestinians in contravention of the genocide convention, to prevent and punish the incitement of genocide, and to facilitate provision of “urgent basic services”.

The UN’s top court also issued a ruling in May calling on Israel to end its operation in the Gaza Strip’s southernmost city of Rafah; but to no avail. 

Despite committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, Israel has not been held accountable so far. 

Western countries have time and again issued statements criticizing Israel’s brutalities in Gaza. They, however, continue to feed the Netanyahu regime's war machine by providing it with weapons.