Introduction

1Months after the brutal torture to which he was subjected at the hands of Israel’s General Security Services (GSS1), Samer Arbid was sitting on the defendant’s bench in Ofer Military Court surrounded by numerous Israeli prison service personnel. Samer’s body looked tired and frail. His appearance in court bore no resemblance to the photos that had circulated of him alongside his family prior to his brutal arrest. Near the end of the court session, when informed by his lawyer about the forthcoming court date, Samer’s frail and brutalised body defiantly responded, “Sure, let me check my schedule first!”2

2On the morning of 25 September 2019, Samer Arbid was arrested as he approached his workplace in the Palestinian city of Ramallah. From the moment of his arrest, he was severely beaten and taken to the Russian Compound (al-Mascobiyya) interrogation centre in Jerusalem. There, designated as a “ticking bomb” detainee, Samer was subjected to interrogation by what the Israeli security agency refers to as “special means.” After two days of continuous interrogation, he was rushed to a Jerusalem hospital in critical condition. Samer was unconscious, had 11 rib fractures, bruises all over his body, severe kidney failure, and numerous signs of critical injuries. As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported, during his first two days of interrogation, Samer was examined by Israeli doctors, with the doctors not reporting any “unusual signs” (Breiner 2019). Reports state that Samer’s interrogation continued while he was in the hospital, and that an Israeli military judge allowed the GSS to resume interrogation following what had been argued was an improvement in his medical condition. Samer was denied the right to meet with his lawyers during most of the interrogation period. He is currently awaiting trial and conviction.

3Samer’s story is not unique. His case—and that of a number of other Palestinians brutally tortured in al-Mascobiyya interrogation centre in the end of 2019—was given heightened coverage because of the physical state in which Samer reached the hospital, and because the GSS was permitted to employ special measures in its interrogation of detainees under the pretext of a “ticking bomb” scenario.3 In these scenarios, interrogators resort to what is referred to as “military interrogation”, which allows employing torture methods that are technically banned by a 1999 Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) ruling.
Samer’s case, however, is illustrative of the ways in which Israel had managed to create a reality in which torture —while systematic—is presented as an exception and a last resort; or better, as a lesser evil needed to save Israel from imminent threats against its ‘security’ and that of its citizens.

4By discussing the torture cases of dozens of Palestinians near the end of 2019, this chapter examines Israel’s regime of torture and the unique legal structures it has carefully been crafting over the years to sanction the ongoing abuse and torture of Palestinian prisoners. It argues that torture has never left the Israeli carceral regime and that, over the years, the Israeli government and its relevant branches managed to shift the way torture was practiced and discussed; in effect, creating a reality where torture—if ever referred to as such by the Israeli authorities—appears as an exceptional last resort to violence under the pretexts of security and necessity, and with impunity offered to those involved at every step of the process. The chapter begins by first discussing the Israeli regime of torture and its centrality to broader Israeli carceral practices. It then discusses changes that the torture regime has undergone over the years, particularly following the 1987 publishing of the Landau Commission’s Report and the 1999 HCJ ruling. These moments were pivotal in constituting the current reality in which Palestinian detainees, during the course of their interrogation at the hands of the GSS, can find themselves subject to a range of interrogation methods, none of which amounts to torture in the eyes of the Israeli government.4 The chapter ends by reflecting upon the intended effects of the Israeli regime of torture, which aims not solely to prosecute Palestinians and extract confessions but also to reshape the entire Palestinian political imprisonment experience.

From “no torture here” to “moderate pressure only”

5Imprisonment has long been a central Israeli policy to control Palestinians that can be traced back to the early years of the state’s violent existence beginning in 1948. It is estimated that already in the first year after the establishment of the State of Israel, between approximately 7,000 and 12,000 Palestinians were arrested and sentenced without a hearing or a trial (Kabha and Awawda 2013). Statistics further show that, since the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967, as many as 800,000 Palestinians were arrested. This number constitutes approximately 20 percent of the total Palestinian population in the occupied Palestinian territory (Addameer 2016). According to Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, there are currently over 4,700 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.5 Indeed, this reality has led numerous scholars to refer to Israel’s policies of imprisonment as a “carceral enterprise”, (Hajjar 2005, 44) a “regime of enclavization”, (Khalili 2013, 64) and a “prison web” (Latte Abdallah 2016, 41).

6Inherent to this reality of imprisonment, and to the ensuing discussion of torture, is the Israeli designation of the majority of Palestinian prisoners as “security prisoners”; a determination that “transforms thousands of Palestinians imprisoned today in Israel into a single group that poses, as such, an identical level of danger” and in effect justifying their stricter living conditions and the denial of their rights (Baker 2009, 65). The Israeli Prison Service includes in this designation what it refers to as “senior members of Palestinian terrorist organizations, terrorists who were on their way to a suicide mission and were apprehended by the defence forces; dispatchers; attack planners; those responsible for preparing the explosives, etc.” (Israel Prison Service 2012, 3). This designation of Palestinians, as an embodiment of threat and danger, is a constituting element of their imprisonment, and of the maltreatment and torture they receive at every stage of their detention process.

7Torture has taken a central role within the carceral reality to which Palestinians have long been subjected. Reports of the various methods of torture endured by Palestinian prisoners’ date to the first campaigns of arrest launched by Israel in the early days of its establishment (Kabha and Awawda 2013). These reports continued and were documented by numerous local and international human rights organisations. Torture of Palestinian prisoners particularly came to light in 1977 when the British newspaper The Sunday Times published a special investigation into allegations that Israel employs torture in its interrogation of Palestinian and other Arab detainees. The report, titled Israel and Torture, discusses the cases of several prisoners and recounts their experiences and the torture to which they were subjected in interrogation rooms. One of the prisoners, Ghassan Harb, recounts aspects of his interrogation. In one of the days, he says: “They took me outside, took my clothes [off] and there were four or five people. Now one kicks me, the other receives me, and gives me to the first – as a ball, kicking to and from. Afterwards they let me crawl. I was still without clothes of course. Somebody sat on my back, and they were laughing” (The Sunday Times 1977, 202). He recounts another incident where he was made to crawl into a dog kennel, and where he was made to hear the screams of other prisoners. Another prisoner, Omar Abdul-Karim, recounts being placed on the floor with an interrogator standing on his legs and another pulling his arms back. He recounts having a stick twisted through his handcuffs thus cutting the blood supply to his hands, and mentions being subjected to electric shock during eight or nine sessions.

8This Sunday Times investigative report is not unique in the sense that numerous other documents and testimonies narrate stories of torture from that period and point to the torture methods employed by Israeli interrogators. This brutal reality of torture is confirmed by the number of prisoners who were killed in interrogation rooms; as Addameer (2020) notes, this number has reached 73 since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967. The report is interesting, however, because the Israeli authorities published an official response contesting the newspaper’s allegations. The Israeli response stated that “Israel police and security [forces] have every reason to refrain from use of force. Such use of force is a serious criminal offence, and where cases of police brutality have been found in the past, police officers have been prosecuted, and [that] it is Israel’s policy to do so in the future” (The Sunday Times 1977, 214). Israel further claimed that any statement obtained through torture is inadmissible in Israeli courts, and that the absence of medical evidence is an assertion to the absence of torture in Israeli prisons (The Sunday Times 1977, 214).

9The Israeli state’s response to allegations of torture has not changed in the years since. Israel continues to deny the systematic use of torture and violence behind bars. The occupying state has, however, dressed torture in the garb of legality, modified it, and permitted its continued use behind prison bars whenever needed. The “necessity defense” laid out in Israel’s penal code came to allow the use of torture while brushing aside any claims to the contrary. The “necessity defense” grants interrogators protection in a criminal trial, thus permitting the use of force without holding those responsible for torturing Palestinian prisoners accountable. It is the “necessity defense” logic that allows the Israeli state to torture Palestinians, while simultaneously purporting the contrary and claiming that the use of violence is either an exception needed for security purposes, or that it was ‘moderately’ enacted. The following section traces the emergence of the legally sanctioned Israeli regime of torture and points to the centrality of torture to the Israeli carceral project.

All the way towards legal torture

10Two particular scandals brought torture back into the headlines, making it impossible for the Israeli authorities to simply brush off accusations of torture or to deny them outright. In 1982, a Circassian Israeli army officer was sentenced to 18 years for treason and espionage. During his trials, the officer maintained his innocence and held that confessions were obtained through violent interrogation means, and thus should not be admissible in court. In 1987, the Supreme Court accepted his appeal and acknowledged that Israeli interrogators had used violent means and lied in court under oath. The court ordered his release from prison. The other incident, known as the “bus 300” affair, similarly involved the GSS’s cover up of a use of force that led to the death of two imprisoned Palestinians. Dating back to 1984, the incident involved four Palestinians who had hijacked an Israeli bus and held its passengers’ hostage, demanding the release of a number of Palestinian political prisoners. During the rescue mission, the GSS shot dead two of the Palestinians and captured the remaining two alive, after which they were beaten to death.6 The attempted cover-up, during which the security services fabricated evidence and lied in court, led to public outcry and greater scrutiny of the GSS’s work.

11These two particular incidents led to the establishment of an Israeli government sanctioned commission in 1987 headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau. The commission’s mandate, as Lisa Hajjar notes, was “to bring to light any illegal actions perpetrated by the GSS and, in doing so, to begin the process of restoring public (Jewish Israeli) confidence in the security establishment, which had been damaged by the scandals” (2005, 70). The commission examined the issue of interrogation methods and false testimonies given by the GSS in court. The commission’s report held that moderate physical and psychological pressure can be employed by interrogators to prevent “terrorism”. The report stated that the means “should principally take the form of non-violent psychological pressure through a vigorous and extensive interrogation, with the use of stratagems, including acts of deception. However, when these do not attain their purpose, the exertion of a moderate measure of physical pressure cannot be avoided” (State of Israel 1987, 80). The second part of the report, which remains secret to this day, includes guidelines for interrogators defining permissible and prohibited interrogation methods.

12In addressing the functioning of the GSS and its practices of interrogating Palestinian prisoners, the Landau Commission’s report permitted the torture of Palestinian prisoners under the pretext of employing “moderate pressure”. As Itamar Mann and Omer Shatz note, the Landau Commission “recognizes that violence has been systematically deployed against Palestinian detainees and asserts that such violence is irreplaceable by other means of interrogation” (2010, 85). Resorting to interrogational violence appears as a necessity needed in order to thwart attacks and threats against the Israeli state that is perceived of as being under constant threat. Indeed, the commission’s reasoning for permitting what is referred to as “moderate pressure” is rooted in the notion that the Israeli state is under constant threat from “terrorists” seeking its destruction. The commission’s report states:

We are convinced that effective activity by the GSS to thwart terrorist acts is impossible without use of the tool of the interrogation of suspects, in order to extract from them vital information known only to them and unobtainable by other methods. (State of Israel 1987, 79)

13While a reality at the time of the report’s publication, exerting psychological and moderate physical pressure on Palestinian detainees came to be sanctioned as a necessity in the face of ongoing “terrorism”. Although the report did not outright endorse torture, using instead euphemisms referring to the exercise of violence, the commission permitted the continuation of violence in interrogation rooms. More importantly, the report set the groundwork for future Israeli efforts geared toward constituting Israel’s legalised regime of torture, or what Mann and Shatz refer to as the “project of containing torture within the rule of law” (2010, 85).

14The project of containing torture within the rule of law, or what I refer to here as the legalised regime of torture, continued with the 1999 HCJ ruling that came in response to petitions submitted by a number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) alongside several Palestinian prisoners brutalised at the hand of the GSS. In its ruling, the HCJ prohibited the use of brutal or inhuman means during interrogation and ruled that a “reasonable investigation is necessarily one free of torture, free of cruel, inhumane treatment, and free of any degrading conduct whatsoever”, mentioning that this conclusion is in accordance with international treaties to which Israel is a signatory (Public Committee Against Torture v. Israel HCJ 5100/94 1999, 23). In this sense, as Bana Shoughry-Badarne notes, the Court decided “that, as a general rule, the use of shaking, painful waiting position (shabeh)7, the “frog crouch” and excessive tightening of handcuffs are illegal” (2011, 114).

15While purporting to ban the methods of torture previously endorsed in the Landau Commission’s report as “physical pressure”, the HCJ ruling had, in effect, left a loophole justifying the ongoing and continuous resort to torture at the hands of the Israeli security establishment and granting interrogators protection from criminal liability. The ruling implicitly allowed for torture and physical pressure to be applied against Palestinian prisoners during interrogation under the condition that Israeli “security officials believe that a suspect is withholding information that could prevent an impending threat to civilian lives as stated in Article 1/34 of the Israeli Penal Code of 1972” (Addameer 2018, 11). In effect, the court therefore determined that the necessity clause in Israeli penal law, which grants protection to a defendant in a criminal trial, could apply to Israeli security personnel using “physical measures” (read: torture) in situations conceived of as “ticking bomb” scenarios.

16In principle, however, the ruling did not take a stance on the legality of the use of physical force in “ticking bomb” situations and left the question of legality to the legislative branch. It stated in this regards that if “the state wishes to enable GSS investigators to utilize physical means in interrogations, it must enact legislation for this purpose” (Public Committee Against Torture v. Israel HCJ 5100/94 1999, 34). Yet, by leaving the question of legality to the legislative branch while simultaneously justifying the resort to torture, the court allowed for torture to continue to be practiced under a logic of exceptionality. As Lisa Hajjar notes, the HCJ “effectively added its stamp to the ‘legalization’ of torture in Israel/Palestine, rationalizing that any harm perpetrated by interrogators was lesser or even was mitigated by the possible harm that detainees posed to national security and the safety of civilians who might be victims of terrorism” (2005, 74).

17Echoing the Landau Commission report’s logic of an Israel fighting against the never-ending threat of “terrorism” while working hard to balance its resort to violence, the HCJ ruling ends by discussing the harsh reality Israel finds itself in and the need to balance the use of force with what the law dictates. The ruling reads, “We are aware that this decision does not ease dealing with that reality. This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it” (Public Committee Against Torture v. Israel HCJ 5100/94 1999, 26). Similarly, Aharon Barak, president of the Israel Supreme Court at the time of the ruling, wrote “Admittedly, the struggle against terrorism turns our democracy into a ‘defensive democracy’ or a ‘fighting democracy’. Nonetheless, this defence and this fight must not deprive our regime of its democratic character. Defensive democracy: yes; uncontrolled democracy: no” (Barak 2002, 150). Therefore, through this ruling, and the previous attempts to justify the use of torture, Israel had presented itself as a state succeeding in a difficult “struggle” of meeting the needs of democracy and the rule of law, while fighting an arduous battle against lawless, barbarian enemies. Indeed, these legal manoeuvres that substitute torture with terms such as “moderate pressure”, “necessity defense”, and “ticking bomb” are part and parcel of the war Israel has long waged against the occupied Palestinian population. This definitional game presents the mistreatment of prisoners as “entirely legal because necessary and that, in any event, it does not rise to the level of torture” (Parry 2010, 121). As Mann and Shatz eloquently state, this is a reality that “can only be conceived of as embodiment of warfare” (2010, 97).

18These Israeli legal attempts at addressing the question of torture provided the illusion that torture is not to be found in interrogation rooms and prisons; that it is not condoned nor is it in alignment with the “democratic” nature of the Israeli state. However, the Landau Commission’s report and the HCJ ruling both paved the way for the long-lived Palestinian reality where torture became “more solidly centralized, organized, and managed from above” (Mann and Shatz 2010, 63). As a report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel notes, the HCJ ruling had in effect provided the justifications and approvals for the use of torture through the easily invoked “necessity defense” situation. Indeed, as the report shows, “cases ‘termed ticking bombs’ do not involve a lone interrogator improvising ‘in the face of an unforeseen event,’ as the High Court stipulated. Interrogators appeal to their superiors in an orderly fashion, receive approval in advance, and employ certain methods repeatedly” (Ginbar 2003, 12). More importantly, torture as a legalised exceptional practice did not solely allow for torture to be practiced whenever the state deems appropriate; it had also managed to create a situation where violence steering away from “physical measures” or justifications of “ticking bombs” appears in forms hard to depict as torture. Once again, the illusion of a prohibition against torture had permitted the Israeli state to continuously present its resort to “physical pressure” as exceptional and limited, thus presenting other means of interrogation as lawful and far removed from being described as violent means or torture.

19The torture to which dozens of Palestinians were subjected near the end of 2019—twenty years after the HCJ ruling—is an illustration of both the centrality of torture to the Israeli carceral project, and of the ways in which Israel had carefully cultivated the systematic and centralised reality of torture in interrogation rooms. The following section addresses the particularities of the torture that took place in Al-Mascobiyya interrogation centre in view of the legally sanctioned regime of torture. As will be argued, these cases are the expected outcome of an Israeli regime of torture that continues to provide impunity to those involved in every step of the interrogation and detention processes, and an outcome of the logic of a perpetual threat that Israel has been living under since its inception.

Months of excruciating pain

20Following the detonation of a bomb that killed an Israeli and injured two in the end of August 2019, Israel launched a months-long arrest campaign in the West Bank. The detainees were subjected to a wide range of psychological and physical torture methods. In the days immediately following the incident, Israel arrested a number of Palestinians—including Samer Arbid, mentioned at the beginning of this text—and designated them as “ticking bombs”, thus permitting the use of particular torture and interrogation methods in an attempt to extract confessions. Several of the detained Palestinians were interrogated under what the GSS refers to as “military interrogation” tactics for days, and some had to endure the excruciating pain associated with this form of interrogation for weeks. The majority of the detainees were subjected to prolonged bans on lawyer visits and had no ways of communicating with their lawyers and family members for months. They were constantly at the mercy of judges who are inherently complicit in their interrogation and detention processes (Addameer 2020).

21The Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association collected numerous testimonies from Palestinians who were interrogated during this period, and who are currently imprisoned and awaiting trial. It is worth describing some of the torture methods used before discussing the intricate legal structures and cycles of impunity that constitute the Israeli regime of torture, and that present incidents of visible violence (i.e., that which reaches the public such as the case of Samer described above) as deviations from the “no-torture” norm—or, more accurately, as unfortunate violence needed to protect the state and its citizens from grave harm. The methods of torture included the banana position,8 the squatting position (see Image 3.1),9 the rounded chains position,10 the imaginary chair position,11 the frog crouch,12 pulling facial hair and scalp hair from the roots, suffocating the detainees (see Image 3.2), harsh beatings, and the small chair position.13 Additionally, the majority of the interrogees were subject to prolonged sleep deprivation, to threats against family members, to non-stop interrogation sessions, and to yelling and cursing. Some of the cases, as I had been told by family members, included the fabrications of intimate family videos in order to further psychologically distress the interrogees. Additionally, in at least five cases, family members were arrested to place pressure on detainees to confess.

22On two occasions in November 2019, I was able to attend military court sessions for a number of the tortured detainees. I had also spoken to a number of the detainees’ families, who had relayed information about the legal conditions and health of their family members. In their first court session after the removal of the ban on lawyer visits and communication with family members, many of the detainees looked extremely tired; they were barely able to walk and had to assist themselves while standing so as not to fall, with visible bruise marks on their faces.14 Indeed, some of the families relayed to me that detainees were brought in on wheelchairs to their court sessions after over a month of interrogation. Indeed, the testimonies collected by Addameer show that a number of the detainees had to be moved between interrogation sessions on wheelchairs. I’tiraf al-Rimawi, for instance, “was taken to the clinic several times on a wheelchair as a result of the harsh beating he suffered from throughout the interrogation period [..] he suffered from a swelling in his feet and an extreme back pain” (Addameer 2020, 8). Another detainee, Tareq Mater, had similarly to “be moved on a wheelchair because of his inability to walk or even move from torture” (Addameer 2020, 12). Tareq’s family informed me that he was escorted in a wheelchair when they first saw him in court following over a month of a brutal interrogation in al-Mascobiyya interrogation centre. Tareq’s interrogation at al-Mascobiyya included continuous interrogation sessions, the squatting in front of a wall position, the banana position, the frog crouch position, and interrogators pulling his facial hair from its roots.

Illustrative Image 3.1: The Squatting Position

23The testimony of Walid Hanatsheh is also illustrative of the measures and torture methods the GSS utilised. Walid spent 63 days in Israel’s interrogation centres and was denied lawyer visits for 45 days. Walid was subject to prolonged sleep deprivation, where he would not be permitted sleep at all or allowed to sleep in his cell for only one to two hours a day. During his “military interrogation”, Walid was slapped on his face while his eyes were blindfolded and his hands cuffed; he was beaten on his chest and thighs; he was forced to perform numerous stress positions including squatting, the rounded chains position and the banana position. Walid’s hair was pulled from its roots while he was being constantly yelled at, cursed, and splashed with water by numerous interrogators. Walid’s daughter was also arrested and kept at al-Mascobiyya interrogation centre in an attempt to pressure Walid into making a confession. (Addameer 2020, 6-7). To this day, Walid suffers from the impact of the brutal torture he was subjected to in 2019 and is currently awaiting trial and sentencing.

24Tortured detainees were not provided adequate medical care at any stage of their interrogation process. During their time at al-Mascobiyya interrogation centre, detainees would regularly be taken to a clinic for a medical check-up; however, none of the doctors had reported the visible marks they had seen on detainees’ bodies nor asked for interrogations to be stopped. As Addameer documents, “the doctors approved the detainees’ physical capability to be sent back to interrogations, ignoring the visible bruises, ulcer wounds, and torture marks on the bodies of those detainees who also expressed their feelings of severe pain to the doctors” (Addameer 2020, 1). Walid was taken to al-Mascobiyya’s clinic almost every day during his interrogation period but not once did doctors disapprove of Walid’s physical capability to continue the interrogation. This attests not solely to the complicity of doctors in the torture of Palestinian detainees, but also to the bureaucratised and centralised system of management through which Israeli torture is given a green light at every stage of the process.

Illustrative Image 3.2: Suffocating Detainees

Beyond the HCJ ruling: Nothing has changed

25Since 2001, nearly 1300 complaints of violence carried by the GSS in Israeli interrogation centres have been filed, but only two resulted in a criminal investigation with zero indictments to date (The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel 2021). In its interrogation of detainees over the last twenty-plus years, the GSS used techniques banned in the 1999 HCJ ruling as well as a variety of other methods devised specifically to break the will of detainees. The HCJ and Israeli military courts play a fundamental role in allowing the torture of Palestinian detainees to continue unabated. Israeli military laws permit holding detainees in interrogation centres for up to 75 days during which detainees can be banned from lawyer visits for 60 days (Addameer 2020). During the period near the end of 2019, more than 200 orders were issued denying legal counsel and lawyer visits. As Addameer notes, “those detainees were only left with the interrogators who have been granted impunity for the crime of torture” (2020, 2).

26Addameer’s lawyers filed 22 petitions to the HCJ against the ban on lawyer visits, 18 of which were rejected and 4 were later withdrawn when the ban was lifted. Addameer’s lawyers filed 80 appeals against prolonging detention periods; only 12 were accepted but only to reduce interrogation periods, not to halt them (Addameer 2020, 2). The majority of these appeals were rejected even though judges were able to witness for themselves the visible signs of torture marking the detainees’ bodies and faces. These legal processes effectively immunized interrogators and allowed for the continued detention of dozens of Palestinians with full knowledge that they were being tortured. The Israeli occupation has “since its inception, been shaped by lawyers, maintained through legal institutions, and justified by Israel on the basis of legal arguments” (Viterbo 2014, 299).

27The Israeli carceral regime is also constituted by the impunity that has been granted to those involved in the torture of Palestinian detainees. The 1999 HCJ ruling states, “The Attorney General [AG] can instruct himself regarding the circumstances in which investigators shall not stand trial, if they claim to have acted from a feeling of ‘necessity’” (Public Committee Against Torture v. Israel HCJ 5100/94 1999, 26). These short lines, as Mann and Shatz note, have “effectively created a space of impunity for state officials to commit crimes within the so-called ‘necessity procedure’” (2010, 71). Responding to the “Attorney General can instruct himself” clause, Eliakim Rubinstein, the AG in 1999, published guidelines that effectively granted authorization to employ violent methods in “ticking bomb” situations. The guidelines stated that the AG “would consider refraining from instigating criminal proceedings if an interrogator employed coercive interrogation methods to secure vital information that prevented a tangible danger of grave injury to state security or to human life, liberty, and integrity, and where the circumstances left no other reasonable means available to prevent the harm” (Loevy 2020, 329). The guidelines paid lip service to the Convention against Torture and Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment by noting that refraining from instigating criminal proceedings would not apply if the means of interrogation used constitute torture as defined in the convention (Loevy 2020).

28In 2011, a petition was submitted by three Israeli human rights organizations to the HCJ contesting the impunity offered by the AG’s guidelines.15 The state responded by arguing that these mechanism “provided the right balance between the need to scrutinize GSS actions and the need to avoid disrupting the routines of security investigations” (Loevy 2020, 331). The guidelines later were changed to assign responsibility for the examination of complaints to the Ministry of Justice. However, none of these legal manoeuvres have impacted the impunity that interrogators continue to enjoy with virtually no exceptions.

29The torture that Samer Arbid faced, which nearly led to his death, was one of the two cases that were investigated. Israel’s Attorney General at the time closed the inquiry related to Arbid’s case on January 24, 2021, arguing that “there are no grounds to prove that the crime of torture has been committed” (Addameer 2021a) This logic is illustrated by comments made by Nadav Argaman, the former GSS head, and Shai Nitzan, the former government lawyer who had ordered the probe. Nitzan said, “It is not clear what led him to need to be hospitalized. It is unclear… I am not saying necessarily for this case, but maybe a man while he is in detention can get a heart attack. Is it clear that it was because of torture or applying pressure? It’s not at all clear” (Jeremy Bob 2021). Following the case’s closure, Argaman commented that interrogators had “carried out their mission professionally, in a statesmanlike manner and according to law, and in their action saved the lives of many Israelis” (Steiner 2021). The Israeli authorities were only forced to open a criminal investigation of Arbid’s case because of his condition when he was hospitalized, and the strong mobilization organized in his support. Yet, the end was the same: fortifying the impunity that torturing interrogators continue to receive from all branches of the Israeli judicial, security, and political establishment.

30The second criminal investigation filed against GSS officers was closed for lack of evidence. The case involved a “cavity search” of a Palestinian female from Hebron who was arrested in 2015. Identified as ‘N’ in the media, she was searched to find a sim-card allegedly used for communication between Hamas members and allegedly hidden in her body (The Times of Israel 2021). While GSS officers confirmed that the search did indeed take place, the case was closed in April 2021, with none of the interrogating officers prosecuted (The Public Committee Against Torture 2021). Here, again, the Israeli juridical establishment acted with complicity to further constitute the racialized Palestinian subject against whom torture violence is permitted for “security” purposes.

31As these two failed investigations show, torture is not only sanctioned through the meticulously drafted legal codes that permit the infliction of “pressure” under justifications of “necessity”, but also through the oversight mechanisms that fail to redress crimes of state. These mechanisms constitute part of the same structure that permit the infliction of torture in the first place. They only serve to fortify the illusion that torture is not to be found in Israeli interrogation centres.

Conclusion

32As the cases of the tortured Palestinian detainees discussed show, torture has never left the Israeli carceral project. Quite to the contrary, torture has taken a more central role in Israeli interrogation centres due, in part, to the legal structures put in place that allow for its persistence alongside the illusion of its absence. The Landau Commission’s report, the 1999 HCJ ruling, and the legal structures providing impunity to interrogators have managed to dress torture in the garb of legality where it appears as an exception. It is through this logic that Israel has managed to retain its ability to resort to torture in its interrogation of Palestinians, while simultaneously claiming that torture is never to be found.

33Indeed, as this chapter had argued, the Israeli torture regime is constituted by a bureaucratised and centralised system of management through which torture is given a green light at every stage of the process. In Israeli discourse and practice, the resort to torture – whenever it manages to become public – will always be postulated as an exception needed to protect the state and its Jewish citizens from imminent threats. This “exceptional practice”, however, is ever-present and routine because the Palestinian body is conceived of as inherently dangerous and a threat to be controlled, if not eliminated.16 More importantly, the exceptional and legalized way in which “physical pressures” is presented has not solely allowed for torture to be practiced whenever the state deems appropriate, but also to create a situation where other methods of interrogation become harder to depict as torture since, within Israel’s legal discourse, they would not amount to “physical pressure”.

34The brutal torture to which Samer Arbid and the other detainees were subjected was not solely intended to extract confessions but to teach a lesson: Palestinians should not resist the Israeli occupation or else they will have to bear Israel’s violent response. These detainees were Palestinian bodies brutalised to teach a lesson to those refusing to submit to Israeli control. Samer Arbid’s defiant response to the court with which this chapter began is perhaps an attestation that the neutralisation and reengineering of the Palestinian population has not been accomplished, and perhaps will never be accomplished as long as Palestinians continue to powerfully design their own responses to Israel’s changing strategies and regimes of control; of which torture has long been a central component.