By Staff, Agencies

Right group advocates have warned that record numbers of Palestinian detainees are filling “Israeli” detention centers in light of the bloody onslaught on Gaza, stating that the inmates are subjected to “systemic abuse” and torture.

Members of several NGOs inside the Zionist entity traveled to Geneva earlier this week to sound the alarm before the United Nations about the serious “crisis” inside the entity’s jails.

“We are extremely, extremely concerned,” Tal Steiner, the executive director of the so-called “Public Committee Against Torture in ‘Israel’” [PCATI], told AFP news agency.

“What we’re looking at is a crisis,” she said, adding that nine people have reportedly died behind bars since October 7 last year, when the “Israeli” military launched its unrelenting ground and aerial offensives against the besieged Gaza Strip.

“There are almost 10,000 Palestinians in “Israeli” custody right now, ... a 200-percent increase from any normal year,” the activist pointed out, stressing that the situation has deteriorated dramatically since “Israel” waged the war on Gaza.

Miriam Azem of the so-called “Adalah” legal center also said her organization had managed to document “19 clear cases” of torture, including sexual violence, within “Israeli” prisons since the outbreak of the Gaza war.

“We’re seeing really widespread and systemic use of many, many tools in order to inflict torture and ill-treatment on Palestinians.

“This crisis requires the immediate intervention of the international community,” Azem said.

Steiner described the current situation as “an ongoing crisis,” warning that “People are [suffering] in detention right now... An urgent intervention is very much needed.”

At least 27 Palestinians have been reportedly martyred inside the “Israeli” military camps holding those detained inside Gaza since early October, Steiner said, adding that this was “unprecedented and extremely severe.”

There was no access to the camps, nor had her organization, or foreign journalists, been permitted to enter Gaza to speak with those released, she said.

Steiner pointed out that all those detained in Gaza, including children and reportedly even an 82-year-old woman, were being held under “Israel’s” unlawful military ‘law’. That ‘law’ denies protections typically granted to detainees and prisoners of war.

“The ‘law’ in its current form is unconstitutional,” she said.

Her remarks come as testimonies provided by former camp prisoners indicate that detainees are frequently confined in “open-air enclosures”, where they are “handcuffed and blindfolded round the clock.”

It has been reported that prisoners were compelled to rest on the bare floor of their cages in chilly conditions, endured physical abuse, and were not provided with medical attention.