Israel’s far-right national security minister on Sunday boasted of worsening conditions for Palestinian prisoners as he visited female inmates.
“Our hostages had no shampoo and had no such conditions. I am proud that we have succeeded in reducing the terrorists’ prison conditions to the bare minimum. Ben Gvir again drew international condemnation recently when he said Israel should kill 30 to 40 Palestinians each night in Gaza. The prisoner speaking in the video is Yasmine Shaaban, who was re-arrested by Israeli forces in May 2025 during a raid on her home near Jenin, months after being released as part of a Gaza ceasefire agreement, according to her husband.
Two months before elections, Itamar Ben Gvir posted a video in which a veiled woman, her face blurred out, said that prisoners had “extremely bad” conditions and “don’t get any rights, and we have particular needs as women”. “We haven’t bathed for three days and we haven’t changed our underwear,” she said, warning of the risk of disease. The summer camps in the prisons are over,” Ben Gvir said. The Gaza prisoners ministry under Hamas said Ben Gvir’s video “reflects the depths of depravity to which the occupation regime has sunk”.
