After overseeing the rough handling of Palestinian prisoners, Ben Gvir proudly releases a video
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir toured a prison where he oversaw guards grossly mistreating Palestinian security prisoners, releasing a video of the visit on Saturday in which he boasted about implementing his minimalist policy on prison conditions.
A Palestinian prisoners’ rights organization accused Ben Gvir, whose portfolio includes the Israel Prison Service, of taking “revenge” on prisoners.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, right-wing extremist Ben Gvir visited Ofer prison in the West Bank, accompanied by prison warden Kobi Yaakobi and relatives of victims of deadly Palestinian terror attacks.
In footage from Friday, around 20 police officers can be seen storming a corridor leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then drag five inmates out of their cells with their hands tied behind their backs and force them face down on the floor.
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“It’s just a source of pride – arriving in a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the most vile of the vile, to see them like that,” Ben Gvir said in the video, without providing any context or explanation for the scenes depicted.
“I want one more thing: execute them – the death penalty for terrorists,” he added as he stood in a cell and pointed to a group of prisoners stacked together, face down and with their arms tied behind their backs, in a corner of the room.
I arrived together with families who will be able to closely follow preparations for Ramadan and ensure that the minimum policy that I lead together with the SBS Commissioner is fully implemented, with no concessions for terrorists.
I became strong and walked strengthened.
The moment Nati Samdar, who lost his father in the terrible attack in Kiryat Yuval, thanked me gave me strength to carry on.
Committed to the bereaved… pic.twitter.com/siG0yAD557
— Itamar Ben Gabvir (@itamarbengvir) February 14, 2026
The visit came as a bill imposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Knesset.
“This is all part of the ongoing revenge actions against Palestinian prisoners,” Abdallah al-Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far-right government do affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in internment camps, but also the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
The Hamas terror group said on Saturday that Ben Gvir’s comments were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the toughest members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
The minister, who took office at the end of 2022, repeatedly boasted about making conditions more difficult for security prisoners, including cutting rations, and argued he was “here to make sure the terrorists get the essentials.”
In September, the Supreme Court ruled that the IPS had failed to provide sufficient food for Palestinian detainees and ordered conditions to be improved. However, recent statements from released prisoners suggest that conditions have not changed. Some report extreme hunger and abuse.
Previous reports compiled in 2024 by the Israeli Ministry of Justice’s Public Defender’s Office showed that Palestinian security detainees held in Israeli prisons suffered severe and systematic violence at the hands of prison guards, food deprivation and medical neglect, while being subjected to unsanitary conditions that caused and exacerbated disease outbreaks in the prisons.
An independent review of the treatment of prisoners has become more difficult since the war in Gaza began following the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, when Israel banned the International Committee of the Red Cross from prison visits, a role the Geneva-based body has played for a century in conflicts around the world.
International human rights groups have repeatedly warned about alleged abuses and ill-treatment in Israeli prisons since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and sparked the war. A ceasefire was reached in October 2025.
While Israel has the death penalty for a small number of crimes, the last person executed was Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann in 1962.
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