Key Facts

• Itamar Ben-Gvir is Israel’s minister of national security and head of the far-right Jewish Power party.
• He posted a video depicting Palestinians being loaded onto a conveyor belt to detention camps and coming out emaciated; the video was later deleted.
• Many Palestinian prisoners are held under “administrative detention,” meaning they are detained without trial or clear charges based on secret evidence.
• Israeli human rights group B’Tselem compares conditions in some Palestinian prisons to “torture camps.”
• Ben-Gvir has proposed extreme punishments, like surrounding prisons with crocodile moats (which was paused after opposition).
• He supports a death penalty law mainly targeting Palestinians convicted of terror offenses.
• Ben-Gvir has openly called for many targeted killings in Gaza in addition to current military actions.
• Concerns raise about the treatment of detained Palestinians, including children, without clear legal processes.