Zero Tolerance

In the post–October 7 world, the once-notoriously lax conditions for Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails have disappeared. Instead, as a close-up view of the holding cells for Hamas’s Nukhba murderers shows, jailtime is meant to serve as a deterrent that won’t be easily forgotten

The iron gate clanks opens. A stern-looking band of armed guards greets us.

Over there, behind those bars, is where the world’s most reprehensible criminals are incarcerated.

Welcome to the living nightmare of the Nukhba terrorists — those still breathing, for now.

We enter the gates of the detention facility at an isolated location in the south of the country. This prison, which covers hundreds of dunams, is the most isolated and well-guarded in the country. Its two compounds house more than a thousand Hamas terrorists from various sectors. The few perpetrators of October 7 who survived have been held in one of these compounds since the start of the war, and their ranks were later swelled by Nukhba terrorists who surrendered during the ground maneuver in Gaza. The second compound houses Hamas terrorists from Judea and Samaria.