Reports from UN and human rights organizations and testimonies of detained victims
It’s winter, but men and boys take off their clothes, cover their eyes, and bare their feet.
They tied my wrists behind my back, made me kneel, beat me, and cursed me.
The New York Times (NYT) reported on the 23rd (local time) that the United Nations has revealed that Israel is detaining thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and treating them as equivalent to torture.
The UN agency added that thousands of people were detained in “appalling” conditions, and that some who were released were found wearing only diapers.
Dozens of Palestinian men and boys who had been driven from their homes in the northern Gaza Strip were kneeling almost naked in the cold, surrounded by Israeli soldiers carrying M16 rifles.
Those who appeared in videos and photos taken on the streets early last month appeared in line wearing underwear. In one video, a soldier yells at them through a loudspeaker. “We are occupying all of Gaza. Is this what you guys wanted? Do you want Hamas to exist? “Don’t even say that you are not Hamas.”
◆When released, he was seen naked and wearing only a diaper.
Some of the detained people were barefoot and had their hands on their heads, and one man protested, saying, “I am a day laborer.”
“Shut up,” the soldier shouted.
They testified that they were stripped naked, beaten, interrogated, and forced into silence for three months. Palestinian detainee advocacy groups also issued similar reports, accusing Israel of indiscriminately detaining and humiliating civilians.
Israel has detained thousands of men, women and children since it invaded Gaza.
Some people were arrested after being ordered to leave their homes, and others were caught fleeing to neighboring homes with their families in search of safety following the evacuation order from the Israeli military.
Photos taken by journalists in Gaza also show released detained residents receiving treatment at a hospital. The skin around the wrists, which had been tightly bound for several weeks by the Israeli military, appears to have been peeled off.
The UN Human Rights Committee said last week that Israel’s treatment of detained Gaza residents amounted to torture. Thousands of people were detained in “horrible” conditions before being released, some completely naked and wearing only diapers.
◆I was imprisoned for several weeks, beaten and interrogated.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it had detained people suspected of involvement in terrorist activities and released those found not to be guilty. He also justified the removal of the clothes of the men and boys, saying that they were treated in accordance with international law, saying, “This was to prevent them from concealing bomb vests or weapons.” “Where possible, detainees’ clothing was returned,” the statement added.
Human rights activists say Israel’s detention and degrading treatment violate the international laws of war. In a recent report, Palestinian human rights groups, including the Palestine Prisoners’ Committee and the United Nations Adermare Prisoners Support Association, said in a recent report, “Since the start of Israel’s bombing and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, there have been photos showing the Israeli military arresting and inhumanely treating hundreds of Palestinians in an unprecedented barbaric manner. and released the video directly,” he said.
“To date, Israel has not disclosed how it has handled the detainees in Gaza and the number of detainees, and is preventing lawyers and the Red Cross from accessing the detainees,” the report added.
Hisham Manna, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said they were receiving reports of family members being arrested every day. He added that the Red Cross is tracking about 4,000 cases of missing persons in Gaza, about half of whom appear to be detained by Israeli forces.
A spokesman said they were gathering information on the treatment and whereabouts of detainees and were requesting interviews with them, but that only a few cases had evidence of their survival.
◆According to international law, detention of non-combatants is a war crime
Brian Financain, a former U.S. State Department researcher at the International Crisis Group (ICS), said international law standards for detaining non-combatants are “set very high” and require humanitarian treatment.
Israel has warned that people who do not leave areas where evacuation orders were issued in the first month of the war “may be considered members of terrorist groups.” Last month, Israeli government spokesman Eilon Levy said the Israeli military was detaining a “military-age male.”
Before the war, the number of Hamas fighters was estimated at 20,000 to 40,000 out of the total population of more than 2 million people in the Gaza Strip.
“It is problematic to assume that all military-age males are combatants,” Financaine said.
Francesca Albanis, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said in October last year that singling out unaccounted civilians as participants in terrorism is nothing more than a threat of collective punishment and amounts to ethnic cleansing.
Photos and videos taken by Israeli soldiers and Israeli war correspondents show Palestinians kneeling outside in their underwear in the middle of winter, with their hands tied behind their backs and their eyes covered.
A video taken at a playground in Gaza City shows dozens of men surrounded by Israeli forces lining up or moving around wearing only their underwear. Some men had gray hair and several young boys were also seen. There were women and girls, but they were clothed.
◆Women are also put in trucks with naked men
In one photo taken last month, 22-year-old Hadil Aldadoux was riding in the back of a truck full of naked men. She covered her eyes with a white cloth, but the hijab covering her head had been removed.
She and her husband, Rushdie Altana (31), said they were from Gaza City, northern Gaza, and were arrested on the 5th of last month.
“I used to hit him in the head with a gun,” Altana said. “She also hit my wife and swore at her, telling her to ‘shut up,’” she said.
Altana and his wife were released 25 days later, but she said she is still missing.
Ayman Rubard was arrested on the 7th of last month while staying at his parents’ house with his wife. It’s only been a few weeks since her wife gave birth to her third baby, she said. He said that after hearing gunshots and tanks in the street, Israeli soldiers shouted through loudspeakers for all men to come out and surrender.
As soon as I went outside with my hands raised high, the soldiers knelt down and took off my clothes. I had to kneel in a row with other men and boys in the cold weather of December. Everyone was in underwear and barefoot.
Rubard, a human rights activist with a Palestinian human rights organization, said he was detained for a week. He said that from the beginning he was coerced into following soldiers’ orders unconditionally. “Nobody knew what was going to happen,” he said.
◆For 17 hours a day, they are made to sit on their knees and not move.
The ropes that bound his wrists immediately dug into his skin. The detainees, with their hands tied in their underwear and blindfolded, were beaten by soldiers and transported on trucks for several hours to Israel.
It was not until we arrived at the prison in Beer Sheva, southern Israel, that we were issued gray tracksuits with blue inmate numbers. The guards called the prisoners by their numbers rather than their names.
Rubard was locked in a large holding cell for three days. He said that from 5 a.m. to midnight, dozens of inmates had to sit on his knees, which was painful. He was punished whenever anyone tried to move, he said.
After being left uninterrogated for several days, he was transferred to another detention facility in Jerusalem.
The interrogator asked where he was on October 7th last month and whether he knew Hamas or Islamic Jihad members. He was also interrogated about the tunnels and the whereabouts of Hamas.
When he repeatedly answered that he knew nothing and that he spent most of his time at work and at home, the interrogator said he got angry and hit him under his eyes and tightened the cloth over his eyes, causing him pain.
He was detained for a few more days and then interrogated again. On the morning of the 14th of last month, I traveled to the south of the Gaza Strip by bus with other detainees and was ordered to return on foot.
The testimonies of other detainees are similar.
Majdi Allarini (50), a retired civil servant with four children, said that while he was detained for 40 days, his hands were tied most of the time, and his wounds were opened. Photos taken after his release showed large scabs around his wrists.
He said, “I had to kneel with my wrists tied and blindfolded the entire time, and I was prohibited from moving left or right.”
He said he was caught while fleeing on foot to the south from his home in northern Gaza with his family in mid-November, following an evacuation order.
He said, “I was treated like an animal. “He hit me with a stick and swore at me,” he said.
Altana, who was detained with his wife, said that on the 25th day of his ordeal, the guard asked him, “Can you run?” She didn’t understand why she was asking at the time. At 2 a.m. she was put on a bus and when she got off she was told to flee within 10 minutes as snipers were watching. “For 10 minutes, everyone ran without looking back,” she said.
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.