Stripped, beaten or missing: alarm over the treatment of detainees in Gaza

Cold, nearly naked and surrounded by Israeli soldiers armed with M16 rifles, Ayman Lubbad knelt among dozens of Palestinian men and boys who had just been forced from their homes in the northern Gaza Strip.

It was early December, and photographs and videos taken at the time showed him and other detainees on the street, dressed only in underwear and lined up in rows, surrounded by Israeli forces.

In one video, a soldier shouted at them through a megaphone:

“We are occupying all of Gaza. Is this what you wanted? Do you want Hamas with you? Don’t tell me you’re not Hamas.”

The inmates, some barefoot and with their hands on their heads, shouted objections.

“I am a day laborer,” one man shouted.

“Shut up,” the soldier shouted at him.

Palestinian detainees in Gaza have been stripped, beaten, interrogated and held incommunicado over the past three months, according to accounts from nearly a dozen detainees or their families interviewed by The New York Times.

Organizations representing Palestinian prisoners and detainees offered similar accounts in a report, blaming Israel for both indiscriminate detention of civilians and the degrading treatment of prisoners.

Israeli forces who invaded Gaza following the Hamas-led attack on October 7 arrested thousands of men, women and children.

Some were ordered to leave their homes and arrested, while others were taken away as they fled their neighborhoods on foot with their families, trying to reach safer areas after being ordered to leave by Israeli authorities.

Photographs taken by journalists in Gaza show recently released detainees receiving treatment in hospitals, the skin on their wrists worn away by deep cuts caused by the sometimes heavy restrictions imposed on them by Israeli forces. for weeks.

THE United Nations Human Rights Office said last week that Israel’s treatment of Gaza detainees may constitute torture. She estimated that thousands of people were arrested and held in “horrible” conditions before being released, sometimes without clothes, only in diapers.

In a statement responding to questions from The Times, the Israeli military said it detains people suspected of involvement in terrorist activities and releases those who are acquitted.

He said Israeli authorities treat detainees in accordance with international law and defended the requirement to force men and boys to undress, saying this was done to “ensure they are not hiding explosive vests or other weapons“

“Clothes are returned to detainees whenever possible,” the army added.

Human rights advocates say Israel’s detention and degrading treatment of Palestinians in Gaza may violate international laws of war.

Operating

“Since the beginning of Israel’s bombing and ground invasion of Gaza, the Israeli army has detained hundreds of Palestinians in an unprecedented and barbaric manner and has released photographs and videos showing the inhumane treatment of detainees,” states a recent report by several Palestinian human rights activists. groups, including the Palestinian Prisoners Commission and Addameer.

“Until now, Israel has hidden the fate of Gaza detainees, has not revealed their numbers, and has prevented lawyers and the Red Cross from visiting detainees,” the report adds.

A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Hisham Mhanna, said his organization receives daily reports from families in Gaza about detained relatives.

The organization is working on some 4,000 cases of Gaza’s missing Palestinians, nearly half of whom are believed to be held by the Israeli army.

The group has gathered information on the conditions and whereabouts of detainees and pushed for visits.

But only in a handful of cases was it received proof of life, Mhanna said.

Brian Finucane, an analyst at the research organization International Crisis Group and a former State Department legal adviser, said international law sets “a very high standard” for the detention of noncombatants and requires that they be treated humanely.

During the first month of the war, Israel warned those who did not flee from areas under evacuation orders that they “may be considered associated with a terrorist organization.”

Last month, an Israeli government spokeswoman, Eylon Levy, said Israeli forces were detaining “men of military age” in those areas.

Hamas is estimated to have had between 20,000 and 40,000 fighters before the war, according to American and other Western analysts, out of a population of more than 2 million people in Gaza.

“THE presumption that military-age males are fighters is concerning,” Finucane said.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, said in October that designating civilians who were not evacuated as complicit in terrorism not only poses a threat of collective punishment but could constitute ethnic cleansing.

Photos and videos taken by Israeli soldiers and Israeli journalists embedded with the army showed Palestinians with their hands tied behind their backs, sometimes blindfolded and in their underwear, kneeling outdoors in winter.

In a video recorded at a stadium in Gaza City, dozens of men dressed only in underwear appear lined up or marched through the field surrounded by Israeli soldiers.

Some of the men had gray hair and many were young boys.

There were also women and girls, but They remained dressed.

One of the detainees was Hadeel al-Dahdouh, 22, who appeared in another photo released last month in the back of a truck full of nearly naked men.

In the image, her eyes were covered by a white blindfold and her veil had been removed.

She and her husband, Rushdi al-Thatha, both from Gaza City in the country’s north, were captured together on Dec. 5, said al-Thatha, 31.

“They hit us on the head with their weapons,” said al-Thatha, one of several detainees who described being beaten by Israeli soldiers.

“They beat my wife just like they beat me,” he said.

“They yelled at him ‘Shut up!’ and they cursed her.”

Al-Thatha said he was released after 25 days.

Al-Dahdouh is still missing.

On the day of Lubbad’s arrest, Dec. 7, he was at his parents’ house with his wife, he said.

She had given birth to her third child weeks earlier.

They could hear gunfire and tanks in the streets and then an Israeli soldier shouted through a megaphone for all the men to come out and surrender.

As soon as he came out, with his arms raised, he met a soldier who ordered him to kneel down and undress.

In the December cold, he was held on his knees in the back row of a line of Palestinian men and some children, all in their underwear, some barefoot.

Lubbad, a human rights worker at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, said his detention lasted a week.

In the first moments, he said, he told himself he would do what the soldiers ordered him to do.

“We didn’t know what was ahead of us,” he said.

They tied his hands with rope that immediately began digging into his skin, he said.

The detainees were forced into trucks, blindfolded and with their hands tied, still in their underwear, while soldiers beat them, Lubbad said.

They were then driven for hours to Israel.

Only when they arrived at a prison in the southern Israeli city of Be’er Sheva were they given clothing: gray sweatshirts.

Each was assigned a number on a blue tag, and the guards called them by their number, not their name.

Lubbad was held in a large barracks for three days.

From 5 a.m. until midnight, all dozens of detainees were forced to sit on their knees, in a position Lubbad described as agonizing.

Anyone who tried to change sides would be punished, Lubbad said.

He was interrogated only days later, he said, after being transferred to another detention center in Jerusalem.

The interrogator asked him where he was on Oct. 7 and whether he had any information on members of Hamas, the armed group that controls Gaza, or Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed faction, he said.

They asked him about the tunnels and Hamas positions.

When he repeatedly replied that he knew nothing and that he spent most of his time at work or at home, the interrogator became angry and hit him under the eyes, he said, and then blindfolded him again, binding them painfully.

He was detained for several days, but was not interrogated again.

According to Lubbad, on December 14, early in the morning, he was taken to a bus full of detainees at Gaza’s southern border and told to start walking.

Other inmates have reported similar events.

Majdi al-Darini, 50, a father of four and retired civil servant, said he was held for 40 days with his hands immobilized most of the time.

The handcuffs cut his wrists and caused wounds that eventually became infected.

A video of Al Darini after his release shows scabs around his wrists.

“The whole time your hands are tied, you’re blindfolded and you’re on your knees,” he said.

“And they don’t let you move left or right.”

He said he was arrested in mid-November as he and his family were walking south, having left their homes in northern Gaza in response to an evacuation order.

“They treated us like animals,” he said.

“They beat us with sticks and cursed us.”

Al-Thatha, the man detained with his wife, said that 25 days after his ordeal, a prison guard showed up at his barracks and asked him:

“‘Can you run?’

He didn’t understand the question.

Hours later, around 2 a.m., they called his name and put him on a bus headed to the Kerem Shalom border crossing from Israel to Gaza.

When they got off the bus, he said, a soldier warned them that there was a sniper watching them and ordered them to run for 10 minutes.

“We ran for 10 minutes without turning our heads,” he said.