Israel’s treatment of Gaza detainees raises an alarm
Accounts detail being stripped, hit, interrogated
Cold, almost naked, and surrounded by Israeli soldiers 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 in the street, wearing only underwear and lined up in rows, surrounded by Israeli forces. In one video, a soldier yelled at them over a megaphone: “We’re occupying all of Gaza. Is that what you wanted? You want Hamas with you? Don’t tell me you’re not Hamas.”
The detainees, some barefoot with their hands on their heads, shouted objections. “I’m a day laborer,” one man shouted.
“Shut up,” the soldier yelled back.
Palestinian detainees from Gaza have been stripped, beaten, interrogated, and held incommunicado over the past three months, according to accounts by nearly a dozen of the detainees or their relatives interviewed by The New York Times. Organizations representing Palestinian prisoners and detainees gave similar accounts in a report, accusing Israel of both indiscriminate detention of civilians and demeaning treatment of detainees.
Israeli forces who invaded Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack have detained men, women, and children by the thousands.
Some were ordered out of their houses and seized while others were taken as they fled their neighborhoods on foot with their families, trying to reach safer areas after Israeli authorities ordered them to leave.
Photographs taken by Gaza journalists have shown newly released detainees being treated in hospitals, the skin around their wrists worn down with deep cuts from the tight restraints Israeli forces kept on them, sometimes for weeks at a time.
The United Nations human rights office said last week that Israel’s treatment of detainees from Gaza might amount to torture. It estimated that thousands had been detained and held in “horrific” conditions before being released, sometimes with no clothes on, only diapers.
In a statement in response to questions from the Times, the Israeli military said it detains people suspected of involvement in terrorist activity and releases those who are cleared. It said Israeli authorities were treating detainees in accordance with international law and defended forcing men and boys to strip, saying this was to “ensure that they are not concealing explosive vests or other weaponry.”
“Detainees are given back their clothes when it’s possible,” the military added.
Human rights defenders say Israel’s detention and demeaning treatment of Palestinians in Gaza could violate international laws of war.
“Since the beginning of the Israeli bombardment and ground invasion in Gaza, the Israeli army arrested hundreds of Palestinians in a barbaric and unprecedented manner and has published pictures and videos showing the inhumane treatment of detainees,” said a recent report by several Palestinian rights groups, including the Palestinian Prisoners’ Commission and Addameer.
“So far, Israel has concealed the fate of detainees from Gaza, has not disclosed their numbers, and prevented lawyers and the Red Cross from visiting detainees,” the report added.
A spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Hisham Mhanna, said his organization received daily reports from families in Gaza about detained family members. The organization is working on some 4,000 cases of Palestinians from Gaza who had vanished, nearly half believed to be detained by the Israeli military, he said.
The group has been seeking information about the conditions and whereabouts of detainees and pushing for visits. But only in a handful of cases has it even received proof of life, Mhanna said.
Brian Finucane, an analyst at the research organization International Crisis Group and a former legal adviser to the State Department, said international law set “a very high bar” to detain noncombatants and required that they be treated humanely.