Israel defends mass detention of Gaza men amid outrage

As criticism mounted over Israel’s mass detention of Palestinian men in Gaza, the government defended the roundup and said it needed to arrest hundreds of men to determine whether any of them had ties to Hamas.

The arrests sparked outrage after photos and video of the detainees – tied up outside and stripped to their underwear – spread widely on social media on Thursday.

On Friday, Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said Israeli forces have detained men in Jabaliya and Shajaiye, areas of northern Gaza that have seen heavy airstrikes and heavy fighting in recent days. Israel has described these areas as strongholds for Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since seizing power there in 2007.

“We are talking about military-age men discovered in areas where civilians should have been evacuated weeks ago,” Mr. Levy said. “These individuals will be interrogated and we will find out who was indeed a Hamas terrorist and who was not.”

But critics said mass detentions and degrading treatment could violate the laws of war, and that many people could not evacuate because of poor health, disability or the cost of flights.

In addition, a Washington DC-based fundraiser for a group that raises money for the UN agency assisting Palestinians, Hani Almadhoun, said that two of his detained relatives, aged 13 and 72, were not of military age.

Brian Finucane, an analyst at the International Crisis Group and a former legal adviser to the US State Department, said on Friday that the treatment of detainees appeared to violate international law.

“The presumption that military-age men are fighters is disturbing,” he said, and the fact that Israel ordered the evacuation “does not mean that they can probably round up or detain people who ignored it.”

International law sets “a very high bar” for an occupying power to detain non-combatants, he said, and requires that they be treated humanely. “That prohibits violence against personal dignity and humiliating and degrading treatment,” he added.

Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari, chief spokesman for the Israeli military, told reporters on Friday evening: “Over the past 48 hours we have apprehended more than 200 suspects, dozens of whom have been transferred” to Israel, including Hamas commanders and fighters.

Israeli authorities declined to comment on the treatment of the prisoners. Speaking to CNN on Friday, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said the men in the video had been stripped naked “to ensure they were not carrying explosives.”

photos and video shared by Israeli media Thursday showed men in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahia wearing only underwear and standing in rows surrounded by soldiers and military vehicles. The location was confirmed by an online researcher and independently verified by The Times.

Other images of undressed detainees kneeling in a sandbox were also published online. The Times linked these images to the social media posts of an Israeli soldier. It was not clear where they were taken, or whether the prisoners were the same people seen in the Beit Lahia footage.

In October, Israel dropped Arabic-language leaflets over northern Gaza, instructing people to evacuate the region and warning that anyone who remained “could be considered a partner in a terrorist organization.”

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, said at the time that designating civilians unwilling or unable to flee as complicit in terrorism was a threat of collective punishment and could amount to ethnic cleansing.

Mr. Almadhoun, the Washington fundraiser, recognized his brother in one of the videos that was widely shared online. Israeli forces also held his brother-in-law, 13-year-old cousin and 72-year-old father captive in their home in Beit Lahia, he said in an interview.

His relatives “have nothing to do with anything,” said Mr. Almadhoun, director of philanthropy for UNRWA USA, which raises money for the U.N. agency for Palestinians.

“My brother can’t even run two meters, let alone fight,” he said. “This is an attempt to humiliate them, to make their families see them stripped naked. The Israelis are in a state of revenge.”

Mr. Almadhoun said all four of his detained family members were released Friday, which he said was due in part to his advocacy on their behalf with the news media and the Biden administration.

On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross expressed “concern over recent reports/images” of the detentions.

“We strongly emphasize the importance of treating all prisoners with humanity and dignity, in accordance with international humanitarian law,” the group said in a statement.

Many of the men in the photos and video have not been heard from since their detention, families and rights groups say. One of these is Diaa Al-Kahlout, a correspondent for Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, a news site based in Britain.

Layal Haddad, an editor at the site, said she and her colleagues learned of his detention from Mr. Al-Kahlout’s wife, and later recognized him in one of the videos of men in their underwear.

She said that Mr. Al-Kahlout had not been evacuated because his eldest daughter, Nada, is partially paralyzed, and that he wanted to continue reporting on the war in northern Gaza.

“He kept saying, ‘Nowhere is safe, the north and the south are not safe,’” Ms. Haddad said.

Christian Triebert And Chevaz Clarke reporting contributed.