Stripped, beaten or disappeared: Israel's treatment of prisoners in Gaza is causing alarm

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

It was early December and photos And videos made on The time showed him and other prisoners on the streets, dressed only in underwear and lined up in rows, surrounded by Israeli troops. In one video, a soldier shouted at them through a megaphone: “We occupy all of Gaza. Is that what you wanted? Do you want Hamas with you? Don't tell me you're not Hamas.”

The detainees, some barefoot and with their hands on their heads, shouted objections. “I am a day laborer,” one man shouted.

“Shut up,” the soldier shouted back.

Palestinian prisoners from Gaza have been stripped naked, beaten, interrogated and held incommunicado over the past three months, according to accounts from nearly a dozen of the prisoners or their relatives interviewed by The New York Times. Organizations representing Palestinian prisoners and detainees have made similar statements a reportaccusing Israel of both arbitrary detention of civilians and degrading treatment of prisoners.

Israeli forces who invaded Gaza after the October 7 Hamas-led attack have detained thousands of men, women and children.

Some were expelled from their homes and seized, while others were taken as they fled their neighborhoods on foot with their families in an attempt to reach safer areas after Israeli authorities ordered them to leave.

photos Photos from Gaza journalists have shown recently released prisoners being treated in hospitals, the skin around their wrists worn away by deep, infected wounds resulting from the harsh coercive measures imposed on them by the Israeli forces, sometimes for weeks.

The United Nations human rights office said last week that Israel's treatment of Gaza prisoners could amount to torture. It estimated that thousands of people had been detained and held in “horrific” conditions before being released, sometimes without clothes on, wearing only diapers.

In a statement in response to questions from The Times, the Israeli military said it is detaining people suspected of involvement in terrorist activities and release those who have been acquitted. It said Israeli authorities were treating detainees in accordance with international law and defended forcing men and boys to strip naked, saying this was to “ensure they are not concealing explosive vests or other weaponry.”

“Detainees will have their clothing returned if possible,” the military added.

Human rights defenders say Israel's detention and degrading treatment of Palestinians in Gaza could violate international laws of war.

“Since the beginning of the Israeli bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, the Israeli army has arrested hundreds of Palestinians in a barbaric and unprecedented manner and published photos and videos showing the inhumane treatment of prisoners,” said a recent report by several Palestinian rights groups. , including the Palestinian Prisoners Commission and Addameer.

“Until now, Israel has concealed the fate of Gaza prisoners, not disclosing their numbers and preventing lawyers and the Red Cross from visiting detainees,” the report said.

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 about 4,000 cases of disappeared Palestinians from Gaza, almost half of whom are being held by the Israeli army, he said.

The group has sought information about the detainees' conditions and whereabouts and has urged visits. But only in a handful of cases has even proof of life been received, Mr Mhanna said.

Brian Finucane, an analyst at the research organization International Crisis Group and a former legal adviser to the Foreign Office, said international law set “a very high bar” for detaining non-combatants and requiring them to be treated humanely.

During the first month of the war, Israel warned those who did not flee areas under evacuation orders that they “could be considered a partner in a terrorist organization.” Last month, Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said Israeli forces were detaining “military-age men” in those areas.

According to American and other Western analysts, Hamas had an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 fighters before the war, among a population of more than two million people in Gaza.

“The suspicion that men of military age are fighters is disturbing,” Finucane said.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said in October that designating civilians who have not been evacuated as complicit in terrorism was not only a threat of collective punishment but could also amount to ethnic cleansing.

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

In a video Recorded in a stadium in Gaza City, dozens of men, wearing only underwear, line up or march across the field, surrounded by Israeli soldiers. Some of the men had gray hair and some were young boys.

There were also women and girls present, but they remained clothed.

One detainee was Hadeel al-Dahdouh, 22, who appeared in another photo published 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 headscarf had been removed.

She and her husband, Rushdi al-Thatha, both from Gaza City in the north, were taken together on December 5, Mr al-Thatha, 31, said.

“They hit us on the head with their weapons,” said Mr al-Thatha, one of a number of prisoners who described being beaten by Israeli soldiers. “They hit my wife just like they hit me,” he said. “They shouted 'Shut up!' and curse her.”

Mr al-Thatha said he was released after 25 days. Ms al-Dahdouh is still missing.

On the day Mr. Lubbad was detained, Dec. 7, he was at his parents' home with his wife, he said. She had given birth to their third child weeks earlier. They heard gunfire and tanks in the streets and then an Israeli soldier shouted on a megaphone for all the men to come out and surrender.

As soon as he walked outside, with his arms raised, he said, he was confronted by a soldier who ordered him to kneel and undress. In the December cold, he was held on his knees in the back row of a row of Palestinian men and some boys – all in their underwear, some barefoot.

Mr. Lubbad, himself 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 whatever the soldiers told him.

“We didn't know what to expect,” he says.

His hands were tied 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, as soldiers beat them, Mr. Lubbad said.

They were then driven into Israel for hours.

Only when they arrived at a prison in the southern Israeli city of Be'er Sheva were they given clothes: gray tracksuits. Each person was given a number on a blue card and the guards called them by their number, not their name.

Mr Lubbad was held in a large barracks for three days. From five in the morning until midnight, all dozens of detainees were forced to sit on their knees in a position he described as painful. Anyone who tried to change would be punished, Mr. Lubbad said.

He was not questioned until days later, he said, after being taken to another detention center in Jerusalem.

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

When he repeatedly replied that he knew nothing and spent much of his time at work or at home, the interrogator became angry and punched him under the eye, he said, before replacing his blindfold and fastening it painfully tight.

He was held for several more days but not interrogated again.

Early on December 14, Mr. Lubbad said, he found himself among busloads of detainees being driven to Gaza's southern border and told to walk.

Several other inmates gave similar stories.

Majdi al-Darini, a 50-year-old father of four and retired civil servant, said he was held with his hands tied for almost the entire 40 days. The braces cut into his wrists, leaving wounds that eventually became infected. A video of Mr al-Darini after he was released shows scabs around his wrists.

“All this time your hands are tied, your eyes are blindfolded and you are on your knees,” he said. “And you are not allowed to move to the right or to the left.”

He said he was arrested in mid-November as he and his family walked south after leaving their homes in northern Gaza in response to an evacuation order.

“They treated us like animals,” he said. “They hit us with sticks and hurled curses at us.”

Mr al-Thatha, the man held with his wife, said that 25 days after his ordeal, a prison guard came to his barracks and asked him: “Can you run?”

He didn't understand the question.

Hours later, around 2 a.m., he said, his name was called and he was put on a bus to the Kerem Shalom border crossing from Israel to Gaza. As he got off the bus, he said, a soldier warned them that a sniper was watching and ordered them to run for 10 minutes.

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

Ameera Harouda, Hiba Yazbek And Nick Cumming-Bruce reporting contributed.