Gaza Guantanamo | ctxt.es

Since October, Israel has been committing crimes and massacres against Palestinians in Gaza, including the widespread and systematic practice of enforced disappearances. Reports from human rights organizations indicate that the Netanyahu regime denies arresting these people, conceals information about their identities and whereabouts, and prevents external entities such as the International Committee of the Red Cross from accessing them or providing them with legal representation.

These reports of torture and abuse match similar complaints presented to the International Court of Justice by human rights observers in a lawsuit filed by several countries against Israel.

The practice of enforced disappearances has left families in despair, not knowing the fate of their loved ones. “My son disappeared during the siege by Israeli forces on Al-Jalaa Street (Gaza City). We have not heard anything since then,” Said’s mother told CTXT with tears in her eyes. The opaqueness of the Israeli authorities only increases fear and uncertainty among families.

Human rights groups say thousands of Palestinians are missing and that Israeli authorities are deliberately hiding Palestinians from Gaza, detaining them without trial and that their families and lawyers do not even know where they are being held. For its part, a Palestinian human rights organization described Israeli prisons as “instruments of repression and revenge.”

However, those detained have reported suffering brutal treatment and torture. Hamza A., a recently released prisoner, tells this magazine about his horrific experience: “They subjected me to unimaginable beatings and torture, trying to force me to confess to crimes I never committed.” This type of treatment is intended to humiliate and terrorize detainees, stripping them of their dignity.

A CNN investigation has exposed the rape and torture of Palestinian detainees at the hands of Israeli soldiers at a secret detention center inside a former military base in Israel’s Negev desert. An Israeli who worked at the center took two photos of the scene, which he says still haunts him, in which he saw rows of men dressed in brown sportswear sitting on thin paper mats surrounded by barbed wire. They were all blindfolded and appeared to be hanging their heads in a glare of bright lights.

Some detainees do not survive their ordeal. Reports of deaths in custody raise serious concerns about extrajudicial executions. Speaking to this magazine, the father of a dead detainee lamented, “We lost our son due to torture, and they did not even allow us to bury him with dignity.”

This is what happened to 40-year-old Ezz al-Din al-Banna, who was detained in the Gaza Strip last February. He was wheelchair-bound and was martyred in Ofer prison. According to a medical source, upon reviewing the autopsy of al-Banna’s body, his health showed a rapid decline. Despite living with his disability for 18 years, it was speculated that he had not received the necessary care.

Hamza A., who was released on 4 April, described severe abuse he suffered during his detention by the Israeli army. Detained on 13 December at Kamal Adwan Hospital, where he had sought asylum, he shared his experience: “They detained me when I was injured. The soldiers set dogs on me, blindfolded me, tied me up and stripped me naked. “They took me to an unknown location, which resembled a military barracks.”

Hamza described in detail the brutal treatment he and other detainees received: “Upon arrival, we were thoroughly searched and eye scanned. They forced us to kneel with our heads bowed. After blindfolding us and marking our names with numbers to treat us like numbers, they threw me to the ground, where they beat and tortured me.”

“After forcing me to the ground, a soldier blindfolded me and put a number on my shoulder with adhesive tape,” he says. “They started beating and torturing me, changing the position of the handcuffs from front to back, even though I told them I was injured. It was obvious because he was naked,” he tells CTXT.

The soldier kept hitting him with his shoes until he fainted several times, hitting him in the operation area and making the pain worse. Despite pleading with the doctor to see him, he refused. A soldier came up to him and asked: “Do you want to die?” That’s when the Israeli soldier picked up his gun, reloaded a bullet and shot him near his head.

Another testimony comes from a 34-year-old woman named Salwa (nickname), who was detained by Israeli forces at the Zeitoun school in western Gaza. She described how she was handcuffed, blindfolded and kept in a metal cage for 62 days. She was subjected to electric shocks during interrogation and was scratched and bitten by army dogs. Other detainees have reported being subjected to electric shocks, attacked by dogs, bathed in cold water, deprived of food, water and sleep, and exposed to loud music.

When Salwa took the school as a shelter, the Israeli army raided a school for displaced people, firing on those trying to escape and leaving bodies strewn on the ground. The men were ordered to strip naked, while the women were forced to undergo a strip search in the mosque. This marked the beginning of 13 weeks of Israeli detention, followed by frequent beatings and interrogation at gunpoint.

During his two-week detention in an unidentified camp in southern Israel, Salwa remembered that the food he was given was stale. “They forced us to eat rice from the ground,” he told CTXT.

The woman described how she was forced to kiss the Israeli flag before being transferred to Demoun prison. When she refused, a soldier grabbed her hair and smashed her face against the wall. “If we raised our heads or whispered a word, they would hit us on the head.”

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor recorded the testimonies of a hundred released Palestinian detainees, detailing crimes of torture and degrading treatment. Eyewitnesses told the organization that soldiers stamped on the heads of Palestinian detainees and verbally abused them.

Speaking about the conditions of detention, Salwa said: “Our bodies were almost frozen from the cold. They forced us to kneel on the floor, played loud music and shouted to scare us. They wanted to humiliate us. “They handcuffed us, blindfolded us and chained our legs.”

Alice Jill Edwards, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, has accused Israel of mistreating Palestinian detainees in Gaza. Edwards claimed she has encountered people who were held hostage, beaten and blindfolded for weeks. Shockingly, when some were released they were wearing only underwear. The exact number of people detained by Israel since the start of the Israeli war in Gaza is unclear, but some sources estimate it to be in the thousands.

However, Haaretz The report said the Israeli military has brought only 71 of the more than 500 detainees before Israeli courts, and some of them have been transferred to prisons under the jurisdiction of the Israel Prison Service or to investigation centers of the Israeli Internal Security Agency.