SD Teiman: “I feel complicit”: The dilemma of an Israeli doctor who treated Gaza prisoners in a detention and torture center | International

The prisoners, all from Gaza and some seriously wounded, remain with their eyes covered the entire time, their hands and feet tied to the bed, naked and covered only with diapers, where they have to relieve themselves, and a quilt. An hour and a half visit is enough for a doctor to conclude that the Israeli army’s Sde Teiman detention, interrogation and torture center, and its hospital…

The prisoners, all from Gaza and some seriously wounded, remain with their eyes covered the entire time, their hands and feet tied to the bed, naked and covered only by diapers, where they have to relieve themselves, and a quilt. The one-and-a-half-hour visit is enough for a doctor to conclude that the Israeli army’s Sde Teiman detention, interrogation and torture center and its field hospital must cease to exist.

EL PAÍS interviews the Israeli surgeon who described the scene, a man who, in the shadow of the Hippocratic Oath (the professional code that safeguards the well-being of the patient above all), feels “complicit” and “guilty” in the violations committed there by Israeli authorities. But he knows that someone has to take care of the detainees who are in danger of death.

Amid the controversy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the Supreme Court this Monday to maintain this Israeli center for temporary detention before transferring prisoners to other prisons. However, the prosecutor’s office reported that the Minister of National Security and head of prisons, ultranationalist Itamar Ben Gvir, is obstructing this process of transferring prisoners – there are currently 166 -, the newspaper reports. Haaretz. A few days ago, according to a video that went viral, Ben Gvir proposed executing Palestinian prisoners by “gunshot to the head.”

The health worker, who requested during a telephone interview that details that could identify him not be published, was authorized to care for one prisoner, but they asked him to help care for two others. All three were in critical condition after being hit by large-caliber bullets in the stomach and one of them was also shot in the chest. He wonders and insists: “Those were not small gun bullets.” He emphasizes that the military personnel deployed on the front do not have the capacity to care for these types of patients.

The doctor, who is not the only one to have access to these facilities located in the Negev desert (in the south of the country, about thirty kilometers from the Gaza border), describes the field hospital as a large white tent that houses between 15 and 20 beds. Although it was the middle of winter when he arrived, it was still open to the outside. Next door, several metal containers used in maritime transport are used to store medical supplies, all “provisional” facilities.

He admits that during his visit he was not able to directly verify signs of torture on the prisoners’ bodies, such as electric shocks or beatings, despite repeated complaints in recent months. But he explains that “being tied to a bed, unable to move, unable to see, unable to speak, unable to understand what is happening and with diapers… it is very cold. And this goes on for days and days, weeks. I think this is already a form of torture.”

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Amid persistent reports of abuse and deaths at that military prison, pressure is mounting on authorities from the Supreme Court and humanitarian organizations to close it. According to the Israeli newspaper, the army is investigating 48 deaths of Gazans, 36 of which occurred at Sde Teiman. Haaretz. In early June, the state informed the court that all detainees were being transferred to other centers or would be returned to the Gaza Strip.

To EL PAIS’s question whether Sde Teiman – located in a military base of the same name and near the city of Beer Sheva – in the south of Israel, is still in operation and with how many prisoners, a military spokesman limited himself to answering that 4,700 detainees have passed through there during the entire war. “We cannot comment further,” concludes the brief response.

Regarding the 36 deaths and the possible results of the investigations, they respond that some of the “approximately 70 investigations” opened refer to the deaths of Palestinians, including those of detainees during their transfer to military detention centers or their own facilities, as well as other deaths that occurred during operations in the Gaza Strip.” They emphasize that “most of the investigations are still ongoing.”

The testimony of the doctor who was spoken to matches that of another doctor who wrote a letter to the authorities in March that was published Haaretz“Just this week, two inmates had their legs amputated as a result of restraint injuries, which, unfortunately, is something that occurs on a regular basis,” he denounced in the letter.

Moral skepticism

During a conversation with EL PAÍS, the doctor raises ethical and doctrinal doubts about his visits several times. “Doctors should never treat patients with their eyes covered,” he laments, even if he did. What happens at SD Teiman “goes against any medical code and what the World Health Organization (prescribes),” he adds.

The latest controversy over these facilities has been caused by the order to release Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Gaza’s largest hospital, who was returned to the Strip on Monday along with fifty prisoners and whose release has sparked a confrontation within the government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for an investigation into the release of the director of Al Shifa Hospital. “This man, under whose responsibility our hostages were held and murdered, must be in prison,” the Israeli president said in a statement.

Netanyahu cites security camera recordings released by Israeli authorities that show some of those captured by Hamas in the October 7 Israeli attack at the hospital complex where Palestinian radicals killed nearly 1,200 people. Meanwhile, the defense, secret services and prison service evade responsibility for the return of Salmiya to Palestinian territory.

The Sde Teiman center, which is dedicated exclusively to examining detainees in Gaza, was launched with the start of the war last October. Given the “violations of human rights”, the surgeon considers that “the only possible solution is to completely close the field hospital and treat these patients in real hospitals.” The Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights is of the same opinion, prohibiting the presence of medical personnel in these facilities, according to a report on abuses presented in April. He denounced that the Sde Teiman hospital had to be opened when various centers in Israel refused to treat Gazan prisoners because they considered them “terrorists.”

The document warns, “Medical personnel working in that center face a significant risk of committing serious violations of medical ethics.” They highlight that the care provided to detainees in the Strip is “far below” what is acceptable and “in many cases far from established protocols and ethical standards.” Physicians for Human Rights also condemns political interference in the decision-making process in the healthcare sector.

The NGO estimates that Israeli authorities have detained and isolated thousands of men, women, children and the elderly in Gaza since fighting began in October. They have often been classified as “illegal combatants,” which deprives them of being considered prisoners of war and prevents them from seeing lawyers for long periods of time, the report said.

Given this reality, there is one last question for the surgeon. What do you feel after treating patients in these conditions? “As an Israeli doctor who treats Gazans in these types of situations, I am complicit in this. Deep down, it doesn’t matter why I did it, but the moment I did it, I was part of it. Of course I feel guilty.”

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