The Electronic Intifada 19 December 2024
A detainee is examined after being released by the Israeli army in Deir Al Balah on 20 June, 2024. Many detainees were physically weakened by their time in Israeli detention, some showing signs of torture and ill-treatment with scars and marks from apparent beatings.
APA imagesOn 21 March, Khalil Skeik, 24, and a number of doctors were summoned for interrogation by Israeli soldiers.
The Israeli military had besieged al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City for four days at that point.
Skeik was a medical student in his last year. At the start of Israel’s attack on Gaza in October 2023, he had decided to volunteer at al-Shifa. He had seen the huge number of wounded and injured overwhelm staff there and wanted to do what he could to help.
The Israeli military had already targeted al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, several times before what would turn into a two-week siege in March.
In November 2023, the Israelis even convinced the US to present the hospital complex as home to a Hamas command center, an allegation the Israeli military tried to back up with a now infamous infographic detailing a James Bond villain-style lair underneath the hospital consisting of several levels.
No such command center was ever found, but Israel had begun a pattern that would see it target every single hospital in Gaza. This has resulted in the near-total destruction of more than half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, leaving just 17, damaged and barely functioning, today.
In March, Skeik’s personal torment was about to begin. Thousands of Palestinians from Gaza have been detained over the past 14 months, so many and with so little transparency that the real number – or even the whereabouts of many – is not known.
The three people featured in this article were all unlucky enough to be among the detainees, but fortunate enough to survive the experience and live to tell the tale.
Skeik was one of them. And his story encapsulates the arbitrary nature of the Israeli military’s actions.
Wrong place
When it finally came, the interrogation was “harsh,” Skeik told The Electronic Intifada. But it seemed to yield nothing of use to the soldiers. They let Skeik leave but told him to exit the hospital grounds.
As soon as he tried, however, he was shot in what he said was gunfire from an Israeli tank.
“As soon as I left the hospital, I was hit by a bullet from a tank, forcing me to return for treatment,” Skeik said, who lost his thumb in the incident.
Two days later, on 23 March, the soldiers ordered the evacuation of all patients able to walk. Skeik was one of them, but since his name had not been on the list of patients the Israelis had previously obtained, he was detained.
Shackled and blindfolded, he was taken to an Israeli detention center in the Negev desert. He was brutally beaten, he said, when he first arrived.
“I fell face-first to the ground, and I could smell blood. Then a soldier stepped on my face.”
Already wounded, Skeik’s health deteriorated in detention to the point where he needed surgery on a fractured jaw and was transferred to the Soroka Medical Center.
“I was forced to sign for a surgery while I was alone, with no family members by my side,” he said.
After surgery, he was returned directly back to the detention center with nothing by way of post-surgery treatment.
“I couldn’t eat due to my injuries,” he said.
And conditions were bad. He was regularly handcuffed and blindfolded for hours, Skeik said. Because of his injuries, he could barely eat the paltry food rations prisoners were given, food so poor Skeik called it “degrading.”
He was released on 2 May after 40 days in detention. He had lost his right thumb and suffered fractures in his jaw.
But though he is free, he said, he feels no relief or joy.
“I walk the streets while the sounds of planes and bombings echo around me. The war only intensifies and my friends are still detained.”
Dream Land
Ahmad al-Ghazali, 34, was meant to return to Gaza on the Thursday before 7 October.
A construction worker inside the 1948 boundaries, al-Ghazali told The Electronic Intifada that he had delayed his return because a friend, Ahmad Nasr, had obtained a rare Israeli work permit and he had promised to give him some basic training.
On the morning of 7 October, Nasr woke up al-Ghazali with news of what was going on. Outside, people were running for shelters. The two laborers decided to stay out of sight for as long as possible.
But their presence was discovered. On 10 October, al-Ghazali was talking to his mother in Gaza on the phone trying to reassure her of his own safety – “Mom, everything is fine here,” I told her. “Don’t worry. I just need to stay for a while” – when he was interrupted by loud banging on the apartment door and angry voices shouting outside.
He immediately rang his Israeli employer, Yair, who arrived to save the two men from an agitated mob that was hurling insults and threats at them.
Yair took them to his home where they spent a night in a caravan in the garden despite angry objections from neighbors.
The next day, Yair drove the two men to the Tarqumiya military checkpoint to cross into the southern West Bank.
Nasr had relatives in Dura village near Hebron and the two men spent what cash they had to get there. The next day, a man recognised al-Ghazali’s Gazan accent and suggested he seek help with a local association that supports workers from Gaza in the West Bank.
Al-Ghazali and four other men were taken, via a small apartment in Hebron, to a tourist resort called Dream Land in Nuba village in the Hebron area.
Detention and return
At Dream Land, there were now 13 laborers from Gaza, al-Ghazali told The Electronic Intifada. With the Israeli military rounding up Palestinians with Gaza IDs from the West Bank, they were trying to keep a low profile.
It worked until it didn’t. On 10 November, the Israeli army raided Nuba and Dream Land and detained everyone. Al-Ghazali hid under a table but was eventually discovered and punished for his attempt at evading capture.
“They beat me so severely when they found me, I thought I wouldn’t survive that moment.”
The laborers were taken to Ofer military prison near Ramallah. There, soldiers confiscated their personal belongings and placed them in an open-air section of the prison yard. After hours of waiting, soldiers called out the names of seven detainees, including al-Ghazali, for interrogation.
It would turn out to be the first of four days of intensive and deeply coercive interrogations.
Al-Ghazali was asked to locate his home in Gaza City on a map. He was asked if any Hamas members lived in his area. He was asked if anyone in his area was “sympathetic” to Hamas.
“I don’t know anyone,” al-Ghazali said he told his interrogators. “I’m just a worker trying to make a living for my family.”
He was put under various forms of psychological pressure. At one point, he said, “They made me sit on cold stones in an open yard wearing light clothing for hours. They wanted to break me.”
At another, he was told that he was a prisoner of war and soldiers had orders for his execution.
“One of them counted down, ‘3, 2, 1,’ pointing his rifle at my head. I closed my eyes, thinking it was over. Then they burst into laughter and said it was a joke.”
After five days of this, he and a few others were “hurled” into a bus, taken to the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza and told to walk to the Rafah crossing from there.
Al-Ghazali now stays with a relative in Deir al-Balah. He has been unable to return home to Gaza City and his wife, Huda, and their three young children: Lana, 8, Muhammad, 6, and Ahlam, 18 months.
Reporter detained
When Muhammad Obeid’s home in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City came under heavy bombardment in mid-November 2023, he and others decided to abandon their homes and try to move somewhere safer.
Obeid – a journalist with Press House – carried only the clothes he was wearing. He waved a white cloth to signal to soldiers that he was no threat. There was a tank stationed at the corner of his street, which was also home to the headquarters of the UN’s Development Program in Gaza.
“The area was swarming with soldiers who were observing from 100 meters away on a nearby hill, armed with sniper rifles and cameras.” Obeid told The Electronic Intifada.
As he walked, he heard a voice call to him.
“‘You, the one in the white pants, come here!’ The soldier pointed at me and said, ‘Yes, you.’ I approached him, and he ordered me to take off all my clothes in front of them, while a sniper aimed his weapon at me.”
He was bound hands and feet and blindfolded before being dragged about 200 meters and thrown onto sharp gravel. Soldiers taunted him, accusing him of being a member of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades and of killing soldiers.
He was taken to an interrogation facility where he was repeatedly questioned about his whereabouts on 7 October, with similar questions being thrown at him over and over, he said.
“Where were you on October 7?”
“Do you know the locations of the tunnels?”
“Where are the rockets hidden?”
Obeid had been at home. He tried to convince the soldiers. He tried to prove it to them, but no one would listen and the conditions got worse. At one point, he told The Electronic Intifada, he was forced to stand up for six consecutive hours, he said.
“It was the coldest day of the year, and I was clothed in just underwear. They placed me in an open area exposed to the wind and when the rain started, it made things worse.”
Propaganda
One day, soldiers dragged him out and placed him before a camera with an Israeli flag behind him. But when an interrogator saw blood covering his face – after a beating – he was ordered to clean up.
In another instance, Obeid said, “They told me to laugh in front of the camera, even though I could barely stand from the pain.”
During one interrogation, the investigator looked through Obeid’s phone, which contained pictures of children killed in airstrikes in Gaza.
The soldier told him that the children had been “human shields.” Obeid said he had responded angrily: “These are children, civilians you murdered without reason!”
Throughout it all, his greatest concern had been for his family.
“All I could think about was returning to find them safe.”
On 23 December 2023, after 40 days in detention, he was surprised to hear his name among those listed for release.
“I didn’t believe it until I signed the release papers,” Obeid said.
And the last day in detention was “different,” he said.
“They gave us clean clothes, slippers, and soap to shower. When we reached the Kerem Shalom crossing, cameras surrounded us, and they handed out chocolate and water in front of the media.”
Tareq Zaqout is a writer and teacher from Gaza.
