Palestinian workers\u00a0who\u00a0were expelled\u00a0back\u00a0to Gaza from Israel last week have accused Israeli authorities of \u201ctorture,\u201d alleging they were stripped naked, held in cages, viciously beaten\u00a0and, according to one worker\u2019s account, subjected to electric shocks. <\/p>\n
Most workers from Gaza work in construction or agriculture. They tend to spend weeks away from home, rather than commuting,\u00a0which is why so many were\u00a0in Israel when Hamas launched its terror attack\u00a0on Saturday October 7. <\/p>\n
Al Radia said that right after the war started, he and some of the other Gazan workers fled to Rahat, a predominantly Arab Bedouin city in southern Israel, where he says they were turned over to the Israeli army by local residents. <\/p>\n
\u201c(The military)\u00a0<\/strong>took our phones and money, we couldn\u2019t communicate with our families, we were given food\u00a0on the floor in plastic bags,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n The security official said that in some cases, their detention was also for their own protection, as they were at risk of violence from Israeli communities. <\/p>\n Six human rights organizations in Israel have filed a petition to\u00a0Israel\u2019s High Court arguing these detentions were \u201cwithout legal authority and without legal grounds.\u201d <\/p>\n Gisha, an Israeli not-for-profit organization focused on protecting the freedom of movement of Palestinians and one of the groups behind the petition, said in a statement last week that it had \u201creason to believe that the holding conditions in these facilities were extremely dire, and that detainees were subjected to extensive physical violence and psychological abuse, as well as being held in inhumane conditions.\u201d <\/p>\n Many of the workers say they had no idea where they were taken. According to the Palestinian Prisoners Society, a human rights\u00a0organization based in the occupied West Bank,\u00a0many were held in\u00a0two detention centers: one in Ofer near Ramallah and one in Salem near Jenin. <\/p>\n Another worker from\u00a0Beit Lahiya, Mahmoud Abu Darabeh, also described beatings by what he says\u00a0were Israeli\u00a0forces. <\/p>\n Abu Darabeh said he was detained on the second day of the war. \u201cThey put us in cages like dogs, beatings, insults, they didn\u2019t care whether people are ill or not, some of us were injured, their feet got rotten because they didn\u2019t get any medical treatment,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n The men faced daily interrogations from the Israeli authorities asking about their homes and family members, Abu Darabeh said. <\/p>\n He also described how some of the workers died during detention and while crossing into Gaza. <\/p>\n \u201cSome people died on the way here because they were beaten and subjected to electric shocks,\u201d Abu Darabeh said.\u00a0He said he personally\u00a0witnessed others who were detained with him being shocked. <\/p>\n \u201cThere have been cases of abuse towards the detainees outside of the official detention facilities. These cases were treated very seriously, and they were dealt with disciplinary measures,\u201d the official said through a translator, saying that to their knowledge, four soldiers were removed from the IDF following incidents of abuse and two soldiers were put in military prison for their conduct. <\/p>\n When asked if any of the detainees died as a result of abuse,\u00a0the official said that they were aware of two deaths of Gazan workers who were detained, but said these deaths were the result of chronic, long-term health issues these workers had before entering Israel, not the result of abuse. <\/p>\n The official said that, to his knowledge, these abuses did not include electric shocks. <\/p>\n In response to the attacks, Israel began an unrelenting bombing campaign on Gaza, while the country\u2019s\u00a0defense minister Yoav Gallant ordered\u00a0a \u201ccomplete siege\u201d on the enclave. <\/p>\n Before the October 7 attacks,\u00a0about 18,000 Gazans\u00a0had permits that allowed them to cross into Israel for work \u2013 where wages can be as much as ten times higher than in Gaza. <\/p>\n All of them would have been subjected to a rigorous security clearing process by the Israeli authorities before being issued the permit. <\/p>\n Immediately after the attack, Israel also revoked the Gazan workers\u2019 permits, which made it illegal for them to stay in the country. Since returning to Gaza was not a possibility, many tried to flee to the occupied West\u00a0Bank. <\/p>\n The security official said that at the beginning, some of the facilities didn\u2019t have shade, but added this was rectified within a few days. The official said detainees were only restrained when in transit. <\/p>\n One man, from\u00a0the\u00a0Al-Maghazi\u00a0refugee camp, sobbed as he described how they were packed into metal cages and deprived of sleep, a known form of torture. <\/p>\n \u201cEvery now and then, they came to us and asked us to stand up. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down, stand up,\u201d he said. \u201cIn one place, we were around 150 people in a metal cage. It smelled very bad, I think it was used for chickens or rabbits before,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n \u201cThey beat us and stole our money, and they took our clothes off and kept us naked, <\/p>\n I was only in my underwear for more than 20 days,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Amani Sarahneh, spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoners Society, said some of these men were detained on the way to the West Bank while some were detained in the West Bank. <\/p>\n The men tried to reach the\u00a0occupied\u00a0West Bank because once Israel revoked their permits, they were in legal limbo \u2013 their stay in Israel became illegal, but there was no clear way back to Gaza with border crossings on both the Israeli and Egyptian side closed. While they also need permits for the West Bank, it was safer for them to be in a territory that is under Palestinian control,\u00a0they believed. <\/p>\n \u201cMost of the testimonies were about being starved, being continuously beaten during the day, handcuffed, isolated from their surroundings,\u201d she said, adding that videos showing Palestinian prisoners being treated violently and in an inhumane manner have surfaced online. <\/p>\n \u201cThey didn\u2019t do anything wrong; they were not charged with anything \u2026 yet many of them were interrogated and systematically tortured, abused, brutally beaten, they faced all kind of dehumanization and insults,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n Dror Sadot, a spokesperson for B\u2019Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, an NGO, said the October 7 attacks by Hamas have led to a huge spike of aggression towards Palestinians. <\/p>\n She said that this rhetoric and the anger over the crimes of Hamas trickles down to the individual soldiers, who then treat any Palestinian with rage. <\/p>\n Sadot said that long-term experience with the way the IDF generally handles cases of abuse is not convincing. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been investigating this for so many years \u2013 the military enforcement system works as a whitewash mechanism with almost no indictments,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cSo they will say \u2018those are the exception, not the rule,\u2019 but if the impunity for soldiers continues \u2013 and not just the soldiers but also the policy itself \u2013 when no one\u2019s being held accountable, of course, things will just continue,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n Some are elderly, visibly exhausted, and drenched in sweat, while others appear to be injured. <\/p>\n At least three have deep, visible cuts on their wrists which appear to have been caused by hand ties. <\/p>\n Most of the men are not carrying any personal belongings apart from the clothes they are wearing. <\/p>\n One man, 58-year-old Mohamed Atallah, was wearing a plastic number tag on his wrist. <\/p>\n They touched the ground with their foreheads, thanking God to be back in Gaza \u2013 the place that has become a hell on earth since they last left it. <\/p>\n\n Palestinian workers\u00a0who\u00a0were expelled\u00a0back\u00a0to Gaza from Israel last week have accused Israeli authorities of \u201ctorture,\u201d alleging they were stripped naked, held in cages, viciously beaten\u00a0and, according to one worker\u2019s account, subjected to electric shocks. Most workers from Gaza work in construction or agriculture. They tend to spend weeks away from home, rather than commuting,\u00a0which is why <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11232,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11231","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} \u2018They tied our arms, blindfolded us\u2019<\/h2>\n
\u2018Dehumanization and insults\u2019<\/h2>\n
Exhausted and injured, but overjoyed to be back<\/h2>\n