How do you think the allegations of torture in Israeli prisons impact the ongoing Israeli Palestinian conflict and prospects for peace in the region ?
They are appalling and abhorrent. They will impede any peaceful resolution in the region.
Fady Bakr, a Palestinian from Gaza who was recently freed from an Israeli detention facility, stated that he was subjected to blindfolding for the most of the 45-day period during which he was wrongfully held. The limited glimpse he was permitted, or compelled, to witness, he asserts, will forever torment him.
Israel has implemented a deliberate strategy of torture and mistreatment towards Palestinians who have been unlawfully incarcerated in its jail system since the commencement of the war in Gaza in October.
Testimonies from detainees and reports from Palestinian and international rights groups reveal a wide range of horrible acts of violence, including sexual torture, electrocution, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, playing loud music to the point of causing bleeding in prisoners' ears, and gang rape.
Bakr, a man who has completed their studies in law, was apprehended by Israeli military personnel on the 5th of January. While searching for flour and food in Tal Al-Hawa, Gaza City, he and his three companions were shot at by Israeli soldiers.
Two of his companions were promptly slain, while the third suffered injuries. Bakr was apprehended following wounds to his left leg, right arm, and abdomen.
He describes his entire time in prison as "horrid", but there is one specific incidence of assault that he will never forget.
“A dog raped another hostage before my eyes,” Bakr exclaimed, visibly distressed, his eyebrows quickly furrowing.
Bakr, who was restrained with handcuffs and blindfolded, was one of three prisoners who were taken out of a cell and directed to stand in a row in an asphalt yard.
“The man on my right was called to step forward, he was forcefully undressed by between 10 to 12 soldiers, who shoved him onto all fours, his wrists and legs tied,” Bakr said.
“They then poured some liquid on his behind and the animal immediately attacked him and raped him. There was immediate panic. The prisoner - helpless, shocked, and in pain - screamed and shouted in horror, tried to jolt and push the dog away but couldn’t, and neither could we. We too were screaming that this must stop. We were unable to do anything. Unable to believe what was happening,” the witness and victim recounted their traumatic experience.
“Eventually, his shouts stopped as he lost consciousness. We were then brutally beaten and returned to our cells, in a complete state of anguish, disbelief, and shock,” Bakr added. “This was the only time they allowed us to be without the blindfolds,” he recalls.
The sexual torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons has been extensively documented by several Palestinian accounts, independent human rights organizations, and United Nations experts since October.
The Israeli military has faced allegations of employing military canines not only for assaulting civilians during military operations in Gaza, but also for intimidating and sexually abusing captured Palestinians.
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has recorded a minimum of one occurrence where military canines were purportedly employed to rape captives.
Muneer Al Barsh, the Director of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, and Qaddura Fares, the Head of the Commission of Detainees Affairs in Palestine, have both documented instances of Israel's illegal employment of military dogs to sexually assault Palestinians who are wrongfully arrested.
In October, there were several reports of torture and sexual abuse inflicted upon Palestinian inmates. Despite these well-documented incidents, a group of Israelis, supported by Israeli officials, recently staged a protest against the arrest of soldiers who were accused of participating in the gang-rape of a Palestinian captive at the Sde Teiman facility.
The spokesperson for the Israel Prison Service (IPS) has stated that all detainees are handled in accordance with the law and that experienced guards ensure that all basic rights are properly respected. This statement comes in reaction to a recent investigation by B’Tselem, which has documented the systematic abuse and torture of Palestinians.
"We are not aware of the claims you described and as far as we know, no such events have occurred under IPS responsibility," the spokesperson stated.
Bakr asserted that the customary practice in Israeli prisons was one of abuse. He remembered being deliberately assaulted on injuries that were never adequately treated and being shot at to intimidate him into confessing to allegations he had no knowledge of. “I kept saying I’m a civilian,” he said.
According to rights groups, Israeli authorities have detained numerous Palestinian civilians from Gaza without presenting any evidence for their arrest or adhering to any basic legal procedures. Subsequently, they are detained in undisclosed facilities, deprived of all means to communicate with legal counsel or oversight organizations like the Red Cross.
“I was stripped naked, and hung from all fours, upside down in a truck that drove on bumpy roads within Gaza, and my body was made to hit the sides of the truck as it moved, and I ended up with a deep cut on my head,” Bakr recounted, pointing to his injury.
“I was taken by a military tank to some location and was ordered to lie down. I believe what I was made to lie down on was a decomposed body of a dead person, based on the smell and texture of it against my skin. Then another round of beating began,” he recounted.
“It was nothing but humiliation and terror,”he recalled, describing how cigarettes were extinguished on the bodies of inmates, food and water were withheld from them despite the oppressive heat, and loud music was played to such an extent that his left ear started bleeding.
The torture persisted when he was relocated to a different prison. He was subjected to prolonged electrocution and forced to wear diapers for several days, resulting in severe leg swelling and the bursting of an abscess, leading to loss of consciousness due to the intense pain.
He recalled:
“I woke up to a doctor by my side, who gave me a painkiller and a sip of water. This was it. But for days, I was writhing in pain and finally, a doctor operated on my leg without anaesthesia. There was a soldier next to him who struck me with a plastic rod each time I screamed in pain.”
“This wasn’t a prison. It was hell - a military base purely for revenge. In prisons, the minimum amount of rights are guaranteed to those held captives.”
Loay Al-Astal, a paramedic at Khan Younis' Nasser Medical Health Complex, was apprehended on 16 February amidst the Israeli blockade of the facility. He was one of the 110 staff members that were gathered together.
The 33-year-old recounted that the prisoners were subjected to humiliation from the start, being forced to remove their clothes and left in that state for several hours. “When I was called to come forward, and I identified myself as a paramedic, the beating and torture began,” Al-Astal said.
Al-Astal was left naked in the month of February, without any food or hydration for an extended period of time. He expressed his distress as he recounted the incident where a soldier urinated in his mouth after he requested water. While blindfolded, he complied with the instruction to open his mouth, under the impression that he would get water to drink.
Immediately following this incident, he received a forceful blow to the back of his head and was then kicked in the ribs, causing fractures on both sides. He stated that he did not receive any medication or drugs, although experiencing intense pain.
Al-Astal describes being sent to a different prison, namely a detention center located in the northern region of Gaza. He remained there for a duration of 13 days before being transported to yet another facility. During his approximately two-month imprisonment, Al-Astal reported being blindfolded and tied up.
“Insults and slurs never stopped. Beatings and abuse never stopped. Hunger and thirst never stopped. And all this began from day one, even before I was questioned or investigated. When I denied charges of transporting Israeli hostages or Hamas fighters, I was beaten up even more,”he recounted.
Al-Astal stated that he was prohibited from using the bathroom, resulting in him defecating on himself on many occasions. According to him, the food portions offered were insufficient to satisfy the hunger of a two-year-old. Additionally, no clothing or bed covers were given, despite the freezing nighttime temperatures.
He said to have witnessed prisoners perish as a result of the torment and mistreatment.
‘’They let dogs attack us in the middle of the night or during interrogations to make us confess to things we haven’t done,” he recalled.
According to Yasser Abdel Ghafour, the deputy head of field research at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), the group has recorded over 40 different forms of torture employed on Palestinian detainees.
The list of abuses comprises physical assaults, hanging from the ceiling, nudity, acts of violence, sexual assault against males, females, and children, withholding of food, water, and medication, refusal of restroom access, and administration of electric shocks.
Based on the account of a prisoner, a Palestinian inmate was raped with the muzzle of an Israeli soldier's gun.
"We received dozens of testimonies from released detainees, including women and children, who recounted shocking incidents and types of torture that made what we used to hear about Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo seem trivial compared to what is happening, and some of them are forms of torture that are outdated," he said.
The mistreatment of Palestinians is a result of the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) delegating the responsibility of treating detainees to the army, he stated.
"Those detained include children and people who are over 80 years old. We’ve also received testimonies from former female hostages who described abuses they faced, which we are ashamed to talk about in front of the media’’, he said, furthermore, he mentioned that the center has recorded around 18 instances of deaths resulting from torture.
“The legal description of this is deliberate killing without justification,” he stated. He further asserted that the arbitrary arrests, as well as the abusive and torturous circumstances in Israeli jails, are "part of the crime of genocide”.