I Spoke To Palestinians Tortured By Israel. What They Endured Is Unimaginable
"I just returned from hell."
“This call is being recorded,” an automated Hebrew voice recording recited when I recently tried to reach Abu Hamza, a friend in Gaza. He had just been released from Israel’s now notorious Sde Teiman prison. He heard the voice recording too. “Every time I speak on the phone, the recording comes on. But I don’t care,” he said.
“How are you?” I asked, painfully aware of how coldly formulaic my query sounded given what I already knew of the unspeakable ordeal he had been through. What do you ask someone somehow surviving amid a genocide? How do you ‘check in’ on someone twice displaced, whose home is destroyed, who now lives in a tent, and who has witnessed massacre after massacre, including the killing of his own family members?
“Glad to be alive,” he answered. “I just returned from hell.”
It strains my imagination to conjure what could be worse than what he already has endured, but he began to describe his monthslong detention in the Israeli army base turned torture camp.
Abu Hamza was picked up by the Israeli army after he fled with his wife, children, and grandchildren from the northern Gaza Strip to the south, crossing through what Israel cynically designated a “safe passage.” Far from being safe, he found the road riddled with dead Palestinians. At one “checkpoint” – set up in early November – soldiers ordered him into a ditch at gunpoint and, from there, later transported him, blindfolded and shackled, to the prison camp in Naqab (Negev).
Abu Hamza told me about months of torture, of being blindfolded, with his body folded – knees and head to the ground for days on end; of being forced to drink urine and salt water whenever he requested water; of being denied food only to be then forced to eat food with maggots (he lost 30 kg – about 66 lbs) during his three-month abduction; of only being permitted to shower once every 50 days; of being forced to wear the same clothes for three straight months; of being beaten with a baton to the point of unconsciousness several times; and of Israeli soldiers breaking his hands and then making him crawl on all fours.
“They enjoyed it,” he said. “I could hear them laughing and howling as they beat us.” He could hear my voice crack as I tried to hold back my tears while speaking with him. “It’s ok,” he told me. “I was lucky. I got out. Others were killed while there.” Throughout our call, the recorded Hebrew warning message repeated again and again.
“Engineered Torture Methods”
Days later, I navigated various new and old checkpoints scattered across the occupied West Bank to visit a friend whose cousin was recently released by Israel from Sde Teiman. Because I am a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, I am among the privileged few who can travel in and out of Israeli checkpoints. The vast majority of Palestinians are denied the Israeli permits required to exit the West Bank. While traveling, I noticed that Israeli settlers had set up a new checkpoint, stopping Palestinian cars (those with green license plates) while letting those with yellow license plates (like mine) pass.
My friend’s cousin, a young man named Bilal, had, by October 2023, been imprisoned for months. Locked up by Israel repeatedly as a young teen, Bilal, by 19, had spent more than three years of his life in Israeli prisons, always without being charged with any crime. In November 2023, he was “randomly selected” to be sent to the Sde Teiman prison camp, where he, too, endured months of torture. His account is eerily similar to what Abu Hamza told me. Bilal was tortured so severely that his captors offered medical treatment. “The doctor told me he could give me something to ease the pain but then added that it may be the last thing I ever ingest. I knew what he meant, so [I] decided to tolerate the pain of broken ribs and vomiting blood.”
Bilal said some Palestinians had been injected with foreign substances. He then described what he called the “engineered torture methods” designed to break Palestinians. “What they did to us was methodically studied. They tortured us in ways to demonstrate their superiority and control over us; they were not seeking information. They want to show us that they have the power to determine our lives. At one point, I realized they were counting our daily calorie consumption (1,706 calories) to make sure we had enough.” Israel has similarly counted calories in Gaza, too – and still does. Bilal, too, lost over 30 kg after five months in prison.
“Of Course Israelis See It”
Abu Hamza and Bilal are just two of the thousands of Palestinians Israel has abducted and tortured in Sde Teiman and other prisons.