Israel torturing forcibly disappeared Gaza detainees

Palestinians, holding banners and photos of their relatives, gather to stage a demonstration on demanding release of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in front of International Committee of the Red Cross building in Ramallah, West Bank on November 21, 2023 [Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency]

The Commission for Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club and the Addameer Foundation for Prisoners Care and Human Rights have denounced Israel’s policy of enforced disappearance of Gaza detainees, more than two months after the beginning of the genocidal bombing campaign against the besieged enclave.

The organisations said in a joint statement that testimonies collected from Palestinian prisoners who have recently been released from Israeli detention, specifically from Ofer Prison, and who were detained in sections close to where Palestinians from Gaza were held, confirmed that “the Israeli forces and prison guards are committing horrific and atrocious crimes against them, in secret.”

The organisations expressed profound fear that Israel would carry out field executions against them, as it continues to refuse to disclose any information about their fate, including their numbers, places of detention, or the condition of their health, despite requests to do so.

According to the prisoners’ testimonies, at least 320 detainees from Gaza are believed to be detained in sections 23 and 25 in Ofer Prison, noting that the assumption is based on the fact that each section has the capacity to hold 120 detainees.

Several freed prisoners reported that the Israeli guards were carrying out horrific crimes and degrading treatment against detainees from Gaza, including asking them to bark like dogs before giving them meals, and demanding they sing pro-Israel songs in a loud voice, adding that they could clearly hear their screams around the clock as a result of the torture and abuse meted out against them.

They warned that Israel’s insistence not to reveal the Gaza detainees’ whereabouts “serves only as a cover for the crimes being carried out against them”, adding that “the Israeli occupation, which continues to carry out genocide in Gaza, in front of the world, will find no one to deter it from carrying out executions against detainees in secret.”

Watch: Israel rounding up hundreds of Palestinian boys, men and disappearing them

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.