“The huge number of men, women, children, doctors, journalists and human rights defenders detained since 7 October, most of them without charge or trial and held in deplorable conditions, coupled with reports of ill-treatment, torture and violations of due process guarantees, raise serious concerns about the arbitrary and fundamentally punitive nature of such arrests and detentions,” said UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk, whose Office published the report.
Complaint about water torture
“Testimony collected by my Office and others points to a range of horrific practices, such as waterboarding and unleashing dogs on detainees.among other acts, flagrant violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” he said.
Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) details the treatment of medical staff, patients and civilians fleeing the conflict, as well as captured fighters from the enclave, the occupied West Bank and Israel, since Hamas-led terrorist attacks on southern Israel sparked the war.
At least 53 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli military facilities and prisons since October 7.
“They don’t know if the detainees are alive or dead,” The authors of the report said, recounting the experiences of family members, mainly male relatives, who were taken away. “often chained and blindfolded” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from various locations in Gaza. “They have not heard any information about their fate or health since then.”
Uncertain target
Among those arrested in Gaza – including staff of the UN agency providing assistance to Palestinian refugees, UNRWA – “Many were arrested while taking shelter in schools, hospitals and residential buildings, or at checkpoints during the forced displacement of large numbers of Palestinians from northern to southern Gaza.“, the report notes. “In most cases, men and minors were arrested, although women, including a woman in her 80s with Alzheimer’s disease, and girls with no apparent links to armed groups, were also detained.”
OHCHR’s records were compiled through interviews with released Palestinians as well as monitoring and analysis conducted by OHCHR’s field office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
In danger
The document contains testimonies from men detained by the IDF in Gaza, including UNRWA staff, who claim they were “forced by IDF soldiers to enter tunnels and buildings in Gaza ahead of the soldiers.”
Other testimonies indicate that Palestinians are detained “en masse for screening” by the Israeli military, or for remaining in areas ordered evacuated by the IDF. “Many of the released detainees, all of whom identified themselves and appeared to be civilians, reported being interrogated without legal representation about the location of the tunnels and/or hostages,” OHCHR said.
The development follows an announcement on Monday by Israeli authorities that they were investigating several soldiers for allegedly mistreating a Palestinian prisoner earlier this month at the Sde Teiman detention camp in the Negev desert.
Whistleblower Insight
According to information from Israeli medical staff and whistleblowers cited in the report, wounded detainees from Gaza “were held in a field hospital set up at the Sde Teiman complex, where they blindfolded at all times, their hands and feet shackled to the bed and they were fed through a straw”.
At another prison in the Negev desert, a former detainee alleged that he was “regularly beaten in front of his son,” who was also detained. The OHCHR report asserted that abuse was “widespread,” particularly in military-run detention facilities.
Stripped Naked
In addition to those arrested from Gaza, “thousands of others” have been detained in the West Bank and Israel “and often in secret,” the report’s authors note.
“Detainees reported being held in cage-like facilities, stripped naked for long periods, wearing only diapers. Their testimonies included being blindfolded for long periods, deprived of food, sleep and water, subjected to electric shocks and burned with cigarettes… Some women and men also spoke of sexual and gender-based violence.”
Israel has also reportedly failed to provide information about the fate or whereabouts of many detainees, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been denied access to the facilities where they are being held.
“International humanitarian law protects all detainees, requiring them to be treated humanely and protected from all acts of violence or threats of violence,” said Volker Türk, the head of the UN human rights body, stressing that “all Palestinians arbitrarily detained by Israel must be released.”
The leader’s call for rights
He added that international law “prohibits torture or other ill-treatment, including rape and other forms of sexual violence”, while “prolonged, secret detention without contact can also be a form of torture”.
The High Commissioner for Human Rights also reiterated his call for the immediate release of all hostages still held in Gaza, an estimated 116, of whom 42 were believed dead, according to Israeli authorities, as of 25 June.
OHCHR’s report follows last month’s probe into the Israeli military’s bombing campaign in the region, where hundreds have been killed after attacks on civilian targets including schools, refugee camps and markets.
The findings of the latest report are based on monitoring and interviews conducted by OHCHR’s office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Contributors, in addition to released Palestinian detainees, include witnesses to violations, as well as information from human rights organizations and other civil society organizations, government entities – both Palestinian and Israeli – and other United Nations agencies, as well as information available through media and social media. OHCHR said both Israeli and Palestinian authorities had received the report.
