Gaza Prisoners: Stories of Enforced Disappearance and Death Under Torture in Israeli Prisons | Politics
Gaza- On the morning of Thursday, August 1, Abdul Aziz Junaid received a call from a number with an Israeli mobile phone company prefix, which worried him. The caller’s voice was confused, and in a consoling tone, he said, “We regret to inform you that your son Omar died as a result of torture in prison on June 17.”
Junaid's heart broke after he received a call from the Israeli human rights organization “HaMoked”, which follows the cases of Palestinian detainees from Gaza, inside the occupation prisons. He was hoping for good news that would tell him the whereabouts of his son, who had been missing since his arrest by the occupation army on December 24, 2023, from his home in the town of Jabalia, north of the Gaza Strip.
At that time, the occupation army arrested Abdul Aziz's two sons, the martyr Omar, and Yasser, who was released on February 25, but was deported to the southern part of the Gaza Strip, which was divided into two parts. Yasser told his father that he had been separated from his brother, the martyr Omar, in prison on January 20, and since then he has not heard anything about him.
He was bitten alive by dogs.
Omar's mother received the news with double grief, as she was preparing for his wedding on October 15, but the outbreak of war on October 7 forced the family to postpone it. Holding the wedding invitation in her hand, the grieving mother told Al Jazeera Net, “We rented him an apartment, furnished him, and he got married to a girl, then the war came… God is sufficient for us, and He is the best Disposer of affairs.”
When the Palestinian Prisoners and Freed Prisoners Authority (official) announced last Thursday the news of the martyrdom of prisoner Islam Al-Sarsawi (42 years old), this did not surprise his family, as they had known about the news for about 4 months.
At that time, the family members were listening to a radio interview with a former prisoner, in which he said that the prison guards had killed a prisoner from the Sarsawi family. Later, the family confirmed the news from a former prisoner.
Regarding the details of the incident, the former prisoner told the family that Al-Sarsawi asked to go to the bathroom, but one of the female prison guards refused and told him, “Piss on yourself.” He replied, “God is sufficient for us, and He is the best Disposer of affairs.” This angered the occupation soldiers, and about 8 prison guards beat him severely, then they unleashed savage dogs on him to devour his body while he was alive, until he breathed his last.
His cousin, Badran Al-Sarsawi, told Al Jazeera Net that Islam was arrested during the raid on Al-Shifa Hospital at the end of last March. They beat him while he was tied up, and brutally broke his bones. “Then they released dogs to eat his flesh while he was alive.”
The martyr Al-Sarsawi was married to two women, and was the father of 7 daughters and 3 sons. His first wife, Reham, told Al Jazeera Net, “We never expected him to be martyred in prison. He was kind-hearted.” His second wife, Samar, told Al Jazeera Net, “They killed him because he only said, ‘God is sufficient for us, and He is the best Disposer of affairs.’ This is his crime.”
Prisoners' tragedy
The stories of Junaid and Al-Sarsawi shed light on the tragedy of the prisoners of Gaza who are forcibly disappeared by Israel and subjected to the most heinous violations, which may lead to their death under torture or due to medical negligence and poor living conditions.
Due to the policy of enforced disappearance, the Palestinian authorities and human rights organizations do not have accurate information about the number of prisoners in the Strip, and the number of martyrs who died inside prisons.
However, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed on July 29 that 36 prisoners from Gaza had been killed in occupation prisons since the beginning of the war. It also reported in an investigation published on April 4 that many prisoners from Gaza had lost limbs due to being shackled for long hours and poor medical care.
Lawyer Janan Abdo, from the Committee Against Torture (an Israeli human rights organization), describes the conditions of Gaza Strip prisoners inside prisons as extremely difficult, explaining that the occupation’s practices against them “exceed the concept of brutality.” She told Al Jazeera Net that she had conducted her last visit to Gaza prisoners on July 22, and that it was in Ofer military prison.
She stated that the jailers tie up the prisoners, blindfold them, and force them to stay in uncomfortable positions all the time, except for about 5 to 6 hours a day, which are sleeping hours, and they prevent them from talking or changing the way they sit.
Abdo added that prisoners suffer from many diseases as a result of physical violence, collective punishment, and continuous abuse. She stressed, “Any prisoner who makes any movement, even if it is involuntary, such as falling asleep, is punished by being placed on a hanging position or sitting on his knees for long hours.”
She also noted that the prison guards use wild dogs excessively to torture the prisoners. She said, “The examples of torture are very numerous, and what distinguishes them is their excessive brutality.”
Unprecedented atrocities
Minister Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian Authority for Prisoners and Freed Prisoners Affairs, spent about 12 years of his life in the occupation prisons, and has worked – since the establishment of the Authority – in the field of defending Palestinian detainees, but he says that the atrocities to which the detainees in Gaza are subjected “have never been seen or heard of in modern history.”
He added to Al Jazeera Net, “I have previously read about experiences and atrocities committed in the prisons of different countries and occupations, and I listened to the experiences of brothers who were arrested during the British era and at the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967, but I have not seen or heard of anything similar to what the prisoners of Gaza are being subjected to.”
Fares asserts that Israel has abandoned all obligations, rules, values and morals, and that what is happening to the prisoners of Gaza and – to a lesser extent – the prisoners of the West Bank, is unprecedented and has never been heard of.
He lists some of the things that the prisoners of Gaza are subjected to, saying, “A long list of crimes are being committed against them, starting with enforced disappearance, through murder, amputation of limbs, starvation, lack of hygiene, humiliation, degradation of dignity, and medical neglect.”
Minister Fares points out that the Prisoners Affairs Authority suffers from a lack of information due to the policy of enforced disappearance, adding that until now the occupation has not allowed the Red Cross or even Israeli human rights organizations to visit the prisons. He explained that the small number of lawyers who are able to visit did not help them form a database about the reality of what is happening to the prisoners in Gaza.