Israel Tortures Healthcare Workers, Daily Brief August 26, 2024

“Every minute we were beaten. I mean all over the body, on sensitive areas between the legs, the chest, the back. We were kicked all over the body and the face. They used the front of their boots which had a metal tip, then their weapons. They had lighters: one soldier tried to burn me but burned the person next to me. I told them I’m a doctor, but they didn’t care.”

These harrowing words from Eyad Abed, a 50-year-old surgeon who was detained by the Israeli military while working at a hospital in Gaza, is just one of the testimonies in a new report documenting Israel’s abuses against healthcare workers in Gaza since October.

They all follow a pattern.

First – as the released doctors, nurses and paramedics describe – they were swept up in mass detentions, most often at work following Israeli sieges of hospitals or during hospital evacuations that they said had been coordinated with the Israeli military.

Once in Israeli custody, mistreatment began immediately. Healthcare workers reported being forced to strip publicly at once and remain kneeling for long periods, outside and exposed to the elements.

Second, they were removed from Gaza to detention facilities in Israel and the occupied West Bank. There, they recount, they were beaten, blindfolded, and handcuffed for weeks on end. Israeli interrogators tried to force them to confess to being members of Hamas, using various threats, like endless detention, rape, and the killing their families back in Gaza.

Former detainees describe how their mistreatment in Israeli custody also included being held in appalling conditions, deprived of adequate food and water, and denied medical care.

And again, these were all healthcare workers, none of whom was ever informed of the reason for their detention or charged with an offense.

The accounts of released detainees in the new HRW report are consistent with other independent reports, too, including by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, other rights groups, and the Israeli news media.

Israeli authorities have not allowed independent humanitarian agencies, like the Red Cross, access to Palestinian detainees since the start of hostilities. Israel’s allies need to press the Israeli government to urgently allow independent monitoring of detention facilities.

Mounting reports of serious abuses need to be investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice. Over the years, however, Israeli authorities have repeatedly failed to provide credible accountability for torture and other abuses against Palestinian detainees.

Justice will have to come from elsewhere.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is currently considering applications for arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials for grave international crimes. The ICC should ensure its investigation includes abuses against Palestinian detainees.