Btselem /19 June 2024  

On 9 October 2023, I received a letter from my university that I was suspended from studies, with no prior warning. Eight other Palestinian-Israeli students were also suspended following social media posts. 

 I contacted Adalah – the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, and a lawyer of theirs accompanied me to the hearing held for me and the other students. At the hearing, the committee showed us photos of destruction and bodies from the attack on the communities by the border with Gaza on 7 October 2023. I didn’t understand why they were showing us those images. 

The university representatives and lawyers at the hearing were very aggressive. It felt like a Shin Bet (ISA) interrogation, and as if they wanted to punish us for actually being Palestinian. 

The suspension remained in place following the hearing. On 12 November 2023, my father called and told me representatives of the authorities had come to our house and handed over a summons for interrogation for me. My father refused to give them my address, and managed to persuade them that they didn’t need to go get me and he’d bring me to the police station. 

The police officers started humiliating me, shouting at me that I was a terrorist supporter and mocking my appearance

That same day at 6:00 P.M. I went to the police station with my father. He waited for me outside, but as soon as I went in they handed me an arrest warrant. The moment I entered, the police officers started humiliating me, shouting at me that I was a terrorist supporter and mocking my appearance. They took away all my belongings, including my phone and shoelaces. Then my hands were tied in front of me with metal handcuffs. 

I gathered from the arrest warrant that I was suspected of identifying with terrorist organizations and supporting terror. I demanded to speak with my lawyer, and they let me. The lawyer calmed me down and explained that I was allowed to maintain my right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. 

Then they put me, handcuffed, in a room where a lot of officers, male and female, were sitting and smoking. One of them put his phone close to my face and took a photo of me. When I told him, “You have no right to photograph me,” he answered: “I’ll go outside and tell your father you’re impolite.” They all made fun of me, whispering and giggling. 

I was held in that room for half an hour and then taken to be interrogated. The interrogator left the door open. I wasn’t hit or yelled at or anything like that. I demanded that the interrogation be conducted in Arabic, and one of the interrogators did speak to me Arabic. In the interrogation I gathered that the suspicions were related to a photo I shared on Instagram, which was why I was suspended from the university. I denied the allegations against me. 

After the interrogation, a female police officer came and searched me with a handheld metal detector. She ordered me to take off my earrings, but I couldn’t get them out because I hadn’t removed them for years. She tried to loosen them with a screwdriver and I was afraid she’d injure me. She said, “Don’t be scared,” but tried and couldn’t get them out. She tied my legs, too, with metal handcuffs. 

Then they took me to a vehicle that drove off. They didn’t tell me where we were going, but when we got there I saw a sign saying Hasharon Prison. I asked what time it was and they said it was about 11:00 P.M. 

I was frightened and anxious. I was received by a male and female prison guard, and the female police officer who escorted me from the police station was also there. They kept mocking me and making fun of me because of a photo of me in a hijab that they had on their computer. I walked slowly, because they’d taken my shoelaces and I was afraid that if my shoes fell off, they wouldn’t let me put them back on. So they pushed me the whole way. 

I didn’t expect them to do such a thing to me – to search me entirely naked. They made me kneel, naked, so they could see I wasn’t hiding anything. It was so humiliating

The worst was the strip search. I didn’t expect them to do such a thing to me – to search me entirely naked. They made me kneel, naked, so they could see I wasn’t hiding anything. It was so humiliating. I asked the female guard and the female police officer to let me sit half crouching, so I could cover my body a bit. 

The female guard made fun of my clothes, the shape of my body, and my body hair. She made it clear that I disgusted her. As if I was tainted with something. She grabbed my clothes, threw them on the floor and stepped on them with her shoes. 

 Then they tried to remove my earrings again, and the female police officer said several times, “I’ll rip off your ears.” They really hurt me, and when they still couldn’t get the earrings out, she asked the male prison guard who was waiting outside, “What shall we do with the earrings?” He answered: “There’s nothing to do.” During the search, the female police officer sang “Am Yisrael Chai” (“the People of Israel live”) and ordered me to say it after her. When I refused, she shoved me a few times. 

I was taken to the medic’s room. He asked me, “How are you?” and I started crying with tears. Until then I had tried to look strong all the time, but I was frightened. I told him, “Physically I’m fine, but mentally I’m not.” He asked if I had any diseases or took any medication. I said I didn’t. 

 I thought of my father. I wondered whether he was still waiting for me outside the police station or already knew I’d been arrested and wasn’t even in Haifa but in prison outside the city. Everything was disturbing, insulting and degrading. They did everything in the most offensive way possible. 

They led me to a cell and gave me a mattress and blanket to take there. The mattress was unfit for use, the filling was lumpy and crumbling. The blanket was completely wet. When I told the guard, “It’s wet,” she said, “That’s what there is.” 

 When I got to the cell, the other female inmates were already asleep. There were four beds and another three inmates sleeping on the floor. One of them got there a bit before me and wasn’t asleep yet. It turned out she was a student from my university, but I hadn’t met her before. 

They said, for example, that the guards would beat me if they asked questions and didn’t like my answers, or if I stayed silent and didn’t answer at all, since they considered that a provocation

 She shared her mattress and blanket with me, which were both small and thin. I cried a lot, but quietly, so I wouldn’t wake the others. I felt like I was suffocating. That night, I couldn’t sleep. There was a male guard who kept shining a flashlight in our faces to stop us sleeping. He did it more than 10 times throughout the night. Early in the morning, the other inmates woke up and we introduced ourselves. They were from the West Bank. They explained the prison routine – a naked strip search every day, in the shower inside the cell. They said I had to be careful not to upset the female guards, so they wouldn’t beat me. They said, for example, that the guards would beat me if they asked questions and didn’t like my answers, or if I stayed silent and didn’t answer at all, since they considered that a provocation. I couldn’t believe it – how could such a thing happen? Where were we? Something inside me just didn’t want to believe it was possible. In the cell was a camera that could see everything except inside the toilet, which had only half a door. Some prisoners wore head covers and had to sleep with the hijab, because the male guards came all the time, including at night. The toilet was filthy and there was no soap or towel. We had to drink from the tap in the sink.

A bit later, three female guards came into the cell, and a male guard stood at the doorway and watched. Just then, I spoke to one of the inmates and smiled at her. One of the female guards didn’t like that and shouted at me, in Hebrew, “Why are you laughing?” I answered that was just the shape of my face, and got angry. She led me to the shower and ordered me to undress. She asked where I was from, and why I was there. She told me several times “You’re Hamas.” And when she didn’t like my answers, she pulled my hair, grabbed me by the jaw, said I had a big mouth and twisted my head and neck, yelled at me and shoved me several times. 

The feeling of insult and degradation was worse than the pain

The feeling of insult and degradation was worse than the pain. That morning I was the victim, and the following day the female guards attacked another inmate the same way. They also threw her underwear in the toilet and beat her in the toilet. I understood that every day, during the search, they would choose another inmate to punish. Of course, they conducted body searches on all the female inmates each time, the same way. 

At 7:00 A.M. they would take our mattresses and blankets, and give them back at 7:00 P.M. We had to spend the day sitting on the iron bed frames or on the floor. The conditions were really tough. There was nothing in the cell. When we ran out of toilet paper and asked for more, it took over a day until they brought us one roll. 

One of the inmates got her period and there were no pads in the room. She banged on the door several times, and only then did the male guard come. She asked him to bring pads. He told her he would check if there were any, and of course he didn’t return and didn’t bring anything. We decided we’d all bang on the door together until they answered, and that’s what we did. At night, when the male guard came and asked what we wanted, we told him we needed sanitary pads. He disappeared for a long time and came back with two pads. Another inmate ripped off a piece of cloth from the lining of the hoodie she was wearing and used it as a pad when she got her period. 

On my second night there, one of the inmates had itchy arms and a rash appeared on her body. She was scratching so hard that none of us could sleep. We banged on the door and asked that they let her see the medic, whose room was close to our cell. But no one answered. 

That night, we also banged the door to ask for pads for another inmate who was menstruating. A female guard came and threw our roll of toilet paper at us. She said, “You’re not in a hotel.” In the morning, during roll call and the search, the female guards asked, “Who banged on the door at night?” We all kept quiet. The male guard pointed to the inmate who had demanded pads, and then they took her to the shower and strip searched her naked. We heard her shouting and understood they were hitting her. It was clearly meant as punishment, what other reason could there be? Afterwards she told us they pulled her hair and put her clothes in the toilet bowl.

In the two days I was at Hasharon Prison, we didn’t go out into the yard and didn’t shower. I didn’t change clothes, either, because I didn’t have any to change into. We weren’t provided with anything. The food was awful and consisted of jam, white cheese, sliced ​​bread, some vegetables and eggs. 

While I was there, I attended a legal hearing on Zoom. There were two male guards in the room talking to each other, and I couldn’t hear a thing. I asked them to speak quietly but they didn’t listen to me, and one of them even turned the volume of my speaker down. I gestured to the lawyer that I couldn’t hear anything and he came closer to the camera, spoke slowly and gestured until I understood they had extended my detention by another three days, and that I would be transferred to Damun Prison. 

On the third morning, a female guard came to the cell early in the morning and said to me and to the other student, “Get ready, you’re being transferred.” I didn’t understand what we had to do to prepare, since we had nothing but the clothes we were wearing. Then she told us, “We’ll take you to Rafah Crossing and leave you there.” She sounded serious and sure of herself.

They took us to the “posta” vehicle and sat us on narrow metal seats, with our hands and feet cuffed. It was very cold, because they deliberately turned on the cold air conditioning. It was a tough ride. 

We arrived at Damun Prison, and I was there for two days. The conditions were awful there, too. There were a lot of female inmates there. I gathered from them that at the start of the war in Gaza, the prison administration had confiscated all their belongings. They left them nothing. They took away their clothes and electrical appliances, including radios, and the kitchen utensils they used to cook and to prepare coffee and tea. The canteen was also closed. Before that, the inmates prepared their own food, but under the new order they brought us prepared food, which was really terrible and the amounts were too small. 

The inmates there were entirely cut off from the world and had no idea what was happening outside

There were already eight female inmates in the cell they put me in, and I slept on the floor along with two others. The inmates there were entirely cut off from the world and had no idea what was happening outside. There was no means of communication – no radio, no television, no family visits and no meetings with lawyers. The only way to get news was new inmates. 

In Damun we were allowed to go out into the yard and shower, but for very short times. Each cell was taken separately to the yard that led to the showers, and a short time was allocated for the shower. All nine of us in the cell got an hour or less to shower. There was no soap, shampoo, towels or change of clothes. 

Roll call was conducted five times a day there. The lights were already turned off at 7:00 P.M., and at night it was impossible to sleep uninterrupted, because a male guard came in, shone a flashlight in our faces and woke us up. Everything was done in a degrading and insulting way. 

While I there, I was taken to legal hearings twice. Ultimately, they decided not to press charges and let me go under conditional release: 10 days of house arrest at my parents’ home, a ban on traveling abroad until February 2024, and my father had to sign a financial guarantee should I fail to meet these terms. They also confiscated my phone for two months and forbade me from posting on social media. The court also gave me 120 hours of volunteer work with a nonprofit in Haifa. 

On the morning of 16 November 2023, I had another legal hearing and was ordered to be released under house arrest. After the hearing, they took me to a freezing cold cell and held me there until 7:00 P.M., and only then released me.

In early 2024, I resumed my studies. I was really scared Jewish students would attack me, especially since there was a group of right-wing students who had campaigned and demanded we be expelled from the university, persecuted and punished. Many students now attend classes armed with rifles and guns, and enter lecture halls like that. I often sit next to someone armed like that during a lecture. It’s a really scary situation, especially in a reality of ongoing incitement against Arab students. 

* Testimony given over the phone to B’Tselem field researcher Salma a-Deb’i on 19 June 2024