Btselem /23 June 2024

I am a lawyer and have my own practice in Gaza City. Like many residents, I was home on 7 October 2023, with my pregnant wife, when we started hearing rockets and bombs. I went out to stock up on food and water right away, and when I came back we stayed home. We were newlyweds. We got married just two months earlier and preferred to stay home.

At the beginning of November, our building was bombed, and I suffered minor burns. We moved to my family’s house, also in the Tell al-Hawa neighborhood, and stayed there for three days. But then the bombings got worse, and we all moved to a-Shifaa Hospital, assuming we would be safe there. Then we moved to an apartment we rented on ‘Omar al-Mukhtar Street. My wife was pregnant and the situation was very difficult.

On Friday, 5 January 2024, at noon, I went to my parents’ house to take my wife’s jewelry and money we left there. I ran into three young guys I didn’t know , and we all went together to look for flour near al-Kuwait Square, east of Tell al-Hawa . Suddenly, at around 1:30 P.M., I heard a shot. It hit one of the guys in the head and he fell to the ground. He was killed.

The other guys and I started running away from there, but then a tank and a military jeep appeared in the street and fired at us. I took a bullet in the leg, below the knee, and another in the lower abdomen. Another guy was killed on the spot. There were two of us left and we managed to get inside the ruins of a bombed building and hide there. I hid behind a concrete pillar, because I couldn’t walk, and the other guy went up to the second floor. The soldiers in the tank started shooting at us, and then they got off it, went up to the second floor and grabbed the other guy. I heard them asking him where I was and then they took him away; I don’t know where. I was left there alone, bleeding, for about four hours.

The soldiers blindfolded me with my clothes and tied my hands to the truck, literally hung me off it, and then it drove for a few minutes with my head banging against it

In the evening, a truck and a tank came and the soldiers in the tank fired in my direction and then about nine soldiers came towards me on foot. One of them, who spoke Arabic, ordered me to get up. I did, but then I fell again. They stripped me naked and took the gold jewelry, my money and my phone. Another soldier came and handed me a phone. I talked to someone who asked me in Arabic which tunnel I’d come out of. I told him I was a civilian and hadn’t come out of any tunnel. Then he told me he would meet me and suggested I didn’t talk to the soldiers in the meantime because they would kill me.

The soldiers blindfolded me with my clothes and tied my hands to the truck, literally hung me off it, and then it drove for a few minutes with my head banging against it. We stopped at a place I didn’t know. One of the soldiers undid the zip ties, and I fell on the ground. He took off my blindfold, and then they took me to a tent where I met a Shin Bet (ISA) officer. He had my ID card and phone. My phone rang, and it was my sister. I asked him to let me talk to her to calm her down and say the army had me, but he refused. He asked me which tunnel I’d come out of, and I told him I was a civilian. The soldiers started beating me hard, and I started bleeding from the gunshot wounds. Then another soldier came and dressed my wounds.

Then they put me in a tank and took me to another place. When I got there, they took me out and laid me down on something foul-smelling for about three minutes. The soldier took my blindfold off, and I saw it was a rotting corpse. Then they took me to another officer, and he also asked me which tunnel I’d come out of. I told him, too, that I was a civilian. The soldiers pointed their guns at me, and I thought they were going to shoot me, so I said the shahada. Then one of them fired a shot on the ground in front of me. They blindfolded me, and I stayed lying outside on gravel, in the cold, until the middle of the night.

Then they dressed me in white see-through clothes, like during the Covid pandemic. They put me in a jeep and we drove for about half an hour. They took me to a detention facility in a place I didn’t know. I later found out it was called Sde Teiman. There were two male soldiers and a female soldier there, wearing medical robes over military uniforms. They laid me on a bed and cauterized the wounds on my legs and stomach without anesthesia, which hurt terribly. Then they dressed them. Then they took me to another room, where they took pictures of my body and face, took my personal effects and gave me a wristband with a detainee number. They brought me underwear and clothes, blindfolded me with a piece of orange-colored cloth, and wrote something on the back of my shirt – I don’t know what. They put me in a structure that looked like an animal pen. I asked for a drink of water and they gave it to me.

They put cigarettes out in my mouth and on my body. They put clamps on my testicles that were attached to something heavy. It went on like that for a whole day

I fell asleep, but after about an hour and a half, they woke me up and told me I wasn’t allowed to sleep now.

In the pen, we were woken up every day at 4:00 A.M. and forced to kneel, handcuffed and blindfolded, until 11:00 A.M. After that, we were supposedly allowed to sleep, but every time we fell asleep, they woke us up.

After five days, I was taken to a very cold room where they played disco music at a very high volume. I was stripped and left there for four days, during which I was only given a little water to drink and a piece of bread each day.

After four days, they took me for interrogation, which was based on beatings and torture. They put cigarettes out in my mouth and on my body. They put clamps on my testicles that were attached to something heavy. It went on like that for a whole day. My testicles swelled up and my left ear bled. I was asked about Hamas leaders and people I didn’t know and hadn’t met. They asked me where I was on 7 October, and I said I was at home and had only gone out to get food for my wife. They beat me. Then they put me back in the freezing room with the loud disco music, and again left me there, naked, for two days, and gave me only very little bread and water.

Then they took me into interrogation again. They opened WhatsApp on my phone and asked me about neighbors from my building and where they worked. I told them that some of them worked at UNRWA or the Red Cross and some I didn’t know.

From there, they took me to a different pen, where they left me naked for about four or five days. I got very little food and drink there too, and they made me wear a diaper. After that, I was taken into interrogation again. I was asked about my work and about car dealers I have business connections with. During the interrogation, they showed me a video and told me they were Islamic Jihad people. I told them I didn’t know them. During the interrogation, I was given electric shocks and beaten so badly that I passed out. My foot got swollen from the electric shocks. When I came to, I asked them to bandage it and they did. The interrogation continued, and then they took me back to the room with the disco and left me there for three days. When I asked the soldier guarding me to go to the bathroom, he brought me a container and told me to pee into it. I developed wounds, bleeding and pain in my body, especially the left leg, which had bruises and wounds full of pus that hurt badly. My leg turned blue and nearly reached a state of necrosis.

I was offered to work with the army and refused. One of the officers or soldiers conveyed condolences for the death of my father and mother, my family and my wife. That’s when I had a nervous breakdown and I passed out

I was kept in the pen for five days, and then I had surgery, without anesthesia, on my swollen left leg. I asked for anesthetics and they said I wasn't in a position to ask for anything and ordered me to keep quiet. When I screamed in pain, they hit me in the abdomen with a plastic stick until I shut up. They drained the pus from my leg.

Then they moved me back to the pen, where I was forced to kneel every day for two weeks, handcuffed and blindfolded. We got food three times a day – cheese, jam, tuna and four slices of bread. The bandage on my leg was changed only once. We showered once a week and got clean underwear only once during that time.

I was offered to work with the army and refused. One of the officers or soldiers conveyed condolences for the death of my father and mother, my family and my wife. That’s when I had a nervous breakdown and I passed out. Then they asked me if I spoke English and offered me to be a shawish – a person who liaises between the soldiers and the other prisoners. I agreed to that.

After six days, a doctor came and called me and five other people. He asked me if I could walk two kilometers and I said yes. He asked me to walk in front of him about 10 meters and then he said it was fine and told me to go back to my place, without explaining anything.

On 25 February 2024, I got called at 3:00 A.M. I was put on a bus with other detainees and it drove for a long time. We arrived at the Karam Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing, where the soldiers told us we weren’t allowed to talk to the media about the torture we’d been through. They gave us a bag with our personal effects, but I didn’t find the money, the gold jewelry or my phone in mine. I only found the phone charger, my UNRWA refugee card and my ID card. I told the soldier I wanted my things, and he said I had nothing and that if I spoke about it, I would go back to prison.

We went to the Palestinian side of the crossing and UNRWA staff were waiting for us there. I called my family in northern Gaza, and they were shocked when they heard my voice. They were sure I’d been killed. My father and mother were so excited that they put themselves at risk and came to Rafah to be with me. They got to the checkpoint in a cart and walked from there. They told me my wife had given birth to our daughter while I was in prison, that she was malnourished because of the hunger in the northern Gaza Strip, and that our daughter was born weighing two kgs.

My parents and I lived in a tent in Rafah until the army raided the area, and now we are in a makeshift tent in Deir al-Balah. Conditions here are terrible. I keep in touch with my wife over the phone. She keeps moving with the baby from place to place because of the bombings.

* Testimony given over the phone to B’Tselem field researcher Olfat al-Kurd on 23 June 2024