‘We were treated like cattle’: Palestinians speak out after mass arrests in northern Gaza by IDF

IDF soldiers stand by a truck packed with bound and blindfolded Palestinian detainees, in Gaza, December 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Moti Milrod, Haaretz, File)
IDF soldiers stand by a truck packed with bound and blindfolded Palestinian detainees, in Gaza, December 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Moti Milrod, Haaretz, File)

Palestinians who were among the hundreds arrested by the IDF in northern Gaza in scenes that went viral earlier this month are speaking out about what they endured.

Palestinians detained in the shattered town of Beit Lahiya, the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya and neighborhoods of Gaza City say they were bound, blindfolded and bundled into the backs of trucks. Some say they were taken to the camp at an undisclosed location, nearly naked and with little water.

“We were treated like cattle, they even wrote numbers on our hands,” says Ibrahim Lubbad, a 30-year-old computer engineer arrested in Beit Lahiya on December 7 with a dozen other family members and held overnight. “We could feel their hatred.”

“My only crime is not having enough money to flee to the south,” says Abu Adnan al-Kahlout, an unemployed 45-year-old with diabetes and high blood pressure in Beit Lahiya. He was detained December 8 and released after several hours when soldiers saw he was too faint and nauseated to be interrogated.

“Do you think Hamas are the ones waiting in their homes for the Israelis to come find them now?” he asks. “We stayed because we have nothing to do with Hamas.”

“There are corpses all over the place, left out for three, four weeks because no one can reach them to bury them before the dogs eat them,” says Raji Sourani, a lawyer with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. He says he saw dozens of dead bodies as he made his way from Gaza City to the southern border with Egypt last week. Israeli forces are holding one of his colleagues, human rights researcher Ayman Lubbad, in custody.

Returning home brought its own hardship. Israeli soldiers dropped detainees off after midnight without their clothes, phones or IDs near what appeared to be Gaza’s northern border with Israel, those released say, ordering them to walk through a landscape of destruction, tanks stationed along the road and snipers perched on roofs.

In response to questions about alleged mistreatment, the Israeli military says that detainees were “treated according to protocol” and were given enough food and water.

The army spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, says that arrests took place in two Hamas strongholds in northern Gaza and that detainees were told to strip to make sure they didn’t conceal explosives.

Hagari says the men are questioned and then told to dress, and that in cases where this didn’t happen, the military would ensure it doesn’t occur again. Those believed to have ties to Hamas are taken away for further interrogation, and dozens of Hamas members have been arrested so far, he says.

The others are released and told to head south, where Israel has told people to seek refuge, Hagari says.

The IDF says those arrested included Hamas terrorists and that all detained were stopped for a reason.

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