Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip – In one of the rooms at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, Mahmoud Zindah stands next to his father, Nader, the horrors of the past week etched on their respective faces. Their eyes are wide and darting around.
The 14-year-old and his father were among hundreds of Palestinians arrested on December 5 by Israeli forces in the Shujayea area, east of Gaza City, who endured five days of torture and degradation before to be released – without any explanation.
“One of the soldiers said that I looked like his nephew and that this nephew had been killed in front of his grandmother who was taken hostage by Hamas and that the soldiers were going to massacre us all,” says Mahmoud, his voice trembling.
Before their ordeal, the Zindah family had been stuck in their home in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City for two days, unable to get out as tanks advanced and artillery bombardments came ever closer. Those who dared to leave their homes for a vital mission were shot down in the streets by snipers.
On the third day, the family, who had been sleeping on the cold tiles under mattresses to protect themselves from possible shrapnel, woke up to find the tanks in their street.
“We heard the soldiers shouting and the tank tracks getting louder,” said Nader, 40. “I felt like something was wrong, so I went towards the house behind me, which was farthest from the street. Before reaching it, I stopped in shock. The house was moving!
“Then I realized that the Israeli bulldozer was tearing down its walls” and that the soldiers were also firing live ammunition, he adds.
Nader quickly tore up some white sheets to make small “flags” for each of his eight children to carry. They took one out of the front door, while the adults shouted that there were people in the house. The bulldozer stopped, as did the shooting. But suddenly the house was full of Israeli soldiers.
“They forced us to empty our bags on the ground and prevented us from getting our money or our women’s gold,” Nader remembers. “The little food we had, they also threw away. They took our money, our ID cards and our phones.
The soldiers divided the house: women and young children in one room and men and teenagers in another. Then they told Nader, Mahmoud, his brother-in-law and another male relative to undress, then pushed them out.
“They gathered at least 150 men from surrounding houses and blindfolded and handcuffed us all in the street,” says Nader.
When the soldiers forced the men into the back of some trucks, Nader made sure Mahmoud was on his knees, terrified of what they would do to his son if they were separated.
“I don’t want to lose my child, and I don’t want my son to lose his father,” he said.
The men quickly realized that there were also women in the truck, which braked suddenly, causing the prisoners to fall on top of each other.
“We were all blindfolded, so we couldn’t see each other, but we could hear the women telling us to watch over them like we would our own sisters,” Nader said. “There were also younger children with them.”
The truck stopped and once again the men and women were separated. The men and teenagers were taken to a warehouse where they sat on a bare floor covered with scattered grains of rice. There they were beaten, interrogated and insulted. They weren’t sleeping and the grains of rice were cutting their skin as they sat there undressed.
Starved and beaten for days
Mohammed Odeh, 14, was taken to the same neighborhood of Wadi al-Arayes in Zeitoun as the Zindahs, where he and his family were stuck in their homes for five days, starving.
Two of the local boys who went to fetch water were killed in the street by Israeli snipers. After the bulldozer tore down the walls of several houses, the soldiers dragged the men and teenagers outside, slapping, punching and beating them with their weapons.
“There was no reasoning with them,” Mohammed remembers. “They kept saying, ‘You’re all Hamas.’ They wrote numbers on our arms. My number was 56.” When he holds out his arms, the red marker is still visible on his skin.
“When they spoke to us in Hebrew and we didn’t understand, they hit us,” he continues.
“They hit me in the back, where my kidneys and my legs are. They took my family and I don’t know where they are,” he said, his voice breaking.
Before they were forced into the warehouse, female Israeli soldiers came and spit on the men, Mohammed recalls.
In the warehouse, it was common for groups of five soldiers to suddenly enter and beat one person while the others were forced to listen to their cries of pain. If one of the men or teenagers dozed off from exhaustion, the soldiers poured cold water on them.
“Their contempt for us was unnatural, as if we were inferior beings,” Mohammed said.
“Some people didn’t come back from the torture sessions,” Nader said darkly. “We heard their screams, then nothing. »
At one point, Mahmoud told his father that his wrists were bleeding from the handcuffs. A soldier heard, asked where it hurt and then pressed on the spot. Nader tried to protect his son and one of the soldiers tried to drag the teenager away. When Mahmoud resisted, he was kicked in the face. The mark is still visible.
“My father kept shouting at them that I was a child and he jumped on me,” he says. “I heard a soldier speaking with an American accent and I told him in English that I was just a kid going to school.” Their words fell on deaf ears.
Blindfolded and handcuffed at all times, the men and boys endured hours of beatings.
“They insulted us, spewing the foulest language,” says Nader, who received a particularly painful blow to the head. “Some of them spoke Arabic. Every time you tried to talk, asked to go to the bathroom or wanted a drink of water, they came and beat us with the butts of their M16 rifles.
The soldiers interrogated them and threatened to kill them all. They accused the Palestinians of stealing their military jeeps and raping Israeli women. When they asked Mahmoud where he was on October 7 and he replied that he was sleeping at home, the soldiers beat him, he said.
“They have incredible racism. They really hate us,” says Nader. “It’s not about Hamas. It’s about annihilating us all. This is genocide, signed by (US President) Biden.
The men only received a few drops of water and a few pieces of bread to eat. Some were forced to relieve themselves on site while others were given a foul-smelling bucket.
On the fifth day, Saturday, Nader, Mahmoud and 10 other men were taken to Nitzarim, a former settlement south of Gaza City that had been turned into farmland after the 2005 Israeli disengagement. It is now a point of Israeli control just before Wadi Gaza and the men there were released and ordered to head south.
The group removed their blindfolds and let their eyes adjust to the light after days of darkness. They were exhausted and hungry and still had no clothes. After trudging for two hours, a group of Palestinians spotted them.
“They dressed us and gave us water,” Nader said. “An ambulance was called and we arrived at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where we immediately received intravenous drips. »
“I thought I had no chance of getting out alive,” he adds.
“It was hell on earth. It was like spending five years in that warehouse. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
