According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Palestinian health workers have been arrested from medical facilities in Gaza, sent to detention centers in Israel, and then severely mistreated and some tortured.
An HRW report released Monday details allegations of torture, threats of rape and sexual abuse by Israeli forces, denial of medical care and poor detention conditions that doctors, nurses and paramedics have faced since the start of the Gaza war in October.
The detentions are one of the reasons for the collapse of Gaza’s health system since the start of the Israeli war, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians.
“The Israeli government’s mistreatment of Palestinian health workers continues in the shadows and must stop immediately,” said Balkees Jarrah, acting Middle East director at the human rights organization.
“The torture and other ill-treatment of doctors, nurses and paramedics must be fully investigated and punished appropriately, including by the International Criminal Court (ICC),” Jarrah said in a statement.
Interviews conducted by the organization with eight released health workers and seven witnesses revealed ill-treatment suffered in Israeli detention, including humiliation, beatings, forced stress positions, prolonged handcuffs and blindfolds.
“He’s bleeding from his buttocks”
A paramedic, Walid Khalili, was blindfolded and taken to the Israeli military detention center of Sde Teiman, notorious for the rape of at least one Palestinian detainee.
He told HRW that once his blindfold was removed, he saw dozens of detainees hanging from the ceiling of a large warehouse-like building by chains attached to their handcuffs.
Khalili was chained and hanged like the other prisoners, wearing a garment and blindfold attached to wires, and shocked with electricity, the report said.
“It was so degrading, it was unbelievable,” he told HRW. “I was helping people as an ambulance driver. I didn’t expect anything like this.”
Another paramedic detained in al-Naqab prison said he saw a man “bleeding from his buttocks.”
The man told the paramedic that before he was taken into custody, “three soldiers took turns raping him with an M16 (assault rifle). No one else knew, but he told me as a paramedic. He was terrified,” the paramedic said, according to the report.
The detained health workers were held without charge for between seven days and five months after being taken by the military between November and December, HRW reported.
They were forced to confess their membership in Hamas by various threats of indefinite detention, rape and murder of their families in Gaza, the human rights organization said.
According to the report, none of them were ever informed of the reason for their detention or charged with any offence.
Reports from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and other human rights groups have also documented torture and abuses against Palestinians in Israeli custody.
Israeli forces have arrested at least 310 Palestinian health workers since October 7, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Due to their prolonged arbitrary detention and ill-treatment, the health crisis in Gaza has worsened, HRW said.
Since the start of the Israeli war, medical workers have been struggling to maintain Gaza’s health system despite destroyed facilities, lack of supplies and fuel, and relentless attacks.
Gaza doctors are risking their lives to help those injured by Israeli airstrikes, and many paramedics themselves have been targeted by Israeli forces while responding to attacks.