In Israel's war on Gaza, Palestinian women's bodies are battlefields

Israel's violence against Palestinian women is core to its settler colonialism because they sustain indigenous life and resistance, writes Farrah Koutteineh.

Farrah Koutteineh
04 Apr, 2024

The systemic violence and humiliation of Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers goes back 75 years, writes Farrah Koutteineh. [Getty]

In recent weeks disturbing revelations of widespread sexual torture and rape of Palestinian women by Israeli forces invading Gaza have come to light.

Last week it was reported that a pregnant Palestinian woman had been kidnapped and held hostage alongside her family by Israeli soldiers in the vicinity of Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital.

She was brutally beaten for several hours and after telling the Israeli soldiers she was five months pregnant, the beating only intensified. This was then followed by soldiers raping her in front of her husband and children, threatening to shoot any of them that closed their eyes during the ordeal.

These horrifying revelations are in fact nothing new when it comes to Israel’s continuous assault on Palestinian women’s bodies. This is a practice as old as Israel itself. When the settler colonial state of Israel formed just 75 years ago, mass rape of Palestinian women was part of its foundational project.

"Throughout settler colonial history, it has often been the bodies of indigenous women that have been viewed as the battlefields of settler colonial domination"

Zionist terrorist groups used mass rape to assert domination over the native Palestinian towns and villages it was ethnically cleansing.

The countless massacres of Palestinians that took place across the 1940’s during the Nakba, in order to create the state of Israel, from the Tantura massacre, to the Deir Yassin massacre, all document the mass-rape of Palestinian women.

Zionist terrorist groups would often rape Palestinian women in full display of an entire Palestinian village, to terrify others to flee.

The Israeli settlers who perpetrated such barbarity were never held accountable. Instead today they are hailed as heroes in Israeli society. In documentaries about these massacres they laugh and snigger over their role in mass-rape, even gloating that some of their Palestinian victims were as young as 14 years old.

As more of the unsubstantiated Israeli government statements about what really happened on 7th October are being debunked, notably their fictitious statements on alleged ‘mass rape’ of Israeli settlers, it is absolutely vital, now more than ever, to condemn Israel’s 75 year long targetted campaign of rape murder of Palestinian women.

During Israel’s first invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Israeli forces committed some of their most unimaginable violence against Palestinian women.

The Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982 saw Israeli soldiers torture, rape, mutilate and murder over 3,500 Palestinian refugees, mostly women and children. Horrifying testimonies of survivors recall unthinkable mutilations of pregnant women’s bodies, testimonies that were actually stolen and appropriated by Israel supporters online.

They had deceptively proclaimed these brutally detailed testimonies of mass rape, mass mutilation and mass murder from Sabra and Shatila massacre survivors, were the testimonies of Israeli women on 7th October.

But these claims were then verified by fact checkers and shown to be unsubstantiated. Indeed, many were the stolen testimonies of Sabra and Shatila massacre survivors.

The lived experience of female Palestinian political prisoners exemplifies the intensified violence Palestinian women experience. They experience psychological, physical and sexual torture at the hands of Israeli prison guards. They are even documented cases of pregnant prisoners tortured to the point of miscarriage.

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Former Palestinian political prisoner Rasmea Odeh recalls a harrowing but unfortunately not uncommon nor unique female Palestinian experience whilst incarcerated. Odeh was arrested in 1969 by Israel, for being a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

After her arrest she was brutally beaten, tortured and raped by Israeli prison guards. Israeli prison guards later arrested Odeh’s father, whereby they gave him the ultimatum to either be forced to watch guards sexually torture his daughter or do it himself, to which Odeh was forced to falsely confess, worried her father would have a heart attack.

Since 7th October it is estimated over 25,000 Palestinian women and children have been killed by Israeli forces. Israel’s systematic targeting of Palestinian women is not coincidental or abstract, it exactly underpins the violent settler colonial nature of its very existence.

Throughout settler colonial history, it has often been the bodies of indigenous women that have been viewed as the battlefields of settler colonial domination. European settler colonialism is constructed upon power and domination, not only upholding notions of white supremacy, but of violent misogyny.

"The humiliation and violence we are witnessing in Gaza and across occupied Palestine today is not a product only of the current war, it is a systemic byproduct of Israel’s settler colonial survival"

During the vast European colonisation of Turtle Island (US & Canada), violence against indigenous women became a central element of the colonial strategy for conquest and genocide.

Indigenous women were targeted with rape and femicide due to their ability to sustain their tribes through childbearing, and thus the survival of native populations depend on its women.

Indigenous women have always been seen as the demographic threat responsible for sustaining the indigenous population that settler colonial projects seek to dominate or exterminate.

Today across the US and Canada, indigenous women are at the forefront of gendered violence. Despite only making up less than one percent of the population, the murder rate of indigenous women is ten times higher than that of any other ethnicity.

In fact, over 80% will experience sexual violence in their lifetime and indigenous women are more likely to be raped or murdered than go to college. The roots of violence against indigenous women across Turtle Island experience today are deeply colonial.

The disturbing phenomenon of photos coming out of Gaza in recent months of perverted Israeli soldiers posing with Palestinian women’s underwear and lingerie is rooted in similar colonial misogyny.

Israeli settler society since its beginnings has been caught up in the same orientalist obsessions over Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern women as its colonial predecessors.

Throughout France’s colonisation of Algeria, the modesty of Algerian women, most notably the veil, became a colonial fixation. Algerian women played a fundamental role in the decolonisation of Algeria: veiled women were not only active revolutionaries, but the veil empowered their very resistance by defying European misogynist ideals of women that confined their worth to their appearance.

Post-colonial writer Frantz Fanon summarises this fixation as, “This woman, who sees without being seen, frustrates the coloniser. The occupier was bent on unveiling…because there is in it the will to make this woman within his reach, to make her a possible object of his possession”.

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French soldiers would often hold “unveiling ceremonies” of Algerian women, ceremonies of stark contrast to current scenes of Palestinian women in Gaza being forcefully stripped and humiliated by Israeli soldiers.

So the humiliation and violence we are witnessing in Gaza and across occupied Palestine today is not a product only of the current war, it is a systemic byproduct of Israel’s settler colonial survival.

Palestinian women who resist are amongst the most vilified in the world’s press and the most targeted by Israeli settler forces. Palestinian women like Leila Khaled, Rasmea Odeh, Shireen Abu Akleh, and Ahed Tamimi send tremors through the Israeli settler colony, as do all Palestinian women.

Because when indigenous women revolt, dissent, and resist, they strike settler colonialism at its core, simultaneously challenging its white supremacist and misogynist roots.

Indigenous women lead the way to liberation, and settler colonial states fear them for it.



Farrah Koutteineh is founder of KEY48 - a voluntary collective calling for the immediate right of return of over 7.4 million Palestinian refugees. Koutteineh is also a political activist focusing on intersectional activism including, the Decolonise Palestine movement, indigenous people's rights, anti-establishment movement, women's rights and climate justice.

Why we must speak up for the women of Palestine – Carole Regan

14th March 2024Leave a Commenton Why we must speak up for the women of Palestine – Carole Regan

“The casualties are horrendous and are still increasing. There are 30,800 people who have been killed and 72,298 who have been injured. It is women and children who form more than 70% of those numbers.”

Carole Regan addressed the ‘Rising Women in the Global South – Solidarity Rally #IWD2024’ on International Women’s Day (March 8th). You can read an edited version of her speech or watch the event in full below:

WATCH: ‘Rising Women in the Global South – Solidarity Rally on #IWD2024’ hosted by Arise Festival on March 8th.

I’ve been a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) since 1980s and Ive been to Palestine a number of times. The first time when I was President of the NUT in 1996 and my Union (now the NEU) has continued to support justice for the Palestinians 

I want to begin by reminding ourselves how The International Court of Justice defines the crime of Genocide:

“Acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group:

(a) Killing members of the group

(b) Causing serious bodily harm or mental harm to members of the group

(c) Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

(e) Forcible transferring children of the group to another group.”

The Republic of South Africa has accused Israel of being guilty of the act of genocide – Israel is undoubtedly guilty – not only in the court in The Hague but in the court of world opinion.

The overwhelming majority of the members of the United Nations and the overwhelming majority of people here in this country are calling for an immediate ceasefire.

The casualties are horrendous and are still increasing. According to figures released this morning (March 8th): There are 30,800 people who have been killed and 72,298 who have been injured. It is women and children who form more than 70% of those numbers.

On International Women’s Day it’s important to remember those thousands of women who have lost their lives under the Israeli brutal occupation. The current toll is two women dying each hour. These women are Workers, doctors, nurses, teachers, reporters, aunties, sisters, grandmothers, and mothers.

They are experiencing absolutely horrendous conditions with no sanitary products, nowhere to wash; and lack of dignity.

We must also remember the 50,000 pregnant women who may have to give birth without medical help, with 5,500 expected to give birth in the next month without proper medical support and the almost 1m women who have been displaced.

Palestinian women have been, and continue to be, in the forefront of the struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination and since 1948 resisting the illegal occupation.

Just to mention a few:

Tarab Abdul Hadi, a Palestinian woman born in Jenin in 1910 who founded the Palestinian Women’s Congress which resisted the British Mandate’s occupation of Palestine.

Fatima Bernawi who was amongst some of the first to mobilise against Israeli colonisation and was the first female Palestinian political prisoner serving 10 years in Israeli prisons

In 1936 Palestinian women from Baqa Al-Gharibiyeh stormed a British Mandate prison in response to the mass arrest of Palestinian men by British soldiers, then succeeded in freeing all the prisoners and ending the enforced curfew on the village.

Probably the most well known resistance fighter is Leila Khaled, who was involved in 1969 in the hijacking of TWA flight on its way from Rome to Tel Aviv. She was imprisoned and released later in a hostage deal.

And of course the courageous young Palestinian women at the forefront of the fight today, like Ahed Tamimi who defied Israel’s occupation with a slap that was heard around the world.

Muna El Kurd another brave Palestinian woman whose fearless journalism covering the continued Israeli colonisation and evictions in her neighbourhood, Sheikh Jarrah, led to the Palestinian struggle going viral in 2021. She was honoured as one of TIME Magazine’s most influential people.

Hanan Hroub is recognised as one of the world’s best teachers. Nujoud Merancy one of the leaders of NASAs Orion Spacecraft programme which is planning to send the first woman to the moon this year.

On 11 May 2022, the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead while she was covering a raid by the Israel Defense Forces at the Jenin refugee camp. Despite overwhelming evidence that she was killed by the IDF – no one has been brought to justice.

There are many other women who have been and continue to be part of the Palestinian resistance against occupation.

Most importantly is that without the end of the brutal occupation, girls, women, boys and men will never be able to fulfil their potential, their dreams, their aspirations – which is why we need to:

Continue to build solidarity with the Palestinian people;

Demand an immediate ceasefire;

Support the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

---

• This article is an edited version of the speech given by Carole Regan, speaking on behalf of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, to the ‘Rising Women in the Global South – Solidarity Rally #IWD2024’hosted by Arise Festival on International Women’s Day. You can watch the event in full here.
• You can follow the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.

Generation after generation, Israeli prison marks a rite of passage for Palestinian boys

Well-known Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, center, is supported by her mother after she was released from prison by Israel, Thursday, Nov. 30, 2023, in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Tamimi's homecoming, along with her cousin, Wisam Tamimi, touched every home in the village of Nabi Saleh, where prison is a grim rite of passage for Palestinian boys. 

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Updated Wed, 6 December 2023 

NABI SALEH, West Bank (AP) — For all Palestinian parents, Marwan Tamimi said, there comes a moment they realize they're powerless to protect their children.

For the 48-year-old father of three, it came in June, when Israeli forces fired a large rubber bullet that struck the head of his eldest son, Wisam, as he watched a raid unfold from his grandmother's rooftop with his family. A week later, Marwan said, soldiers came for the 17-year-old, dragging him out of bed with a fractured skull as his mother cried.

Wisam was later charged with a range of offenses he denied — throwing stones, possessing weapons, placing an explosive device and causing bodily harm. He was sent to Israel's Ofer Prison. Last Saturday, after six months behind bars, he returned home with 38 other Palestinians in exchange for Israeli hostages released from Hamas captivity in Gaza — part of a temporary cease-fire in the war that started after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel.

His parents said they hadn't seen or heard from him in two months, since the war started. Wisam said he spent that time in an overcrowded cell and was denied adequate food and medication, was interrogated about his friends, and was beaten repeatedly.

“I yelled, ‘No, he’s my boy, you can’t take him, he’s injured,’” Marwan Tamimi said. “That’s when I realized they will take him. And if I stop them, they will put his life in danger.”

Wisam's homecoming last week, along with the release of his well-known activist cousin, Ahed Tamimi, touched every home in the village of Nabi Saleh, where prison is a grim rite of passage for Palestinian boys.

People clapped. Tears fell. Wisam hugged friends and family, one by one. But the euphoria spoke to pain as much as to joy in the occupied West Bank, where the United Nations estimates 750,000 Palestinians have been arrested since Israel captured the territory in the 1967 Mideast war.

The competing claims of Palestinians and Israelis have left their scars on Nabi Saleh, home to charismatic activists, journalists and lawyers known for their refusal to submit to occupation. Once an idyllic village on a hilly stretch of farmland growing grapes and green olives, it serves today as a powerful example of how Israeli prison over decades of war has crushed families, constrained lives and stamped out popular resistance.

Israel's security service didn't respond to questions about Wisam’s case. But the military defended large-scale arrests of Palestinians, including minors, as necessary to prevent militant attacks. In a statement to The Associated Press, the army said it aims to “preserve the rights and dignity" of Palestinian suspects during court proceedings and detention and that convicting a minor “requires a burden of proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt."

Palestinian activists and human rights watchdogs say Israel's mass detentions seek to sow fear among the youngest, breaking communities that continue to defy Israeli military rule, now in its 57th year.

“We've seen that this system suppresses and intimidates the majority of children,” said Salwa Duaibis, co-founder of Military Court Watch, a Palestinian legal advocacy group. “It crushes their spirit so that even when they're 40, they'll be running away when they see soldiers."

IN EVERY HOUSE, A STORY

Most of Nabi Saleh's 550 residents are related by blood or marriage, and nearly all share the surname Tamimi. Most boys — like their fathers and grandfathers — have landed in prison at some point, as the close-knit village became known for its grassroots protest movement.

“We live in a village of resistance,” Wisam said. "Every house has its own story."

Wisam was raised on the history of his activist grandfather’s deportation to Jordan in 1970 and his triumphant return to Nabi Saleh as part of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Wisam's father, Marwan, served time at the height of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in 2002. His journalist uncle, Bilal, was locked up four times starting in the late 1980s, during the first intifada.

His neighbor, 45-year-old pastry chef Haitham Tamimi, said he was once held up and questioned in the street by a soldier who "found it suspicious I was from Nabi Saleh and hadn't been imprisoned." Haitham's explanation: He'd lived mostly in Jordan.

Before Israel and Hamas resumed their war Friday, the militant group had pushed for the release of high-profile prisoners in exchange for the remaining Gaza hostages.

But the vast majority of Palestinians passing through Israel’s ever-revolving prison door, experts say, are teenage boys and young men who mostly go unnamed, plucked from bed in the middle of the night for throwing stones and firebombs or associating with militants in towns and refugee camps near Israeli settlements. Most of the international community considers Israeli settlements illegal and obstacles to peace.

Under the weeklong cease-fire agreement, Israel released 240 Palestinian minors and women. Most of 14- to 17-year-olds freed had been detained for investigation and not convicted of a crime, reported the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group, based on data from the Israeli Prison Service. Over that same week, Israel arrested 260 other Palestinians, the group said.

Every year, the Israeli military court sentences hundreds of minors to prison, mostly for throwing stones, according to Military Court Watch. Most are 16 or 17.

Israel argues that stone-throwing can be dangerous and even deadly.

“The victim who gets hit in the head by stones doesn't care how old the person throwing it is,” said Maurice Hirsch, Israel's top military prosecutor from 2013 to 2016. “There are very young terrorists who commit very violent offenses.”

 Men wave after being released from prison by Israel, Thursday, Nov. 30, 2023, in the West Bank town of Ramallah. 

‘AN ORCHESTRA’ OF ARRESTS

The conviction rate for security offenses in the West Bank is more than 99%. Defense lawyers often encourage young clients to plead guilty to avoid lengthy trials and detentions. Some are never formally charged or tried, held under a practice known as “administrative detention” that allows Israeli authorities to arrest Palestinians based on secret evidence and renew detention indefinitely.

The pace of arrests — already quickening over the past two years — soared after Hamas' Oct. 7 rampage that killed 1,200 people and resulted in the abduction of more than 240.

Israel has arrested 3,450 Palestinians across the West Bank since the war erupted, according to the Israeli military, in a sweeping campaign aimed to deter militant attacks. An all-time high of 2,873 Palestinians are now held in administrative detention, according to Israeli rights group HaMoked.

“The crackdown in a way contradicts our intention not to open another front in the West Bank,” said Ami Ayalon, former director of Israel’s Shin Bet security service. “On one hand, we understand the more people killed and arrested, the more hatred rises. But on the other hand, we don't want to pay the price in terrorist attacks.”

Lawyers say the crackdown affects Palestinians of every stripe, branding people as security threats for even mild social media posts.

“It was an orchestra, as though a composer led all the courts across the country to understand they had a duty to arrest young men,” said Lea Tsemel, a prominent Israeli human rights lawyer. “We saw police stopping youngsters and checking phones to see if they could find anything constituting incitement.”

Israeli forces have ramped up deadly raids in the northern West Bank, such as in the flashpoint Jenin refugee camp, using airstrikes to target militants with unprecedented force.

The intensifying violence and constraints on Palestinian freedom of movement have generated fear in Nabi Saleh. New Israeli checkpoints have turned a 15-minute drive to the Palestinian city of Ramallah into a nauseating two-hour maze.

In recent months, Israeli troops repeatedly stormed the village. An explosive tear gas canister set Marwan Tamimi's SUV on fire in mid-October. A rubber projectile, much larger than a bullet, slammed into Wisam's head, causing brain bleeding and sending him to intensive care for a week. Four bullets sliced through Haitham Tamimi's car door, piercing his shoulder and killing his 2-year-old son, Mohammed, in June — an incident the army admitted was a mistake.

It's the latest chapter in the tumultuous history of a village once at the center of a spirited protest movement that began in 2009, inspired other villages and made global headlines. Each week, residents rallied over the loss of their ancestral lands and freshwater spring to the fast-growing Israeli settlement across the road.

The Friday marches, just after the midday call to prayer, became family affairs. Villagers waved national flags, clapped and crooned Palestinian songs while trying to reach their spring that had become a picnic spot for settlers. Inevitably, boys pelted Israeli jeeps with stones.

“We were showing the world what was really happening here, and it felt so good, so important,” said Janna Jihad, now 17, who became an internet fixture filming herself reporting on protests at just 7 years old.

Israel says troops responded only after protesters started throwing stones and trying to enter a military zone around the village. “The Tamimi family trained and organized these children to ambush soldiers,” said Hirsch, the former military prosecutor.

Troops sent protesters fleeing with tear gas, rubber-coated bullets, blasts of noxious liquid and live fire. They carried out nighttime raids, arresting most young men, and killed six Palestinian villagers during protests, all young men, residents said.

PARENTAL PLEAS AND THE ‘RESISTANCE’

Marwan Tamimi begged his sons to stay away from what Palestinians call the “muqawama,” or resistance.

Sensitive and studious, his youngest, Kenan, said he’d rather run on a soccer field than away from bullets. Now 14, he's resisted peer pressure to join protests.

“I don’t like going out,” he said, huddled over a princess coloring book with his 6-year-old sister last week.

Wisam had friends who confronted Israeli soldiers, like his cousin Ahed, whose arrest for slapping Israeli soldiers five years ago transformed her into a symbol of Palestinian resistance.

“All of us here, we care so much about our children. We tell them, ‘Look, don’t go and throw stones, you don’t need to prove yourself,’” Marwan Tamimi said.

But parents' pleas often go unheeded.

"There was nothing I could do to stop the boys,” said 56-year-old Imtithal Tamimi, mother of nine. Her son Mohammed, was disfigured at 14 when Israeli forces fired a rubber bullet that lodged in his head.

“Mohammed had no job, he wasn’t in school," she said. “He was trying to let off steam.”

All the men in her household got sucked into Israel’s prison system, she said, and she noticed a change in each when they emerged. Mohammed, now 21, couldn't shake his state of rage. Tamim, her eldest, locked himself in his bedroom for three months after serving a year. Her 64-year-old husband, Fadel passed in and out of prison for decades and struggles with a central nervous system disorder.

Mohammed, arrested for the third time the same night as Wisam, remains in jail. Imtihal hasn’t heard anything of his condition or whereabouts since the war started, when Israeli authorities banned prisoners from using phones or receiving visitors.

Wisam, his eyes sunken and face gray and gaunt, lost 12 kilograms (26 pounds) in prison, where he said he shared two daily meals of undercooked chicken and stale bread with 11 others, an account supported by prisoner rights groups. They were packed like teeth into a cell that held half that number before the war, he said, and on the rare occasions they were let out, guards ordered them to walk with wrists bound tight under their knees.

In response to questions, the Israeli Prison Service denied authorities were crowding cells or reducing meals. But national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has publicly promoted harsh disciplinary treatment of Palestinian prisoners. Parliament passed a temporary measure allowing prisons to fill beyond legal capacity.

For Wisam, 45 days in solitary confinement was the real torment. Every night, authorities blasted air conditioning in his tiny cell. He shivered in the darkness, homesick, imagining his mother warming him with her hug and cooking mansaf — milky mountains of rice with mutton. His only human contact came in the punches raining down on his head during daily interrogations, he said.

The Prison Service said Palestinians are detained according to law and had the right to file complaints over conditions. Palestinians say their complaints are not taken seriously and rarely yield results.

A week after his release, Wisam still winces when he catches sight of a grated door, even in his house. He fills shelves beside his bed with chocolate bars and chips, for his “canteen.” He spends his days quietly weaving lighter cases from plastic and string, a prison habit, and taking driving classes in hopes of preventing arrest even for traffic offenses.

When 22-year-old cousin Ahed emerged from prison last week, she also looked exhausted, her typically self-assured voice halting and frail in TV interviews.

“This is what I was trying to prevent,” said Marwan Tamimi, who moved his family to Ramallah at the height of the Nabi Saleh protests in 2014 so his boys could attend school and play without encountering soldiers.

The family returned home in 2021, after the military’s harsh response brought the rallies to an end. There were too many killed, wounded and imprisoned — and too few achievements, residents said.

An uneasy calm prevailed over Nabi Saleh and other villages that had become symbols of civil disobedience. Without progress toward a political solution, protest leaders insist the relative quiet shouldn't be mistaken for acceptance.

Beneath the surface, pressure builds. More minors pass through Israel's jailhouse door.

“I expected to die in there,” Wisam said. “I don’t want to go there ever again."

___

Palestinian Wisam Tamimi, 17, a released prisoner under the Israel Hamas cease fire agreement last week, poses for a photo at the family house in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, northwest of Ramallah, Thursday, Nov. 30, 2023. The release of Palestinian prisoners under the Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreement last week has touched nearly everyone in the occupied West Bank, where 750,000 Palestinians have been arrested since 1967. In negotiations with Israel to free hostages in Hamas captivity in Gaza, the militant group has pushed for the release of high-profile prisoners. But experts say most Palestinians passing through Israel's ever-revolving prison door are young men arrested in the middle of the night for throwing stones and firebombs in villages near Israeli settlements. 

 Palestinian demonstrators throw stones during clashes with Israeli troops following a demonstration in support of Palestinian prisoners in Nabi Saleh, Jan. 13, 2018, near the West Bank city of Ramallah. In negotiations with Israel to free hostages in Hamas captivity in Gaza, the militant group has pushed for the release of high-profile prisoners. But most Palestinians passing through Israel’s ever-revolving prison door are young men arrested in the middle of the night for throwing stones and firebombs in villages near Israeli settlements. Nabi Saleh is one such village, long known for its grassroots protest movement. 

The Palestinian Tamimi family pose for a photo with their son Wisam, 17 rear left, a released prisoner under the Israel Hamas cease fire agreement last week, at the family house in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, northwest of Ramallah, Thursday, Nov. 30, 2023. The release of Palestinian prisoners under the Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreement last week has touched nearly everyone in the occupied West Bank, where 750,000 Palestinians have been arrested since 1967. In negotiations with Israel to free hostages in Hamas captivity in Gaza, the militant group has pushed for the release of high-profile prisoners. But experts say most Palestinians passing through Israel's ever-revolving prison door are young men arrested in the middle of the night for throwing stones and firebombs in villages near Israeli settlements. 

 Palestinians hurl stones and wave a Palestinian flag toward Israeli soldiers to protest a march by Israeli settlers on April 10, 2023, in the West Bank village of Beita. In negotiations with Israel to free hostages in Hamas captivity in Gaza, the militant group has pushed for the release of high-profile prisoners. But most Palestinians passing through Israel’s ever-revolving prison door are young men arrested in the middle of the night for throwing stones and firebombs in villages near Israeli settlements. 

(AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed, File)

Palestinian Tamimi family gather for a meal with their son Wisam, 17 second right, a released prisoner under the Israel Hamas cease fire agreement last week, at the family house in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, northwest of Ramallah, Thursday, Nov. 30, 2023. The release of Palestinian prisoners under the Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreement last week has touched nearly everyone in the occupied West Bank, where 750,000 Palestinians have been arrested since 1967. In negotiations with Israel to free hostages in Hamas captivity in Gaza, the militant group has pushed for the release of high-profile prisoners. But experts say most Palestinians passing through Israel's ever-revolving prison door are young men arrested in the middle of the night for throwing stones and firebombs in villages near Israeli settlements.

 Palestinian demonstrators run from tear gas fired by Israeli troops during clashes following a demonstration in support of Palestinian prisoners in Nabi Saleh, Jan. 13, 2018, near the West Bank city of Ramallah. In negotiations with Israel to free hostages in Hamas captivity in Gaza, the militant group has pushed for the release of high-profile prisoners. But most Palestinians passing through Israel’s ever-revolving prison door are young men arrested in the middle of the night for throwing stones and firebombs in villages near Israeli settlements. Nabi Saleh is one such village, long known for its grassroots protest movement. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed, File)

A man smiles as he is welcomed after being released from prison by Israel, Thursday, Nov. 30, 2023, in the West Bank town of Ramallah. The release of Palestinian prisoners under the Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreement last week has touched nearly everyone in the occupied West Bank, where 750,000 Palestinians have been arrested since 1967. In negotiations with Israel to free hostages in Hamas captivity in Gaza, the militant group has pushed for the release of high-profile prisoners. But experts say most Palestinians passing through Israel’s ever-revolving prison door are young men arrested in the middle of the night for throwing stones and firebombs in villages near Israeli settlements. 

 Israeli soldiers are seen during a military operation, Nov. 19, 2023, in the Balata refugee camp, West Bank. The release of Palestinian prisoners under the Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreement last week has touched nearly everyone in the occupied West Bank, where 750,000 Palestinians have been arrested since 1967. In negotiations with Israel to free hostages in Hamas captivity in Gaza, the militant group has pushed for the release of high-profile prisoners. But experts say most Palestinians passing through Israel’s ever-revolving prison door are young men arrested in the middle of the night for throwing stones and firebombs in villages near Israeli settlements. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed, File)

Palestinians throw stones at an Israeli military vehicle following a military raid of the Askar refugee camp, July 24, 2023, in the West Bank city of Nablus. In negotiations with Israel to free hostages in Hamas captivity in Gaza, the militant group has pushed for the release of high-profile prisoners. But most Palestinians passing through Israel’s ever-revolving prison door are young men arrested in the middle of the night for throwing stones and firebombs in villages near Israeli settlements. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed, File)

A security metal gate near an Israeli army post, closes the road at the main entrance of the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, northwest of Ramallah, Thursday, Nov. 30, 2023. The release of Palestinian prisoners under the Israel-Hamas cease-fire agreement last week has touched nearly everyone in the occupied West Bank, where 750,000 Palestinians have been arrested since 1967. In negotiations with Israel to free hostages in Hamas captivity in Gaza, the militant group has pushed for the release of high-profile prisoners. But experts say most Palestinians passing through Israel's ever-revolving prison door are young men arrested in the middle of the night for throwing stones and firebombs in villages near Israeli settlements. 

(AP Photos/Nasser Nasser)

Released Palestinians reveal horrors in Israeli prisons

Tamara Nassar

ELECTRONIC INTIFADA 

Rights and Accountability 

4 December 2023

A Palestinian youth is welcomed by friends and family after being released from an Israeli jail, as part of an exchange deal between Hamas and Israel.

 Ayman NobaniDPA via ZUMA Press / APA images

As Palestinian teens and women were liberated in a groundbreaking prisoner exchange agreement between Hamas and Israel, chilling accounts emerged of dire conditions in Israeli prisons.

Detainees gave testimonies on how Israeli prison authorities subjected them to food deprivation, medical negligence, regular beatings and menacing threats aimed at them and their families.

Despite many of the prisoners being released from different prisons across historic Palestine with no way of communicating with one another prior to their release, their accounts have been consistent.

For seven consecutive days starting 24 November, prisoners were exchanged between Hamas and Israel as part of a temporary truce which was extended twice but collapsed on 1 December as Israel resumed massacring Palestinians in Gaza.

A total of 240 Palestinian prisoners were released by Israel as part of this deal – including 107 children, 65 teens 18 and older and 68 women.

The vast majority of Palestinians released had never been charged with a crime, and most had been in Israeli detention for less than one year, The New York Times reported.

Throughout the seven days of prisoner exchanges, Israel detained more Palestinians than it released amid what the UN human rights office in Palestine called a “dramatic growth in the number of Palestinians arrested and detained by Israeli security forces across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

Six Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since 7 October, the UN office said. This is “the highest number of cases reported in such a short time-period in decades,” the office added.

The UN said that testimonies it has collected “appear consistent with numerous pictures and video clips published in recent weeks on social media by Israeli soldiers, depicting abuse and humiliation of Palestinians.”

Palestinian detainees have also reported being “threatened with rape in retaliation for the attacks of 7 October.”

Hamas released 105 captives, which included women, children and citizens of Thailand, the Philippines and Russia. More than 120 captives from Israel are said to remain in Gaza. Salah al-Arouri, the deputy head of Hamas’ politburo, said those remaining are soldiers and former soldiers.
Beatings

Released Palestinians detailed how Israeli prison guards beat them regularly.

Teenager Muhammad Nazzal was released in the fourth batch of exchanges with broken arms and fingers. He said his Israel jailors provided him with no medical treatment.

Nazzal, from Qabatiya, a town near the northern West Bank city of Jenin, described how Israeli prison guards entered the cell he shared with other Palestinians for a headcount.

Prisoners were ordered to place their hands on their heads but when Israeli jailers didn’t get the response they expected, Nazzal said they started to beat him on his head, back and arms.

“I spent a week suffering, bedridden on the mattress,” he explained, adding that fellow prisoners fed him and helped him drink water.

Nazzal said Israeli prison authorities provided no medical treatment and did not take him to a clinic. He said they returned days later and beat prisoners again, leaving some bleeding from their faces.

“It turned into a battlefield for them against us,” Nazzal asserted. “They entered with the intention to kill, wielding metal batons that they bent on us.”

Nazzal described the conditions in the Naqab prison, where he was held, as dire. He said one of his fellow inmates died, after which beatings lessened, but food remained scarce. He was not staying with other young prisoners but with adult and elderly inmates, he explained.

Israel’s propaganda immediately sprung into action as Nazzal’s testimony gained traction, releasing a video purportedly showing his release from prison to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“CCTV footage shows Muhammad Nazzal leaving prison and boarding the bus with two perfectly working arms,” the official Israel account on Twitter/X stated.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Arabic spokesperson Ofir Gendelman posted the same video, adding: “another Palestinian lie is debunked” and “Pallywood is busted again.”

He said that Nazzal had told media “that Israeli prison guards broke his arms, but when he boarded the Red Cross’s bus at the prison, they were fine!”

The video only depicts Nazzal providing his information to an Israeli officer and subsequently being handed over to the Red Cross with his arms at his side, not wrapped with bandages. Nothing in the video contradicts Nazzal’s testimony.

One Palestinian prisoner reportedly lost consciousness upon his release due to inadequate care and insufficient food.

One of the youngest Palestinians to be released from detention, Saif al-Din Darwish, recounted the appalling conditions imposed on Palestinian boys in Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank.

He said they were served dry and uncooked food, such as raw falafel and sausages.

He described how newly-detained Palestinian boys would arrive at the section visibly bruised with swollen faces and eyes, suggesting they had been beaten by their Israeli captors.

Threats to harm family

Ahed Tamimi, who became an iconic figure in 2018 when her arrest and eight-month detention made international headlines at the time, was detained again in November and released as part of the prisoner exchange.

Upon her release, Tamimi talked about the dozens of female detainees still in Israeli prisons who are “getting mistreated every day.”

Ahed talked about the dire conditions that Israeli prison authorities are forcing Palestinians to live under.

“There’s no food, no water, nothing at all, no clothes. They sleep on the floor,” Tamimi said. Her father, Bassem Tamimi, is held under administrative detention.

“As I was leaving [the prison], they threatened me by invoking my father. They said we’ve got your father in prison, and if you say a word, we’ll kill your father in prison.”
Tamimi exhibited the defiance and dignity consistent with released Palestinian prisoners in the exchange. “Despite everything, we’re stronger than the [Israeli] occupation, and we will keep going.”

Still a child in 2018, she was accused of shoving and slapping a heavily armed occupation soldier after Israeli forces had shot and severely injured her then 15-year-old cousin Muhammad Fadel Tamimi.

Marah Bakir, who was also released in the exchange, spoke of the importance of focusing efforts on including female prisoners with life sentences in the prisoner exchange.

Bakir was a schoolgirl when she was arrested in October 2015, accused of intending to stab an Israeli soldier near her school in occupied East Jerusalem. She was shot multiple times by Israeli forces.

Though Bakir has insisted that she had no intention to carry out such an attack, she was sentenced to more than eight years in prison.

Iman Nafi, the wife of Nael Barghouti, the longest-serving prisoner in Israeli detention, told Al Jazeera she came out to thank the resistance for their sacrifices and welcome the released prisoners.

She said her sister was released as part of the exchange and she had been hopeful that her husband would have been included as part of the deal.

“Graveyard for the living”

One released Palestinian told media how food was scarce and that the only medical treatment they were afforded by Israeli prisoner authorities were painkillers.

“There are a lot of prisoners with broken ribs. A while ago a prisoner died in detention. They beat him on the head and he kept bleeding and no one asked about him.”

Another who was held at the Nafha prison in southern Israel described the “catastrophe” of the prison conditions.

He said that he had been beaten before his release for refusing to sign documents presented to him by Israeli prison authorities shortly before his release, adding that he had been feeling unwell on the bus.Freed prisoner Ramzi al-Absi vividly recounted the harrowing conditions endured by Palestinians at the Naqab prison, also in the south, dubbing it the “graveyard for the living.”

Al-Absi said prisoners were getting beaten and sexually assaulted by prison authorities.

“The detainees are being sexually assaulted, to the extent of rape. I’m not exaggerating. To the extent of rape,” he said.

“For 60 days, we did not see the sun. For 60 days, we had three servings of beatings: mornings, afternoons and evenings. In a manner beyond imagination, with beatings on all parts of the body.”

Al-Absi detailed how Israeli prison authorities routinely cursed prisoners and desecrated the Quran to demean them.

He explained how detainees were forced to sleep on bare mattresses in the cold without a blanket. Israeli prison authorities confiscated everything from the prisoners, even the windows to the cells, despite chilly desert weather in the southern Naqab area.

Israeli prison authorities also restricted water to one hour per day, making basic hygiene impossible for prisoners. Al-Absi said that he couldn’t even take a shower for 15 days.

Al-Absi implored lawyers and the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit the prisons and note the deplorable conditions.

Another recently released child, Ahmad Salaymeh, recounted how Israeli prison authorities sealed off sections of Damon prison after 7 October. He said they heard the sounds of women detainees getting beaten. He also described how prisoners were deprived of sufficient food.

Lama Khater, a released Palestinian woman, described being threatened with rape by her Israeli interrogators.

“I was treated with great brutality and excessive cruelty at the beginning of my detention,” Khater said, adding that she was tied up, blindfolded and taken to interrogation without knowing “who was talking to me or who was investigating me. They made threats of rape against me,” Khater told the reporter.

When the reporter asked for elaboration, she said, “I was honestly threatened with rape” in retaliation for the events of 7 October.

She said that her Israeli interrogator told her, “I have about twenty soldiers present now,” suggesting they could assault her.

“Of course, it was clear that the goal was intimidation, meaning it was a psychological intimidation session.”

She added that her Israeli interrogator threatened to burn her children.

“They told me we will go to the house and burn your children, we will lock the door on them and burn the little children,” Khater said.

Khater said that her Israeli captors told her they were treating her as they would a prisoner of war.

“They told me from the first moment that you are now a prisoner of war. I was previously a prisoner, and today this applies to you. You are all prisoners of war, and therefore there are no laws,” she said.

The prisoners are living in “near starvation,” Khater said.

“Prisoners, in general, can be said to have returned to square one, with restrictions in all respects,” Khater said. Palestinian prisoners acquired many of their rights inside Israeli detention through hunger strikes, resistance and organizing.

“The occupation is taking advantage of the preoccupation with war,” she said, and withdrawing “all the achievements that the prisoners have gained through their blood, struggles and sacrifices.”

Khater explained that there was no way to get news and communicate with family.

Israeli authorities have arrested around 3,400 Palestinians since 7 October, including dozens across the occupied West Bank even as the prisoner exchange was underway.

No celebrations

Many Palestinians said they weren’t told they were being released until just before they were sent home.

A Palestinian

“He said don’t dream about leaving here,” he told Al Jazeera

He described how Israeli prison authorities threatened to rearrest him if there were celebrations over his release.

His mother, visibly distraught beside him, cried as she remarked how her son had lost weight and looked unwell.

Israel’s far-right national securiItamar Ben-Gvir ordered police to
Israeli forces “enacted a media ban prenting journalists from gathering at the site of the release and shooting sound grenades and tear gas into crowds of awaiting people,” prisoners rights group Addameer reported.

Palestinian prisoners were threatened with rearrest if they celebrated public
Many spoke about how their joy at being released was incomplete given the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and the fact that they left comrades behind in Israel’s chambers of horror.

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