“I cry every day without my family,” he said. “I’m alone in the south, I have no one. I swear I don’t need anything but to be with my family.” He has not yet met his youngest son, who was born in Gaza while he was in detention.
A Palestinian paramedic based in Gaza has shared horrific details of his detention and torture including threats of rape at the hands of Israeli forces.
Walid Khalili, 36, was arrested after being dispatched to the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City on November 10 to rescue four wounded men, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on Monday.
But when his ambulance reached the location, 20 meters from the Labor Ministry building, he saw the men surrounded by Israeli forces.
“I saw the four men being executed in cold blood,” Khalili said. “I saw it with my own eyes, I was three meters away. When they were shot, I hid under the ambulance, and next to it there was a building, so then I ran inside the building. The Israeli forces raided the building and started yelling at me to raise my hands.”
Soldiers kicked and beat him with their rifle butts, breaking his ribs.
HRW said Khalili’s subsequent ordeal – including deportation from Gaza to detention facilities in Israel, torture, and denial of medical care – was consistent with the abuses in Israeli detention described by seven other healthcare workers who were interviewed.
His account is also consistent with reports by other rights groups, the United Nations human rights office, and journalists, the report said.
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‘Say You’re Hamas!’
Khalili said the soldiers forced him to strip naked in public, zip-tied his hands behind his back, blindfolded him, and took him to another location.
“They kept telling me, ‘Say you’re Hamas,’” he said.
The father of three recalled the bitter November cold, the report said, when soldiers placed him in an open-back military vehicle, hit him, and drove him to an open area, where he was forced to lie face-down on sandy ground.
Soldiers repeatedly shoved his face into the sand with their boots and threatened to kill him, Khalili said.
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He was even doused with gasoline, as a soldier threatened to set him on fire, and others drove a military vehicle quickly toward him as if to run him over apparently to terrify him into confessing to being a member of Hamas, said the report. This was a tactic that another former former detainee separately described to HRW.
Transferred to Sde Teiman
At the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility, about 30km from Gaza, in southern Israel, Khalili described being held in a large building “like a warehouse” with chains hanging from the ceiling.
He said Israeli soldiers dragged him on the ground, removed the cuffs on his ankles, dressed him in adult diapers, and removed his blindfold.
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Dozens of detainees, also in diapers, were suspended from the ceiling, with the chains attached to their square metal handcuffs.
Khalili said he was hung up, dressed in a garment and a headband that were attached to wires, and shocked him with electricity.
“The world was spinning around, and I fainted. They hit me with batons. I kept fainting and hallucinating. He kept asking me about the hostages, and moving Hamas hostages, and where I was on October 7. With every question I was electro-shocked to wake me up. He told me confess and we will stop torturing you,” he told HRW.
‘Pill Made Me Feel Weird’
Khalili said he was given electric shocks every second day in addition to being suspended in stress positions and having cold water thrown on him.
At three-day intervals, he was taken from the “warehouse” for interrogation and before each ordeal, a soldier administered an unknown drug to him in pill form.
“The pill made me feel weird, it was the first time I have felt like this, as if my inner mind was speaking what was in my heart, not me. I felt like I’m flying. I saw hallucinations.”
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An Israeli official who spoke fluent Arabic “told me how many children I have, all their names, my address,” and threatened they would be killed if he did not confess.
Khalili shared the abuse and torture of other detainees as well, saying one “had his leg amputated” apparently as a result of prolonged shackling and exposure to cold.
He saw a detainee in the “warehouse” experience what he believes was cardiac arrest; a soldier brought in an Israeli medical worker who confirmed the detainee was dead.
Israeli forces brought the dead body of another detainee into the warehouse, Khalili said.
‘Threatened With Rape’
After 20 days, he was transferred, in a wheelchair and unable to stand, from Sde Teiman to a detention facility he called “al-Naqab” prison.
He was cuffed and blindfolded and said soldiers threatened him with rape while he was being transported.
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The other detainees at al-Naqab were also sick and wounded, he said, and a man who was visibly “bleeding from his bottom” was brought in and placed next to Khalili.
The man told Khalili that before he was placed in detention, “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. His mental health was awful, he started talking to himself.”
After more than 30 days at al-Naqab, Khalili said, he signed release papers at the prosecutors’ office and was given back his Palestinian ID document, but not his phone or cash (the equivalent of US$1,250) taken from him during his arrest in Gaza.
Four days later, in late December 2023, he was released without charge at the Kerem Shalom (Karam Abu Salem )crossing. He had weighed 80 kilograms when arrested, and now weighed 60, he said.
‘I Cry Every Day’
The World Health Organization arranged for permission for him to be transferred for care to Egypt in May, but Israeli forces closed the Rafah border crossing on May 7.
HRW said Khalili was sheltering in the al-Mawasi area near Khan Yunis, and still awaiting possible transfer to Egypt for medical care, separated from his family who are in northern Gaza.
“I cry every day without my family,” he said. “I’m alone in the south, I have no one. I swear I don’t need anything but to be with my family.”
He has not yet met his youngest son, who was born in Gaza while he was in detention.
HRW said he still loses consciousness and feels “something in my head like microwaves, a loud sound,” and his hands cramp up. The pain from his broken ribs makes it difficult for him to sleep, and when he sleeps, he has nightmares, the report said.
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‘Welcome to Hell’
Last month, ten Israeli soldiers were detained for sexually abusing a detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman prison. Five were released following riots by far-right Jewish settlers and politicians who broke into two military bases where the soldiers were being held in protest at their arrests.
The remaining five were released earlier this month and placed under house arrest by an Israeli military court.
A recent report by the B’Tselem Israeli human rights group documented testimonies from 55 Palestinians incarcerated in Israeli detention facilities.
Titled ‘Welcome to Hell’ the report indicates “a systemic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.”
• Israeli soldiers try to hide their act with shields
• Hours later, detainee taken to hospital, bleeding
• Clinical decision confirmed injury caused by insertion of objectIsraeli soldiers at Sde Teiman prison committing rape against blindfolded Palestinian… pic.twitter.com/jsT5V9JsM3
— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) August 7, 2024
It documented frequent acts of severe, arbitrary violence; sexual assault; humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation; forced unhygienic conditions; sleep deprivation, prohibition on, and punitive measures for, religious worship; confiscation of all communal and personal belongings; and denial of adequate medical treatment.
The organization said “no less than 60” Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli custody.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
