Told to fix notorious prison, Israel just relocated alleged abuses, detainees say

Told to fix notorious prison, Israel just relocated alleged abuses, detainees say
Members of the Israeli security forces stand guard as a bus belonging to the International Red Cross is parked outside of the Ofer military camp near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah (AFP)
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Updated 26 March 2025
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Told to fix notorious prison, Israel just relocated alleged abuses, detainees say

Told to fix notorious prison, Israel just relocated alleged abuses, detainees say
  • The alleged abuses include beatings, excessive handcuffing, and poor diet and health care
  • Military transferred hundreds of detainees to newly opened camps

JERUSALEM: Under pressure from Israel’s top court to improve conditions at a facility notorious for mistreating Palestinians seized in Gaza, the military transferred hundreds of detainees to newly opened camps.
But abuses at these camps were just as bad, according to Israeli human rights organizations that interviewed dozens of current and former detainees and are now asking the same court to force the military to fix the problem once and for all.
What the detainees’ testimonies show, rights groups say, is that instead of correcting alleged abuses against Palestinians held without charge or trial — including beatings, excessive handcuffing, and poor diet and health care — Israel’s military just shifted where they take place.
“What we’ve seen is the erosion of the basic standards for humane detention,” said Jessica Montell, the director of Hamoked, one of the rights groups petitioning the Israeli government.
Asked for a response, the military said it complies with international law and “completely rejects allegations regarding the systematic abuse of detainees.”
The sprawling Ofer Camp and the smaller Anatot Camp, both built in the West Bank, were supposed to resolve problems rights groups documented at a detention center in the Negev desert called Sde Teiman. That site was intended to temporarily hold and treat militants captured during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. But it morphed into a long-term detention center infamous for brutalizing Palestinians rounded up in Gaza, often without being charged.
Detainees transferred to Ofer and Anatot say conditions there were no better, according to more than 30 who were interviewed by lawyers for Hamoked and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. AP is the first international news organization to report on the affidavits from PHRI.
“They would punish you for anything” said Khaled Alserr, 32, a surgeon from Gaza who spent months at Ofer Camp and agreed to speak about his experiences. He was released after six months without charge.
Alserr said he lost count of the beatings he endured from soldiers after being rounded up in March of last year during a raid at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. “You’d be punished for making eye contact, for asking for medicine, for looking up toward the sky,” said Alserr.
Other detainees’ accounts to the rights groups remain anonymous. Their accounts could not be independently confirmed, but their testimonies – given separately – were similar.
The Supreme Court has given the military until the end of March to respond to the alleged abuses at Ofer.
Leaving Sde Teiman
Since the war began, Israel has seized thousands in Gaza that it suspects of links to Hamas. Thousands have also been released, often after months of detention.
Hundreds of detainees were freed during the ceasefire that began in January. But with ground operations recently restarted in Gaza, arrests continue. The military won’t say how many detainees it holds.
After Israel’s Supreme Court ordered better treatment at Sde Teiman, the military said in June it was transferring hundreds of detainees, including 500 sent to Ofer.
Ofer was built on an empty lot next to a civilian prison of the same name. Satellite photos from January show a paved, walled compound, with 24 mobile homes that serve as cells.
Anatot, built on a military base in a Jewish settlement, has two barracks, each with room for about 50 people, according to Hamoked.
Under wartime Israeli law, the military can hold Palestinians from Gaza for 45 days without access to the outside world. In practice, many go far longer.
Whenever detainees met with Hamoked lawyers, they were “dragged violently” into a cell — sometimes barefoot and often blindfolded, and their hands and feet remained shackled throughout the meetings, the rights group said in a letter to the military’s advocate general.
“I don’t know where I am,” one detainee told a lawyer.
Newly freed Israeli hostages have spoken out about their own harsh conditions in Gaza. Eli Sharabi, who emerged gaunt after 15 months of captivity, told Israel’s Channel 12 news that his captors said hostages’ conditions were influenced by Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners.
Detainees allege regular beatings
Alserr said he was kept with 21 others from Gaza in a 40-square-meter cell with eight bunk beds. Some slept on the floor on camping mattresses soldiers had punctured so they couldn’t inflate, he said. Scabies and lice were rampant. He said he was only allowed outside his cell once a week.
Detainees from Ofer and Anatot said they were regularly beaten with fists and batons. Some said they were kept in handcuffs for months, including while they slept and ate — and unshackled only when allowed to shower once a week.
Three prisoners held in Anatot told the lawyers that they were blindfolded constantly. One Anatot detainee said that soldiers woke them every hour during the night and made them stand for a half-hour.
In response to questions from AP, the military said it was unaware of claims that soldiers woke detainees up. It said detainees have regular shower access and are allowed daily yard time. It said occasional overcrowding meant some detainees were forced to sleep on “mattresses on the floor.”
The military said it closed Anatot in early February because it was no longer needed for “short-term incarceration” when other facilities were full. Sde Teiman, which has been upgraded, is still in use.
Nutrition and health care
Alserr said the worst thing about Ofer was medical care. He said guards refused to give him antacids for a chronic ulcer. After 40 days, he felt a rupture. In the truck heading to the hospital, soldiers tied a bag around his head.
“They beat me all the way to the hospital,” he said. “At the hospital they refused to remove the bag, even when they were treating me.”
The military said all detainees receive checkups and proper medical care. It said “prolonged restraint during detention” was only used in exceptional cases and taking into account the condition of each detainee.
Many detainees complained of hunger. They said they received three meals a day of a few slices of white bread with a cucumber or tomato, and sometimes some chocolate or custard.
That amounts to about 1,000 calories a day, or half what is necessary, said Lihi Joffe, an Israeli pediatric dietician who read some of the Ofer testimonies and called the diet “not humane.”
After rights groups complained in November, Joffe said she saw new menus at Ofer with greater variety, including potatoes and falafel — an improvement, she said, but still not enough.
The military said a nutritionist approves detainees’ meals, and that they always have access to water.
Punished for seeing a lawyer
Two months into his detention, Alserr had a 5-minute videoconference with a judge, who said he would stay in prison for the foreseeable future.
Such hearings are “systematically” brief, according to Nadia Daqqa, a Hamoked attorney. No lawyers are present and detainees are not allowed to talk, she said.
Several months later, Alserr was allowed to meet with a lawyer. But he said he was forced to kneel in the sun for hours beforehand.
Another detainee told the lawyer from Physicians for Human Rights that he underwent the same punishment. ”All the time, he has been threatening to take his own life,” the lawyer wrote in notes affixed to the affidavit.
Since his release in September, Alserr has returned to work at the hospital in Gaza.
The memories are still painful, but caring for patients again helps, he said. “I’m starting to forget ... to feel myself again as a human being.”


Protest letters from former Israeli soldiers lay bare profound rifts over brutal war

Protest letters from former Israeli soldiers lay bare profound  rifts over brutal war
Updated 6 sec ago
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Protest letters from former Israeli soldiers lay bare profound rifts over brutal war

Protest letters from former Israeli soldiers lay bare profound  rifts over brutal war
  • Tens of thousands of academics, doctors, former ambassadors, students, and high-tech workers have signed similar letters of solidarity in recent days, also demanding an end to the war

TEL AVIV: When nearly 1,000 Israeli Air Force veterans signed an open letter last week calling for an end to the war in Gaza, the military responded immediately, saying it would dismiss any active reservist who signed the document.
But in the days since, thousands of retired and reservist soldiers across the military have signed similar letters of support.
The growing campaign, which accuses the government of perpetuating the war for political reasons and failing to bring home the remaining hostages, has laid bare the deep division and disillusionment over Israel’s fighting in Gaza.
By spilling over into the military, it has threatened national unity and raised questions about the army’s ability to continue fighting at full force.
It also resembles the bitter divisions that erupted in early 2023 over the government’s attempts to overhaul Israel’s legal system, which many say weakened the country and encouraged Hamas’ attack later that year that triggered the war.
“It’s crystal clear that the renewal of the war is for political reasons and not for security reasons,” said Guy Poran, a retired pilot who was one of the initiators of the air force letter.
The catalyst for the letters was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision on March 18 to return to war instead of sticking to a ceasefire that had facilitated the release of some hostages.
In their letters, the protesters have stopped short of refusing to serve. And the vast majority of the 10,000 soldiers who have signed are retired in any case.
Nonetheless, Poran said their decision to identify themselves as ex-pilots was deliberate — given the respect among Israel’s Jewish majority for the military, especially for fighter pilots and other prestigious units.
Tens of thousands of academics, doctors, former ambassadors, students, and high-tech workers have signed similar letters of solidarity in recent days, also demanding an end to the war.
“We are aware of the relative importance and the weight of the brand of Israeli Air Force pilots and felt that it is exactly the kind of case where we should use this title in order to influence society,” said Poran.

 


Herders suffer in West Bank as settlers encroach on grazing land

Herders suffer in West Bank as settlers encroach on grazing land
Updated 5 min 31 sec ago
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Herders suffer in West Bank as settlers encroach on grazing land

Herders suffer in West Bank as settlers encroach on grazing land
  • Israeli shepherd outposts take 14 percent of the total area of Palestinian territory, report says

AL-MUGHAVIR, West Bank: Fatima Abu Naim, a mother of five, lives in a hillside cave in the occupied West Bank, under increasing pressure from Jewish settlers who, she says, try to steal her family’s sheep and come by regularly to tell her and her husband to leave.

“They say, ‘Go, I want to live here,’” she said.
The same stark message from settlers has been heard across the West Bank with increasing frequency since the start of the war in Gaza 18 months ago, notably in the largely empty hillsides where the Bedouin graze their flocks.
According to a report last week by the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, nearly half of the over 40 settler attacks documented at the end of March and early April hit Bedouin and herding communities, “including incidents involving arson, break-ins, and destruction of critical livelihood sources.”
The West Bank, an area of some 5,600 sq. km that sits between Jordan and Israel, has been at the heart of the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians since Israel seized it in the 1967 Middle East war.

FASTFACT

According to a report last week by the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, nearly half of the over 40 settler attacks documented at the end of March and early April hit Bedouin and herding communities, including incidents involving arson.

Under military occupation ever since, but seen by Palestinians as one of the core parts of a future independent state, it has been steadily cut up by fast-growing Israeli settlement clusters that now spread throughout the territory.
Most countries deem Israeli settlements to be illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this. Ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government talk openly about annexing the area completely.
Sparsely populated areas in the Jordan Valley, near the south Hebron hills, or in central upland areas of the West Bank have come under increasing pressure from outposts of settlers who have themselves begun grazing large flocks of sheep on the hillsides used by Bedouin and other herders.
According to a joint report last week by Israeli rights groups Peace Now and Kerem Navot, settlers have used such shepherding outposts to seize around 78,600 hectares of land, or 14 percent of the total area of the West Bank, harassing and intimidating nearby communities to expel them.
“The Jordan Valley or southern areas are where there used to be big meadows for Palestinians, and this is why these areas were targeted,” said Dror Etkes, one of the authors of the report.
“But if you look at a map, the outposts are everywhere. They keep constructing more and more.”
The report quotes documents from the attorney general’s office to show that around 8,000 hectares of West Bank land have been allocated for grazing by Israeli settlers in such outposts, who receive significant funding and other material support, including vehicles, from the government.
“The Bedouin communities are in many ways the most vulnerable,” said Yigal Bronner, an activist on the board of Kerem Navot who has monitored settler abuses for years and who says the problem has become more severe since the war in Gaza.
Without being able to graze their animals, many Bedouin cannot afford to maintain their flocks, leaving them with no way of earning a living, he said. “People are struggling to make ends meet.”
The windswept hillside where Abu Naim’s family lives in an encampment set up around two rock caves just outside the village of Al-Mughayir, is typical of the rugged terrain along the spine of the West Bank.
The family has already been forced to move from the Jordan Valley, where Bedouin communities have faced repeated attacks by violent groups of settlers who run flocks of their own.
Now living in their third home this year, she says they have once again faced aggression from intruders who she noted recently killed six of her family’s sheep and forced her husband to keep them penned up.
“The problems with the settlers started a year and a half ago, but we’ve only been harassed for two months now. The goal is to get us out of here,” she said.
“The sheep stay in the enclosure. They don’t let them out or anything.”
Abu Naim’s husband, who has confronted the settlers, was arrested this week for a reason she is unaware of. Palestinian and Israeli rights groups say there is effectively no legal redress for the herding communities, and the bitterness of the Gaza war has hardened attitudes further.
“This is our land,” said 65 year-old Asher Meth, a West Bank settler who was enjoying an outing at the springs of Ein Al-Auja, in the Jordan Valley that the nearby Bedouin community is prevented from accessing.
“And if the state of Israel would wake up, and say ‘Actually, do take the land’ and say ‘This land is now part of Israel’, the Arabs will understand better and move back from trying to kill us.”
A few hundred meters from the spring, in a large Bedouin encampment, 70-year-old Odeh Khalil has heard the message.
Ever since losing 300 sheep to a raid by settlers last August, he has kept his remaining animals in an enclosure, but he says he is determined to hang on for the moment.
“People cannot live without sheep. If we leave, it will be all gone,” he said.
“They want to deport us and say this is Israeli property.”

 


Hezbollah ‘will not let anyone disarm’ it, says chief

Hezbollah ‘will not let anyone disarm’ it, says chief
Updated 24 min 20 sec ago
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Hezbollah ‘will not let anyone disarm’ it, says chief

Hezbollah ‘will not let anyone disarm’ it, says chief
  • Qassem said: “We must cut this idea of disarmament from the dictionary“

BEIRUT: Hezbollah “will not let anyone disarm” it, the Lebanese group’s leader Naim Qassem said Friday, as the United States presses Beirut to compel the Iran-backed movement to hand over its weapons.
“We will not let anyone disarm Hezbollah or disarm the resistance” against Israel, Qassem said in remarks on a Hezbollah-affiliated TV channel. “We must cut this idea of disarmament from the dictionary.”


Lebanon says two killed in Israeli strikes in south

Lebanon says two killed in Israeli strikes in south
Updated 18 min 24 sec ago
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Lebanon says two killed in Israeli strikes in south

Lebanon says two killed in Israeli strikes in south
  • An Israeli attack on “a car on the Sidon-Ghaziyeh road resulted in one dead,” a Lebanese health ministry statement said
  • Hours later another Israeli strike on a vehicle around Aita Al-Shaab had also killed one

GHAZIYEH, Lebanon: Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli air strikes killed two people in the south on Friday, with Israel announcing attacks in the same areas targeting Hezbollah militants.
Despite a November 27 ceasefire that sought to halt more than a year of conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, Israel has continued to conduct near-daily strikes in Lebanon.
An Israeli attack on “a car on the Sidon-Ghaziyeh road resulted in one dead,” a Lebanese health ministry statement said on the fourth straight day of Israeli attacks in the south.
Hours later, the ministry said another Israeli strike on a vehicle around Aita Al-Shaab had also killed one.
Israel’s military said it had “conducted a precise strike in the area of Sidon and eliminated the Hezbollah terrorist Muhammad Jaafar Mannah Asaad Abdallah.”
It said Abdallah was “responsible, among other things, for the deployment of Hezbollah’s communication systems throughout Lebanon.”
On Friday evening, it announced “a Hezbollah terrorist was struck and eliminated by the IDF (military) in the area of” Aita Al-Shaab.
An AFP journalist said the Israeli attack in Sidon had hit a four-wheel-drive vehicle, sending a column of black smoke into the sky.
At the scene of the strike, members of the security forces stood guard as a crowd gathered to look at the charred remains of the vehicle after firefighters had put out the blaze.
The Israeli military has also said it was behind other attacks this week that it said killed Hezbollah members.
Hezbollah, significantly weakened by the war, insists it is adhering to the November ceasefire, even as Israeli attacks persist.


Israeli strikes hit dozens of targets in Gaza as ceasefire efforts stall

Israeli strikes hit dozens of targets in Gaza as ceasefire efforts stall
Updated 18 April 2025
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Israeli strikes hit dozens of targets in Gaza as ceasefire efforts stall

Israeli strikes hit dozens of targets in Gaza as ceasefire efforts stall
  • Defense Minister Israel Katz repeated that Israel intended to achieve its war aims
  • “The IDF is currently working toward a decisive victory in all arenas,” he said

JERUSALEM: Israeli airstrikes hit about 40 targets across the Gaza Strip over the past day, the military said on Friday, hours after Hamas rejected an Israeli ceasefire offer that it said fell short of its demand to agree a full end to the war.
Last month the Israeli military broke off a two-month truce that had largely halted fighting in Gaza and has since pushed in from the north and south, seizing almost a third of the enclave as it seeks to pressure Hamas into agreeing to release hostages and disarm.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he would make a special statement on Saturday evening but gave no detail on what it would be about.
Palestinian health authorities said that at least 43 people were killed in strikes on Friday, adding to more than 1,600 deaths since Israel resumed airstrikes in March.
The military said troops were operating in the Shabura and Tel Al-Sultan areas near the southern city of Rafah, as well as in northern Gaza, where it has taken control of large areas east of Gaza City.
Egyptian mediators have been trying to revive the January ceasefire deal that broke down when Israel resumed airstrikes and sent ground troops back into Gaza, but there has been little sign the two sides have moved closer on fundamental issues.
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
But he dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza.
On Friday, Defense Minister Israel Katz repeated that Israel intended to achieve its war aims.
“The IDF is currently working toward a decisive victory in all arenas, the release of the hostages, and the defeat of Hamas in Gaza,” he said in a statement.
The ceasefire offer it made through Egyptian mediators includes talks on a final settlement to the war but no firm agreement.
Katz also said this week that troops would remain in the buffer zone around the border that now extends deep into Gaza and cuts the enclave in two, even after any settlement.