Comment on this storyCommentAdd to your saved storiesSave
JERUSALEM – Israeli forces have detained Palestinian civilians in Gaza during the two-month war, according to family members and human rights groups. They say they have not been given any information about the whereabouts, conditions or charges against those missing.
Many of those arrested were rounded up by Israeli forces fleeing south or raiding north, friends and family said in more than a dozen interviews. Some were held outside or in metal trailers for hours and then released. Others have disappeared.
Family members told The Washington They saw relatives with no ties to Hamas or armed groups being taken away at gunpoint by Israeli soldiers and have not heard from them since.
Mahmoud Almadhoun, his 13-year-old son, his 72-year-old father and several other relatives were arrested on Thursday. This morning, Israeli tanks rolled past her family home in Beit Lahia, in the sweltering north of the Gaza Strip. Soldiers ordered them and dozens of other men to retreat.
In a widely circulated video, Almadhoun, 33, is seen on the ground in his underwear in a line of men. They sat there for hours, he told the Post on Saturday, before soldiers tied their hands and loaded them onto trucks. They drove in burning cars to a beach somewhere between Beit Lahia and inside Israel. Almadhoun feared he would not return. “None of the people they arrested were Hamas or fighters of any kind,” he said.
Israeli forces say they are searching for members of Hamas and participants in the militant group's attack on Israel on October 7, when fighters poured out of Gaza to kill 1,200 people and take another 240 hostage. Israel responded with a military campaign that commanders said was aimed at eradicating the militant group as a political and military force in Gaza. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 17,000 people died in Gaza.
But Israeli authorities have not said how many people they detained, the legal grounds on which they were held or where they were held, including whether in Gaza or Israel. The Israel Defense Forces referred their questions to the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service. The Shin Bet did not respond to requests for comment.
Yasser Alyan told the Post that he had last seen it 20-year-old Ahmed Al-Lahman, whom he described as a surrogate son, on November 20 as they headed south. The family fled Beit Lahia via Salah al-Din Road, the route Israel had recommended people take.
What happened next followed a pattern that emerged. When the family reached the Netzarim checkpoint, the site of an ancient Israeli settlement, soldiers summoned Lahman. Alyan hasn't seen him since.
The family waited for hours, Alyan said, until Israeli soldiers shot in their direction and told them to leave. A relative who was held with Lahman but released that day told Alyan this They had to strip down to their underwear and walk past what looked like a facial recognition scanner, he said.
Lahman, an amateur singer, “had no connection to any organizations or political orientations, so we are shocked and surprised by his arrest,” Alyan said. He and his wife repeatedly contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross. The organization said it had no information.
The ICRC received more than 3,000 reports of missing Gazans between October 7 and November 29, spokeswoman Sarah Davies said. She could not say how many people were detained.
Almadhoun's video is among the images shared by Israeli media for the first time. indicate the extent and conditions of some arrests.
Israeli media reported without citing sources that members of Hamas were seen in the videos. Friends and family members of several of those pictured told the Post that their loved ones had been abducted from their homes and had no connection to Hamas or any armed group.
Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said Friday that the people The images show “men of military age” found in “Hamas strongholds” and “areas from which civilians should have been evacuated.”
“These people will be questioned and we will find out who was actually a Hamas terrorist and who was not,” he said.
Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said Friday that the military had arrested more than 200 suspects in Gaza in the last 48 hours and referred dozens for questioning.
Hani Almadhoun, the Washington-based director of philanthropy at UNRWA USA, told the Post he was shocked when he saw his brother Mahmoud, 32, in the video.
Another brother was killed in an airstrike on November 24, just before the start of a week-long humanitarian ceasefire.
On the beach, Mahmoud Almadhoun said soldiers insulted her, scanned her with what appeared to be facial recognition devices and left her exposed to the elements in her underwear. When they asked for food or water, soldiers kicked or insulted them, he said.
Sometime after midnight, soldiers transported him and other men closer to Beit Lahia and made them walk back barefoot.
Two college-age cousins did not return, Hani Almadhoun said.
According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, Israel has detained 31 medical professionals – doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers – whose whereabouts remain unknown. The most prominent detainee is al-Shifa Hospital director Mohamed Abu Salmiya, who the IDF says allowed Hamas to use bunkers beneath the hospital as a command center. The ministry and medical staff deny the allegation.
Hana Herbst, a spokeswoman for the Israel Prisons Authority, said she could not comment on specific cases.
International law allows armed forces to detain combatants. However, they are only allowed to arrest or detain civilians “if absolutely necessary,” it said Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch's Israel and Palestine director. Civilians must be charged within 48 hours and given the opportunity to challenge their detention, among other protections, or be released, he said.
“You have to set the bar very high if you want to arrest civilians,” Shakir said. “It can't just be: 'Anyone could attack us at any time.'”
“Israel’s abusive and discriminatory detention practices during its decades-long occupation cast significant doubt on whether detention meets these standards,” he said.
Israel's Unlawful Combatants Law provides the authority to place Palestinians from Gaza in administrative detention, a form of detention without charge or trial that authorities can extend indefinitely, Shakir said.
The Israeli prison authority announced this this month As of December 1, 260 Gazans were detained under the law. It was unclear which cases were counted.
The Shin Bet is holding an unknown number of militants captured during the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel. Since then, Israeli forces have arrested more combatants in the Gaza Strip. Hundreds of Gaza workers stranded in Israel were also detained.
Jessica Montell, executive director of the Israeli human rights group Hamoked, said the organization had received more than 115 calls from family members of people detained at the Netzarim checkpoint. In only two cases was the person released.
“The question is, where is everyone else?” she said. “Where are they physically and what is their legal status?”
At least 16 female prisoners from Gaza have been detained in Israel. Since October 7, authorities have denied Palestinian prisoners access to lawyers The ICRC, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Association.
40-year-old teacher Khawla Salem says her 19-year-old daughter Aseel is one of these prisoners.
Salem, her husband and three children left their home in Jabalya refugee camp, where her 16-year-old son was killed in a strike, on November 22 and headed south to Khan Younis. As they approached the Netzarim checkpoint, Salem said, soldiers stopped the group and asked them to appear in front of what looked like a facial recognition scanner. Snipers and tanks surrounded them.
Aseel and nine-year-old Mays were summoned Metal pendant. The soldiers, Mays told The Post, wanted her ID, asked about her school and insulted her sister. Aseel begged the soldiers to release Mays.
Mays was released after four hours. But she didn't have a word about Aseel, who is limping. As Salem waited, other women told her that the detainees had been interrogated, strip-searched and beaten.
Lama Khatour, a Palestinian from the West Bank, was detained in Damon Prison in northern Israel when women from Gaza arrived in distinctive brown uniforms without headscarves. She learned their names through the walls. One of them was Aseel.
Khatour, who was released last month as part of the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, said the women had little to eat and slept on the floor. Several said they were beaten. One of them was breastfeeding.
“There were no clear allegations against her,” Khatour said. “They told us the goal was to gather as much information as possible about their families and their community.”
Harb reported from London.