Cold, nearly naked and surrounded by Israeli soldiers with M16 assault rifles, Ayman Lubbad knelt among dozens of Palestinian men and boys who had just been there forced from their homes in the northern Gaza Strip.
It was early December and photos And Videos recorded at Time showed him and other prisoners on the street, wearing only their underwear and lined up in rows, surrounded by Israeli forces. In one video, a soldier shouted to them through a megaphone: “We are occupying all of Gaza. Is that what you wanted? You want Hamas with you? Don’t tell me you’re not part of Hamas.”
The prisoners, some barefoot and with their hands on their heads, shouted objections. “I’m a day laborer,” a man shouted.
“Shut up,” the soldier shouted back.
Palestinian detainees from Gaza have been stripped, beaten, interrogated and held incommunicado over the past three months, according to accounts from nearly a dozen of the detainees or their relatives interviewed by The New York Times. Organizations representing Palestinian prisoners and detainees made similar comments in a report, accusing Israel of both indiscriminate detention of civilians and degrading treatment of detainees.
Israeli forces that entered Gaza following the Hamas-led attack on October 7 have arrested thousands of men, women and children.
Some were evicted from their homes and confiscated, while others were arrested as they fled their neighborhoods on foot with their families and tried to reach safer areas after Israeli authorities asked them to leave.
Photos taken by Gaza journalists show newly released prisoners being treated in hospitals. The skin around her wrists is worn away from deep cuts from the hard shackles that Israeli forces used to restrain her, sometimes for weeks.
The United Nations human rights office said last week that Israel's treatment of detainees in the Gaza Strip could amount to torture. It was estimated that thousands were detained and held in “horrible” conditions before being released, sometimes with no clothing, only diapers.
In a response to questions from the Times, the Israeli military said it was detaining people suspected of involvement in terrorist activities and releases those who are acquitted. It said Israeli authorities treated detainees in accordance with international law and defended forcing men and boys to undress, saying this was to “ensure that they do not hide explosive vests or other weapons.”
“If possible, clothing will be returned to prisoners,” the military added.
Human rights advocates say Israel's detention and degrading treatment of Palestinians in Gaza may violate international laws of war.
“Since the beginning of the Israeli bombardment and ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army has arrested hundreds of Palestinians in barbaric and unprecedented ways and released images and videos showing inhumane treatment of detainees,” said a recent report by several Palestinian human rights groups, including the Palestinian Prisoners' Commission and Addameer.
“So far, Israel has kept quiet about the fate of Gaza detainees, not disclosing their numbers and preventing lawyers and the Red Cross from visiting detainees,” the report continued.
A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Hisham Mhanna, said his organization receives daily reports from families in Gaza about detained family members. The organization is working on around 4,000 cases of disappeared Palestinians from Gaza, almost half of whom are believed to be held by the Israeli military, he said.
The group sought information about the conditions and whereabouts of detainees and urged visits. But only in a few cases was there even any proof of life, said Mr. Mhanna.
Brian Finucane, an analyst at the research organization International Crisis Group and a former State Department legal adviser, said international law sets “a very high bar” for detaining non-combatants and requires that they be treated humanely.
In the first month of the war, Israel warned those who did not flee areas following evacuation orders that they “could be viewed as affiliated with a terrorist organization.” Last month, an Israeli government spokesman, Eylon Levy, said Israeli forces were arresting “men of military age” in these areas.
Before the war, Hamas had an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 fighters out of a population of more than two million people in Gaza, according to American and other Western analysts.
“The assumption that men of military age are combatants is disturbing,” Finucane said.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, said in October that naming civilians who were not evacuated as accomplices to terrorism not only represented a threat of collective punishment but could also amount to ethnic cleansing.
Photos and videos Photographed by Israeli soldiers and Israeli journalists affiliated with the military, Palestinians are seen with their hands tied behind their backs, sometimes blindfolded and in their underwear. kneeling outside in winter.
In a video shot at a stadium in Gaza City, dozens of men wearing only their underwear are lined up or marched across the field surrounded by Israeli soldiers. Some of the men were gray-haired and some were small boys.
Women and girls were also present, but remained clothed.
One of the detainees was 22-year-old Hadeel al-Dahdouh, who was seen in the back of a truck full of nearly naked men in another photo released last month. In the picture, her eyes were covered with a white blindfold and her headscarf had been removed.
She and her husband Rushdi al-Thatha, both from northern Gaza City, were arrested together on December 5, said Mr al-Thatha, 31.
“They hit us on the head with their weapons,” said Mr. al-Thatha, one of several detainees who described being beaten by Israeli soldiers. “They would beat my wife like they beat me,” he said. “They shouted 'Shut up!' and curse them.”
Mr al-Thatha said he was released after 25 days. Ms al-Dahdouh is still missing.
On the day of his arrest, Dec. 7, Mr. Lubbad was at his parents' house with his wife, he said. She had given birth to her third child weeks earlier. They could hear gunfire and tanks in the streets, and then an Israeli soldier shouted through a megaphone for all the men to come out and surrender.
As soon as he walked out with his arms raised, he was confronted by a soldier who ordered him to kneel down and take off his clothes. In the December cold, he was held on his knees in the back row of a line of Palestinian men and some boys – all in their underwear, some barefoot.
Mr. Lubbad, himself a human rights activist with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, said his detention lasted a week. In the first moments, he said, he told himself he would do what the soldiers ordered.
“We didn’t know what to expect,” he said.
His hands were tied with a rope that immediately began to dig into his skin, he said. The detainees were forced into trucks, blindfolded and handcuffed, still in their underwear, while soldiers beat them, Mr. Lubbad said.
They were then driven for hours to Israel.
Only when they arrived at a prison in the southern Israeli city of Be'er Sheva were they given clothes – gray tracksuits. Each person was given a number on a blue sign and guards called them by their number, not their name.
Mr. Lubbad was held in a large barracks for three days. From 5 a.m. to midnight, all dozens of inmates were forced to sit on their knees in a position he described as torturous. Anyone who tried to switch would be punished, Mr. Lubbad said.
He said he was not questioned until days later, after he was taken to another detention center in Jerusalem.
The interrogator asked him where he was on Oct. 7 and whether he had any information about members of Hamas, the armed group that controls Gaza, or Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed faction, he said. He was asked about tunnels and Hamas positions.
When he repeatedly replied that he knew nothing and spent much of his time either at work or at home, the interrogator became angry and hit him under the eye, he said, and then he put the blindfold back on him and tightened it painfully tied up.
He was held for several more days but was not interrogated again.
Mr. Lubbad said he was among the buses full of detainees being driven to Gaza's southern border early on December 14 and told him to go.
Several other prisoners gave similar reports.
Majdi al-Darini, a 50-year-old father of four and retired civil servant, said he was held for 40 days, with his hands tied almost the entire time. The shackles cut into his wrists, leaving wounds that eventually became infected. A video of Mr al-Darini after his release shows scabs on his wrists.
“Meanwhile, your hands are tied, your eyes are blindfolded and you’re on your knees,” he said. “And you can’t move left or right.”
He said he was arrested in mid-November as he and his family were heading south after leaving their homes in northern Gaza following an evacuation order.
“They treated us like animals,” he said. “They beat us with sticks and hurled curses at us.”
Mr. al-Thatha, the man who was imprisoned with his wife, said that 25 days after his ordeal, a prison guard came to his barracks and asked him: “Can you run?”
He didn't understand the question.
Hours later, around 2 a.m., he said, his name was called and he was put on a bus to the Kerem Shalom border crossing from Israel to Gaza. As he got off the bus, he said, a soldier warned them that a sniper was watching him and ordered them to run for 10 minutes.
“We ran for 10 minutes without turning our heads,” he said.
Ameera Harouda, Hiba Yazbek and Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting.