“Every time they called me to count, I wanted to die,” said Mohamed Nizzal, an 18-year-old Palestinian who was released last Sunday after three months in an Israeli prison. He claims he returned home with two broken fingers on his right hand, without even receiving any pain medication. “They came to beat us with iron bars, and I covered my head with my hands,” he recalls of one of those counting rounds on November 18th. Nizzal’s statement is one of those collected by EL PAÍS, which assures that the shock wave of the Hamas massacre on October 7 was immediately felt in the Israeli prisons where Palestinian prisoners are housed.
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Half a dozen prisoners released these days thanks to the ceasefire agree, in a version not confirmed by prison authorities, that conditions in prisons have worsened since the start of the current war. They speak of beatings, overcrowded cells, humiliation, isolation from the outside world and even smoke canisters and pepper spray. Physical attacks are reported by those being fired, not women, although they also describe deterioration in treatment. Since the beginning of the war, “they have taken revenge on us. They used to treat us like normal prisoners,” Nizzal says on the phone from his home in Qabatia, next door to Jenin, in the northern West Bank. Since his abduction from his home, he has been in administrative detention, without charge or trial, in Ktziot Prison in the Negev Desert for three months.
This is not the case for Rawan Abu Zeyadeh, 29, whose eyes widen as she bluntly explains that she was sentenced to nine years in prison at the age of 21 for stabbing and wounding an Israeli soldier. This was done on his own initiative on July 15, 2015, at the checkpoint that the army constantly maintains on the hill in front of his home in the West Bank town of Beitillu. This position will be visible behind your back while you conduct the interview. She explains that after the Hamas massacre she was left without a shower for three days and from five days onwards there were eight people in the cell, so some prisoners had to sleep on the floor. Authorities at Damun Prison (Haifa) closed the store where they shopped, removed all electronic devices such as televisions, radios and kettles, and they were no longer able to cook. They also couldn’t go for walks during breaks and some remained isolated until the day of departure, says Zedayeh, wearing the traditional Palestinian kefiya (scarf) on her shoulders and her father listening intently at her side.
Mohamed Nizzal, an 18-year-old Palestinian, was released from an Israeli prison on Monday with two broken fingers thanks to the ceasefire, he told EL PAÍS.FADEL SENNA (AFP).
The description of what has happened in Damun prison since October 7 by 25-year-old Azhar Assaf at his home in Al Jeeb (West Bank) is similar. This woman, who was released in the first ceasefire exchange on Friday, admits they started celebrating when they saw news of the attack on television. The officers, he says, then attacked the cell and in those weeks even used smoke canisters and pepper spray against those who, like Assaf himself, were protesting. In his cell, he adds, they went from three to nine inmates.
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She was in prison for a year and two months after she was arrested on September 11, 2022 for allegedly trying to attack soldiers with a knife at the military checkpoint near her home, one of the border crossings from Jerusalem to the occupied West Bank . Her mother, Libya Othman, a 50-year-old native of Peru, denies being armed and insists there hasn’t even been a trial. That day they called her in the morning: “Your daughter wanted to have an operation, but the shot (from the Israelis) didn’t hit her,” she says in Spanish.
Azhar Assaf, a 25-year-old Palestinian prisoner released by Israel, with her mother Libia Othman at her home in the West Bank town of El Jeeb.LUIS DE VEGA
Omar al Atshan, 19, does not hide the fact that one day in early 2022, together with six other Palestinians, he attacked members of the Israeli occupation forces with a weapon near Ramallah. He believes that by being sentenced to three years as a minor, he benefited from the pact between Hamas and Israel. “On October 7th we saw what was happening on TV, but after 30 minutes they turned it off” and “they started looting the cells, beating us and humiliating us,” he says in the living room of his house, where, how… As a prodigal son, he never stops receiving visitors. The next day, he continues, officers removed the television along with the rest of the electronic devices. Three days later they took the clothes away and left us only a spare set. “Until the 7th, they treated us like normal prisoners,” he says.
15 prisoners in one cell
In his cell in Ktziot, he explains, there were between four and 15 prisoners spread across two bunk beds and mattresses on the floor. Most of the attacks he remembers occurred during the counts, which took place at five in the morning, eleven in the morning and six in the afternoon. “They broke into the cell and beat us with batons. They also attacked us when they moved us from one wing to the other and insulted us in Arabic and Hebrew,” says Al Ashtan as he tries to recover the passwords to his Facebook and Instagram profiles with the help of his brother.
Omar Atshan, a 19-year-old Palestinian prisoner who was released by Israel on Sunday, this Tuesday in his home in Ramallah.LUIS DE VEGA
On the street leading to the family’s home in Ramallah, the administrative capital of the West Bank, there are banners of Fatah (the majority formation in the Palestinian Authority), posters with the young man’s face and even two paintings in which he appears next the now deceased former president, the Palestinian Yasir Arafat. Fatah “sends warm congratulations and best wishes to Omar al Ashtan upon his release from the occupiers’ prisons,” it said. The freed young man thanks Hamas that he can be home again, but remains loyal to Fatah. Something similar happened to the father, but he does not hide the fact that with the massacre in October, the Gaza-born fundamentalist movement “made us raise our faces before the whole world.” “Nobody cares about our prisoners, only Hamas .” For this reason, on Sunday, when his young son was released, he decorated his car with the green flag with which this jihadist militia identifies itself.
In the family there are four sisters, one died after being run over, and four brothers. All the men were in prison, according to the father, Emad al Ashtan, who also spent some time behind bars. He defends his youngest son’s “soldier against soldier” attack and, with reference to Israel, asserts that “everything that was taken from us by force can only be regained by force.” “The negotiation never achieved anything.”
Imad Atshan, at the door of his home in Ramallah next to posters of his son Omar Atshan, a 19-year-old Palestinian prisoner who was released by Israel on Sunday.LUIS DE VEGA
Rawan Abu Zeyadeh’s family is also large. She was imprisoned at the age of 21 and is the eighth of twelve siblings. She has been studying social work with the help of other inmates and hopes to graduate from the Al Quds Open University in a month. According to the institution’s complaint on its website, its facilities in Gaza were attacked and used as a military post during the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip. Zedayeh, who still had seven and a half months left to serve her nine-year sentence, assures that she now sees the reality around her with different eyes and that she “looks for solutions differently than when she was young.” “However, he does not want to answer whether he would commit such a stabbing again in the summer of 2015. The Israeli military post can still be seen through the door of the family home, about 200 meters away.
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