‘They forced me to stand for hours in the cold, arms raised and shackled’: eight Gaza doctors on their Israeli prison ordeal

Senior doctors and surgeons describe the torture, starvation, humiliation and denial of medical care they endured while being held without charge. Many days I was tied to a chair in the interrogation room for maybe 15 hours. I was not allowed to sleep or eat or drink. They tied my arms to the chair very painfully and when they were beating me they would put their hands or legs on my chest to bend my back.

After about a month I was transferred to Ofer camp in Ramallah. The whole transfer process was one of the worst things I remember. When you first go into a new prison, as someone from Gaza, you are subjected to a special campaign of torture and humiliation. That day there were four of us doctors – and none of us are young men and it was hard to bear it.

Frankly, no matter how long I talk about what I experienced in detention, it is only a fraction of what truly happened. I am talking about being clubbed, being beaten with rifle butts and being attacked by dogs. At night I was put back in my cell but they don’t let you sleep ever; the air conditioner is on and they don’t turn the lights off. There are cameras in the cell filming you. It is terrifying. All night you hear the voices of people around you screaming. I saw people who were dying there. Every day is a humiliation, every day is degradation.

In detention you would have to sleep on the floor which they covered with small, sharp rocks with your hands and legs tied and your eyes blindfolded. They would pour cold water on you and put fans on and bring powerful air conditioners. They would play loud music 24 hours a day.

In interrogations it would be dark and my hands and feet would be bound. They made me stand on my tiptoes for two or three hours and [would] then throw me to the floor and spray me with water. Then three or four guards would beat me. After months in detention, they transferred me to Negev prison in the desert. It was summer and very hot. They locked us inside tents. We had to ask for permission to use the bathroom, but the sick weren’t allowed to go and were told to soil themselves.

We contracted scabies because we hadn’t washed or changed our clothes in six months. Your body felt like it was burning, but they wouldn’t give us treatment. We could only drink hot water from the pipes once a day. We didn’t have shoes and they would make us stand on the asphalt with bare feet for two or three hours in 37C [99F] heat. The food was just yoghurt and a bit of rice. I lost half my body weight. They never charged me with anything and I didn’t get to see a lawyer during seven months of imprisonment.

On 25 March we were in Nasser hospital, which had seen severe destruction after attacks by the Israeli army, when they stormed the hospital. They ordered us to evacuate through loudspeakers mounted on drones. We left the hospital, where Israeli armoured vehicles and soldiers were stationed pointing their rifles and tank cannons at us.

We were ordered to completely remove our clothes and were then taken in a line to a pit that had been prepared in advance next to the hospital. All the medical staff were put in the pit [then] we were thrown into a military vehicle and taken across the border from the Gaza Strip into Israel.

Throughout this period, while we were being transferred, we were given severe, brutal beatings all over our bodies. I suffered bone fractures on my right side, which affected me greatly all the way through the first three or four months of detention. I never got any medical care.

After two or three hours we arrived at the prison. Our names and numbers were taken and we were led, with our eyes covered and our hands chained with metal handcuffs, into Sde Teiman detention camp. I was taken to an open space surrounded by metal bars, like a warehouse. We were given a mat that was no more than half a centimetre thick and then we had to sit in the same position from 5am until 10pm. It was absolutely forbidden to speak. We were blindfolded the whole time with our hands in metal cuffs.

I was in a state of shock, in complete denial of being inside that prison and tried to avoid anything that would mean a punishment. However, on the third day an Israeli prison repression unit stormed the prison with dogs and batons. We were ordered to lie on the ground. If anyone raised their head they would be subjected to severe beating. I was beaten where I lay and heard the screams of prisoners [who had been] singled out. Many suffered permanent disabilities.

In Gaza we are used to war but this time it was different. At the hospital [during the war] you would begin to lose your soul because of the horrors we saw every day. Things that are difficult to describe or put into words because they were so awful. Day after day, the exhaustion and the work increased. I was constantly on the edge of breaking down.

I was pulled out of the line at a checkpoint when I was with my family trying to leave Khan Younis, which was under siege. They told me to take off my clothes except my underwear and I left everything else on the ground – my ID, even my socks, and I had to walk barefoot.