When the Israeli authorities released the director of Gaza’s biggest hospital from custody on Monday, they also opened the gates to a string of extremely serious accusations. Dr Mohammad Abu Salmiya, who was released along with about 50 other detained Palestinians, said prisoners had been assaulted, deprived of food and did not receive any legal representation during their detention.
Dr Abu Salmiya had been accused by Israel of allowing Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City to be used by Hamas as an operations centre. However, after more than six months’ detention, he was released without charge. Another released detainee, Bassam Miqdad – head of the Gaza European Hospital’s orthopaedic unit – spoke of his own mistreatment. “I was deprived of food and was verbally abused. I was moved to three Israeli detention centres, the last being Nafha Prison,” he added.
It is far from the first time that Palestinians have accused the Israeli authorities of treating prisoners and detainees inhumanely. The latest accusations have come not from hardened militants or political activists but senior doctors, responsible for the lives of many patients. This should be cause for alarm and should lead to serious investigations.
Their accounts are the latest in many years of findings that point to systemic violence and abuse against Palestinians. In just one example, a report in February from Save the Children found that Palestinian children arrested by Israeli forces faced “immense emotional and physical abuse”. Four out of five, the report added, had been beaten and nearly 70 per cent had been strip-searched. The continuing scandal of so-called administrative detention, in which Palestinian suspects can be held for months or years without charge or trial, reflects a deeply compromised justice system.
As with last month’s case of Israeli soldiers tying a Palestinian man to a military vehicle in the West Bank city of Jenin, few are expecting the accusations made by Dr Abu Salmiya and others to be properly investigated – if they are investigated at all. Instead, the men’s release has sparked a very public row among Israel’s political and security establishment.
Various actors – including Cabinet ministers, the Shin Bet internal security agency, opposition leaders and others – are assigning blame to one another for this group of detainees being released. This is not only the latest example of disarray in the Israeli ranks but reveals the unsustainability of an unending policy of collective punishment.
The mass detentions of Palestinians since October 7 have apparently led to a shortage of Israeli prison cells in which to hold them. The overcrowding has been exacerbated over the past nine months. Since the beginning of the Gaza war, about 9,500 Palestinians have been detained in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military has launched more operations in areas of Gaza, such as Khan Younis, that were thought to have been cleared of Hamas fighters. As the war grinds on, Israeli reservists are cycled in and out of active service and the country is now potentially looking to draft ultra-Orthodox religious communities into the armed forces.
Unjustified detention and inhuman treatment should be a red line for all involved in this conflict; that includes those militant factions who abducted Israeli civilians and continue to hold them against their will in a war zone. Israel, if it wants to be regarded as a nation of laws, needs to not only investigate credible allegations of abuse in its prison system, it needs to stop these violations systematically.
