Until the war I lived with my wife, Manar ‘Ali Saleh, 36, and our five children, ‘Amer, 17, ‘Abd a-Ra’uf, 16, Hibat Allah, 13, Muhammad, 10, and Hala, 3, in Beit Lahiya. In 2001, I injured my leg and I’ve had a disability ever since.
We lived in a small apartment in a building owned by the family west of Kamal ‘Adwan Hospital. Our lives were simple but relatively stable, despite the financial difficulties.
On the morning of 7 October 2023, at 6:30 A.M., I woke up to the sound of loud explosions. A few seconds later, my children, who had already left for school, came home. I started following the news on TV and social media, and learned that the Palestinian resistance had launched rockets and that the border fence had been breached. I knew the response would be severe, and I decided to stay home with my wife and the children.
On Tuesday evening, 10 October, Israeli fighter jets bombed the home of the ‘Afaneh family near us. Pieces of the building hit our home and shattered the windowpanes, but we weren’t hurt.
On 13 October, the Israeli military dropped leaflets ordering us to leave our homes and go south, past Wadi Gaza. We refused to leave, and other relatives and acquaintances of ours stayed with us in the family building. We were almost 70 people, most of them women and children.
The interrogator accused me of belonging to Hamas. I denied the accusation, and the interrogator threatened me that if I didn’t confess, he would get my wife and order the other soldiers to rape her.
On 23 November, an artillery shell hit my brother Raed’s apartment on the fourth floor of the building. The building was heavily damaged, but no one was hurt. The incident terrified us, and we decided to move to Kamal ‘Adwan Hospital.
We arrived at the hospital on the night of 24 November. That was the day a ceasefire agreement was announced between the Palestinian factions and Israel. It lasted seven days, and we returned home for the duration.
When the bombings started again and the Israeli ground operations continued, we moved to Kamal ‘Adwan Hospital again. I managed to find a place for my wife and the children to sleep in the pediatric ward, and I slept on the building’s stairs because it was so overcrowded. The conditions were harsh: the water wasn’t fit for drinking, food was scarce, and it was hard to find diapers and milk for baby Hala. There were repeated attacks by fighter jets, which started fires and caused us constant fear and suffering.
On 12 December, at 9:00 A.M., Israeli tanks surrounded the Hospital. Fighter jets, surveillance planes and drones circled overhead and there was heavy firing. A man sheltering in the hospital like us was hit in the chest by a bullet.
The military called for men between the ages of 15 and 55 to come out to the yard. My son ‘Amer and I went out, raising our hands in the air. The sight outside was terrifying: military vehicles spread out in the hospital yard and in nearby streets, dozens of soldiers on the ground, and snipers on the roofs of the tall buildings around the hospital. There were about 300 men in the yard. They ordered us to strip down to our underwear. We sat on the ground for about an hour, and then they moved us to a plot of land behind the al-Barawi gas station, where they scanned my eyes, gave me pants and a shirt, blindfolded me and tied my hands with zip ties.
They took me to a building nearby and started interrogating me. They demanded my personal details, and the interrogator accused me of belonging to the Hamas movement. I denied the accusation, and the interrogator threatened that if I didn’t confess, he would get my wife and order the other soldiers to rape her. He also accused me of belonging to the Islamic Jihad movement, which I also denied. During the interrogation, he swore at me. He called me “son of a bitch,” “son of a whore” and other insults.
After that, four soldiers attacked me savagely. They beat me, kicked me and hit me with their rifle butts. One of the blows hit me on the back of the head. I lost my balance, fell and passed out.
When I partly came to, I realized the soldiers were dragging me and throwing me into a truck with other detainees inside. We didn’t know where the truck was taking us. The driver sped and then braked suddenly several times during the ride, making us slam into each other over and over. The truck finally stopped and I was taken out. Immediately, a dog jumped on me and started butting me very aggressively, even though its mouth was muzzled. Meanwhile, the soldiers beat us and cursed us and our mothers.
I took eight straight punches to the head, which made my left ear bleed. Since then, my hearing in that ear has been damaged
The soldiers focused their blows on my head: I took eight straight punches to the head, which made my left ear bleed. Since then, my hearing in that ear has been damaged, and I still have ringing in both ears.
The soldiers forced me to strip naked and lie face down. They left me like that for about two hours, in the bitter cold and pouring rain. The whole time, the soldiers beat me hard. That went on for a long time. When the beating stopped, I noticed there were no other detainees around, and I was alone in the yard.
B’Tselem field researcher Muhammad Sabah: “At this point, the witness stopped talking and went silent for a few moments. Then I heard him sobbing loudly over the phone. He broke down. For five minutes I tried to calm him down, and then he spoke again. He said the soldiers had done something to him that he was ashamed to share. I urged him to speak, and explained it was important to report everything that happened. He said:”
During the torture, one of the soldiers raped me. He shoved a wooden stick up my anus, left it there for about a minute, and pulled it out. Then he shoved it back in, even harder, and I screamed at the top of my lungs. After a minute, he pulled the stick out again, told me to open my mouth, pushed the stick into my mouth and forced me to lick it. I was flooded with feelings of injustice and humiliation. The insult was so powerful, I passed out for a few minutes.
One of the soldiers raped me. He shoved a wooden stick up my anus, left it there for about a minute, and pulled it out.
At some point, a female officer arrived and ordered the soldiers to stop abusing me. She took the zip ties off my hands and made sure I was given a white jumpsuit. I put it on, and then she said, “Wait, wait,” and brought me a cup of water. I told her I needed to go to the bathroom because I could my anus bleeding. She gave me toilet paper. When I got to the bathroom, the soldiers removed my blindfold. I saw that I really was bleeding. After I finished cleaning myself and the bleeding stopped, I put the white jumpsuit back on. When I came out of the bathroom, they blindfolded me again and tied my hands behind my back with zip ties.
Then I was taken to a room where several detainees were being held, and they kept me there for about eight hours. During that time, the soldiers took turns attacking us, beating us and humiliating us.
After that, they transferred us by bus to a place whose name we didn’t know. During the transfer, they beat me again, kicked me and hit me with their rifle butts. The ride lasted close to two hours, and when the bus stopped, they took us out again, while hitting us. They gathered all of us in a yard, and then the soldiers untied our hands and took off our blindfolds, and gave us gray pants and a gray shirt. I put them on without underwear. That was also where I got my prisoner number: 0525422.
They took me in for a medical examination. They weighed me. I weighed 108 kg. The doctor asked if I had any chronic illnesses. I told him I did not, but that I had a disability in my leg and now it hurt even more because of the severe beating I had taken. The doctor gave me a painkiller. When I started telling him that I’d been raped with a stick, the doctor cut me off and told the soldiers to take me out of the examination room.
I was taken into a large shack with about 100 detainees. It was very cold, because the shack was open on all sides and the roof was made of tin sheets. The soldiers tied my hands in front and blindfolded me. In that place, they forced me to kneel on the ground. We were given very little food, not enough to feel full, and also very little water. I was in the shack from 13 to 22 December 2023.
When I started telling him that I’d been raped with a stick, the doctor cut me off and told the soldiers to take me out of the examination room.
That day, they took me to what’s called “the disco room.” The floor of the wing was covered with sharp bits of gravel, and in the room they had installed speakers that played disturbing sounds loudly all the time. That same day, I was interrogated several times in a row in that room. There was an interrogator in civilian clothes sitting behind a desk with a computer. He asked about my personal details, where I was on 7 October, the location of the tunnels, the location of the Israeli prisoners, and also some questions about people in my family. In each interrogation, the interrogators repeated the same questions, and I repeated the same answers.
On 27 December 2023, they took me back to the shack.
Because our hands were tied very tightly the whole time, the zip ties wore away the skin and flesh at my wrists. It bled all the time, until at some point, the bones in both hands were exposed. It was sharp pain all the time. When my condition got worse, the soldiers took me to a place where a female doctor treated me. It took her a whole day to drain a lot of infected blood and blood clots from my fingers, using only the most basic medical equipment. The treatment lasted three days in row, during which I was taken many times from the shack to the doctor’s room.
While I was held in the shack, suppression units raided the place three times. Large groups of soldiers would burst in with weapons and dogs. The soldiers would order us to lie on the ground, and then let the dogs step on us and walk over us. In one raid, a dog butted me hard in the head. The soldiers hurled tear gas canisters, beat us and cursed us.
On 1 January 2024, my number was called out along with about 20 other detainees. We were taken to a place called al-Kalabeh, which is a “shabah” room [tying or shackling in a stress position]. In the room, our photos were taken and I was assigned a new number, 0987582. Then I was photographed again, this time against the background of an Israeli flag hanging on the wall. After that, they put us in a small room. When they took us out of it, we passed through a row of dogs that attacked me savagely.
Later that day, they tied my hands and legs with tight metal cuffs that were very painful, and loaded me and the other detainees onto a bus that took us from Sde Teiman to the Negev Prison (Ketziot). The drive took three hours straight.
When we went in, soldiers attacked us and beat us savagely in a ritual called a-Tashrifah (the reception). After that they gave me new clothes, gray pants and a blue shirt, and put me in Cell 1 in Wing 6. There were 15 prisoners in the cell and only seven beds, so eight prisoners slept on mattresses on the floor. There were 10 mattresses in the room, which we spread across the room, side by side, so we could sleep on them.
They held me in that cell for only 10 days, and then transferred me to the tent wing. There I was in a tent measuring 5×8 meters with almost 40 prisoners. The tent had six bunk beds. I was hungry most of the time because we were given very little food, and whatever we did get was bad. Sometimes the bread was moldy. I remember that after seven months in detention, they brought us a bucket of tea with cockroaches in it, and of course we didn’t drink it.
Soon after they moved me to the tent, we all started getting skin diseases: scabies, lice and boils. I caught all of them. I had bad itching that kept me up at night. Sometimes I had to tear at my skin with my fingernails to ease the pain, and I would squeeze the boils to get the pus out. The pus-filled sores were mostly on my knees and buttocks.
For a year and two months we suffered from the spread of scabies. That whole time, we were given water to wash ourselves only twice. We were also given medical ointment that gradually eased the itching. The itching lasted for a long time but gradually became less severe.
I was in Tent 1, and I heard about a guy called Khalil Haniyeh from Tent 4 in the same wing, who died after he got scabies and boils. They said he blacked out, fell on his head and died as a result of the fall. One of the guys was nicknamed “green scabies” because his condition was so bad. His entire body was covered with it, and his weight dropped to 40 kg. Then he was transferred to another place and we feared for his life. I still don’t know what happened to him.
We all started getting skin diseases: scabies, lice and boils. I caught all of them. I had bad itching that kept me up at night.
I was held in that wing for a long time. In early July 2025, they moved me to a wing called al-Bakh, which was a large tent (Tent 18) surrounded by iron on all sides. There was a gate with an intercom on one side. At first, we relieved ourselves in a bucket.
Dr. Ahmad Mhanna was also held in that wing, in a nearby section, and a tragic incident occurred in Tent 18: A detainee called Abu Isma‘il from Khan Yunis died after suffering from urinary retention and constipation, which caused him severe swelling and internal poisoning because of an intestinal rupture. After that incident, they were forced to install toilets for us instead of the bucket, and to guarantee us a regular supply of drinking water.
On Friday, 10 October 2025, at 5:00 A.M., they moved me along with other prisoners to another room in Wing 1 and gave us new clothes. We were 13 prisoners. The next day, 11 October, around 8:00 P.M., two Red Cross representatives visited us. They filled out forms, asked whether I preferred to go back to the Gaza Strip or go abroad, and told me that I was officially on the list of prisoners due to be released as part of the deal.
On Monday, 13 October, at around 3:00 A.M., soldiers arrived, tied our hands and legs, and took us to the prison yard. There, they untied us and gave us gray tracksuits with the Israel Prison Service logo. At 4:00 A.M., they put us on buses and left us sitting in them for about seven hours. Then the buses started driving. Throughout the ride, the soldiers humiliated us and beat us, until we reached the Karam Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) Crossing. We entered the Gaza Strip, where Red Cross representatives received us, and we were taken in other buses to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.
My family welcomed me with great joy, but the hard news came immediately. I learned that two of my friends had been killed: Muhammad Qarmut, 28, who is also my cousin on my father’s side, and Luqman al-‘Ajuri, 38. I was also told that my son ‘Abd a-Ra’uf was run over by an aid truck and injured in his right leg, and that my other son, ‘Amer, had been shot in his right thigh. They were both injured going to get aid packages from the Zikim area for my family, which was left without a breadwinner. I also learned that my wife’s brother, Hani ‘Ali Saleh, 20, had been killed in the Zikim area. We no longer have a home to live in. I saw with my own eyes the massive destruction in Gaza and heard about the mass killings of so many people.
I’m still in severe pain from the beatings I took. I also have severe pain in my anus and sometimes it bleeds, especially when I’m outside or sitting on a chair, which is very embarrassing. I’m still full of sorrow because of the torture and the harsh experiences I went through in detention, painful memories that would hurt anyone.
* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Muhammad Sabah on 8 November 2025
