A 42-year-old father of one from Jabalya Refugee Camp, Saed recounted abuse at Sde Teiman and the death of his baby nephew at the a-Shifaa neonatal unit following a military invasion:
Until the war, I lived with my parents, Muna al-Khatib, 62, and Mahmoud al-Khatib, 68, and my sister Samah al-Khatib in Jabalya Refugee Camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
At the beginning of the war, we woke up to the sound of rocket fire. I immediately understood the situation was serious and that this might be the start of a war, so I decided to stock up on essential supplies. We stayed at home until the first Israeli military invasion into Jabalya Refugee Camp, when soldiers entered the camp from the west and came very close to our area, bombed several houses near us, and shot several young men in the area.
When the army got very close to our area, we all moved to a nearby UNRWA school. We took what we could and slept in one of the classrooms. Later, I carefully made my way back home to get more basic supplies. During this first invasion into Jabalya Refugee Camp, the situation in the school was also extremely dangerous. The army shelled and bombed the area nonstop, destroyed buildings and completely blockaded the school for a week, so no one could go in or out. We had no water or food, and drones hovered above us all the time. We saw how, at a nearby school, the army forcibly evacuated IDPs, detained the men, and then burned the building and raised an Israeli flag over it. The school we were in also came under fire. Parts of the building were hit, and two IDPs were killed. The soldiers forbade us from going near the windows and ordered everyone to gather on the ground floor as tanks surrounded the school and soldiers threw stun grenades at the gate.
After the military withdrew, leaving extensive destruction in the area, we went home and found the house relatively lightly damaged, so we stayed there. A month later, the military issued a warning that it was about to bomb more homes in the area, so we had to flee again to the school. By that point, many homes in the camp were destroyed. Living conditions at the school were extremely harsh: there was a severe shortage of water and food, and for a long period we suffered from hunger, which was even harder than the bombings.
During the war, one of my sisters gave birth to her daughter at al-‘Awda Hospital. After she was discharged, she, her husband and the baby joined us at the school. There was also a severe shortage of diapers and formula. I would go out at daybreak to try to find food, but could barely manage to get anything. Once, I managed to get a sack of wheat, ground it and mixed it with a bit of white flour we still had, and we used that flour very sparingly so it would last as long as possible. Our diet was very poor, plain bread and wild plants like khubeza that we foraged. Many families had no choice but to eat bread baked from fodder intended for farm animals. There was also a severe shortage of medicine. My niece got sick twice, and the only treatment we could give her was herbal infusions. Because of the hunger, my sister also struggled to breastfeed.
In the second invasion into Jabalya, the situation deteriorated quickly: the army dropped leaflets ordering us to evacuate and also attacked the school where we were staying. We had to leave. We took only the most essential items and moved to a small storage room in western Gaza City. We stayed there for 21 days, and when the army withdrew, I went back to the camp and found immense destruction. This time, our house was destroyed, and three schools in the camp were burned down, with the belongings of the IDPs who had left their things there still inside. We went back to living in a classroom that had been less damaged, in one of the schools.
On 6 October 2024, the third invasion began, which almost destroyed the camp completely. The army entered from two directions and used bulldozers and robots to blow up buildings. Grenades fell in the school, and one of them hit a classroom, killing three people and injuring two, including my sister, who was lightly wounded. After that, we moved to a relative’s house near al-Fakhura school and then to Kamal Adwan Hospital, where we stayed. One day, I went out to bring water and on the way, when I jumped over a fence, I sprained my foot. People helped me get back to the hospital, and after that I got around on crutches. We stayed in the hospital until the army ordered everyone to evacuate to the Indonesian Checkpoint. My family left, but I stayed behind because I couldn’t walk. Later, I found out that the soldiers had detained my elderly father and my sister’s husband for 12 hours, and after they were released, they had to walk until they managed to rejoin the rest of the family.
On 25 October 2024, the Israeli military surrounded the hospital, with IDPs, wounded people and medical staff inside. Heavy machinery destroyed the fence, and crushed ambulances and a tent used to store medicine. The army ordered the medical staff and the IDPs to gather in the emergency room. They ordered the director, Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh, to hand over the staff members’ names and how many there were, and demanded that some of the staff go to the Indonesian Checkpoint. They also demanded information about the wounded people and the people escorting them. The soldiers searched all the hospital’s facilities and people’s personal belongings, and all the people escorting patients were required to identify themselves and strip.
I was also detained, interrogated and beaten. They tied my hands, blindfolded me and took me with other people to one of the hospital wards. They kept us there for hours on end, in harsh conditions, beat and humiliated us, and then loaded us, still handcuffed and blindfolded, onto trucks while beating us.
They counted us and ordered each of us to remember his number. I was number 173. Then they took us to a place they called “Hell.” All the way there, they cursed us, humiliated us and spat on us. One of the guys, who slightly lifted his blindfold, saw that a soldier was taking pictures of us on his phone and showing them to his friends while swearing in Hebrew.
When we got to the place they called “Hell,” we were greeted with curses and beating. They threw us from the truck onto the ground, which made my foot worse, and it’s still swollen now. The soldiers dragged me like an animal. They made us kneel in a row. There were guys who arrived there before us. One of them told me they’d asked for water and were given bottles filled with urine. When they threw the bottles away, the soldiers swore at them. While we were there, the soldiers beat us and set dogs on us. One of the soldiers shouted “Pool,” and then they pushed us into an empty swimming pool. Luckily, we didn’t stay there overnight because they transferred us to the Sde Teiman detention facility.
The drive to Sde Teiman was very hard. The soldiers escorting us on the bus beat us the entire way, hit us with their guns, stubbed out cigarettes on our bodies, swore at us and degraded us. They ordered one of the guys to sing, and laughed and made fun of him.
When we entered Sde Teiman, they removed the plastic zip ties and tied our hands behind our backs with metal cuffs. They also took off our underwear, leaving us completely naked, until they gave us an undershirt, underwear, a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of trousers – one set of clothes that we kept for a very long time.
There were about 20 of us, and they ordered us to get down on our knees. A soldier walked around us with a dog. They took us one by one into a small room, wrote down our information, removed the blindfold in front of a camera, scanned our eyes, and then sent us back. I was taken into a room that served as a clinic, where I was given water to drink. The doctor asked, “What are you suffering from?” I told him I’d sprained my foot jumping over a fence. He gave me a painkiller, bandaged my foot, and then they sent me back to the others.
After that, they put us in a shed that was like an iron cage, where there was a “shawish” (an inmate liaising between the guards and the other inmates). We were still handcuffed with our hands behind our backs. There, they tied our hands in front with the same metal handcuffs and removed the leg cuffs. Then they transferred us to another shed, where we sat on beds without mattresses. The shawish said, “You’re not allowed to take off the blindfolds, only lift them a bit.” At night, they gave us thin mattresses, and in the morning they took them away.
The breakfast we got consisted of dry bread and two containers of labneh for 40 detainees. Each of us got a spoonful of labneh and a slice of dry bread. At lunchtime, they gave us a can of tuna and slices of dry bread.
That same day, a suppression unit entered the shed. They threw stun grenades, ordered us to lie face down with our hands on our heads and cursed us. At the end of the raid, they threw a tear gas grenade into the shed. We all suffered from inhaling the gas, especially people with heart problems and angina. Some detainees actually choked, and one of them fainted. Because we were in such bad shape, they took us to wash our faces in the bathroom.
There were four sheds in Sde Teiman, and in the one where we were first held, conditions were especially harsh and included daily beatings and humiliation. They forced us to kneel or stand for hours on end. We weren’t allowed to talk to one another or move, and it was very hard even to pray properly. We got very little food, mostly dry bread. Most of all, we suffered from the cold and from being handcuffed all the time: We ate handcuffed, we showered handcuffed, slept handcuffed, and sometimes we simply couldn’t use the bathroom or shower like that. Our wrists turned blue from the handcuffs. I asked the guards to loosen them because they were too tight, but they refused. I’m still suffering from weakness and numbness in my fingers.
After 20 days, they moved us to another shed where the conditions were a bit less harsh. There were no soldiers inside, we could move a little and it wasn’t as cold. At some point, they brought in new detainees, some of them wounded. After a while, they removed our handcuffs and blindfolds. But two days later, the suppression units raided our shed in a very rough and violent operation.
Then they took us to interrogation rooms. The interrogator asked where I had been on 7 October and whether I knew the location of hostages, tunnels or Hamas members. I explained that I’m an ordinary civilian, not involved in any military activity, and that I only take care of my family. At the end of the interrogation, he suggested I collaborate with the Israeli military and said, “Help us, and we will help you.” I refused. He asked if I had a passport and when I said yes, he asked if I planned to emigrate after my release. I answered that I couldn’t leave my mother and daughter.
On the way to the interrogation and back, they beat and cursed us.
One night, while we were asleep in Room 5-6, a female soldier came in. They handcuffed and blindfolded us, and told us to go back to sleep like that. It was a very hard night. In the morning, they took me and five other detainees to a place called B1. When we got there, they took two of away for interrogation somewhere else and left the rest of us there. There were 50 detainees in B1. I slept on the floor and everything there was torture: the food, the water, entering the bathroom. They carried out suppression actions there every day and beat us so brutally it was unbearable.
After we suffered from the cold there for a long time, they brought us light jackets and added an apple or a tomato to the food. Because there was so little food, some of the guys and I started fasting during the day and saving all the food for the evening so we could eat a more filling meal before going to sleep. When the soldiers found out, a female soldier confiscated the food we had saved and forbade us to keep food for the evening. We had to obey. In other sheds, detainees didn’t obey, their food was taken and they were beaten.
The last suppression action I experienced was three days before my release. They ordered us to lie face down and brought in very big, frightening dogs the size of sheep. They ordered two detainees to go outside. One of them was a mental health professional. When they came back, they told us that outside, the soldiers had stripped them and made a large dog climb on them and stand on their chests. The Israeli military was especially interested in humiliating doctors and medical professionals from hospitals in the north.
There were detained teenagers there, 16-17 years old, that soldiers, both male and female, picked on. One was a sick boy they would wake up at night, move from bed to bed and harass until he broke down crying. They also picked on a detainee who was a judge in a shari’a court. They beat him, broke his front teeth and humiliated him. Another detainee, who had high blood pressure and diabetes, would wet himself because of the cold or during suppression actions, and we had to beg the guards to bring him clean clothes. There were elderly or disabled detainees who needed other detainees’ help to use the bathroom, including a man whose leg had been amputated after he was injured by gunfire at a-Nabulsi Square and didn’t have a wheelchair.
On the day I was released, an officer in charge of transferring detainees came into the shed and called my number. He said to me in Hebrew: “Come. Are you in good shape? Do you have any illnesses? Can you walk?” He called more guys over. There were between 10 and 15 of us. That night, when I went to sleep, I understood I probably really was going to be released.
The next morning, 29 December 2024, a female soldier came and called us. I told her my name and number and walked over to the shed door. They shackled us by the hands and feet, blindfolded us and ordered us to kneel. We waited like that for about half an hour. Then they made us crawl on our knees with our heads down to another shed. We stayed there for almost an hour, until they collected the other detainees from the other sheds. They beat us, cursed us and forbade us to move. When we asked for water, the soldiers said, “There isn’t any,” and when we asked to go to the bathroom, they said, “Not allowed.”
Then the officer in charge of the transfer came again, and we got on a bus. They cuffed our hands behind our backs and ordered us to press our foreheads to the back of the seat in front of us. The bus drove towards the crossing. On the way, the soldiers sang and mocked us. The officer announced: “I’m the officer. You are released. No one move.” He tried to confuse us and said they were taking us to the Tulkarm Crossing, but we were taken to Kerem Abu Salem [Kerem Shalom] Crossing.
Before we arrived, the officer said: “We’ll take off your handcuffs and leg cuffs and leave the blindfolds on.” They took the blindfold off just before we got off the bus, and gave us back our belongings and ID cards. My belongings were already stolen at Kamal Adwan Hospital, and I didn’t get my ID, money or phone back.
When we got off the bus, the officer said: “Go to the crossing and cross into Gaza.” We went and met people from the Red Cross. At 10 A.M., we boarded a bus where they gave us water and biscuits. Then they took us to the European Hospital, where we had medical checkups. Red Cross staff gave us clothes and phones so we could call our families, and a sum of 400 shekels each (roughly 125-130 USD).
I told the Red Cross guy that we had no roof over our heads, because our families were in the northern Gaza Strip. Later, I reached a school and received a tent there, but I only managed to sleep in it one night because it collapsed in the rain.
Now, I’m in Deir al-Balah. I’m moving between friends, acquaintances and relatives. I haven’t received any more aid to this day, no tent, no food parcel and no place to sleep. My situation is very difficult. No one takes care of us. Despite the severe suffering in the northern Gaza Strip, I would rather be there, where my family is, than in the south under these conditions.
After my release, I found out that my brothers Muhammad al-Khatib, 40, and Wael al-Khatib, 29, were arrested on 27 December 2024 at Kamal Adwan Hospital, on the same day the hospital director, Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh, was arrested. Muhammad had been hospitalized there because he was injured in his right arm and right leg, and Wael was there to look after him because he couldn’t walk or manage on his own. He needed surgery, but there was no way to do it at the hospital, and he only received first aid. I don’t know whether he was treated in an Israeli hospital after his arrest.
I’m trying to find out what’s happening with them. Released detainees told me that Muhammad lost a lot of weight, that he’s exhausted and in poor health due to the injury and neglect. Muhammad is married and a father of three. During the war, he had a son who needed medical attention and didn’t survive. He was in the neonatal unit at a-Shifaa Hospital and died of lack of oxygen when the Israeli military invaded the hospital. Wael is married and has two boys and a girl. From what I’ve heard, both were taken to Sde Teiman on 28 December 2024. I asked the Red Cross to find out what happened to them, and they confirmed they are both being held at Sde Teiman.
Now I’m waiting for a-Rashid Road to open so I can go back north, to Jabalya Refugee Camp, and see my daughter and the rest of my family. I miss them so much and can’t wait to see them.
* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Olfat al-Kurd on 26 January 2025