The death of a Hamas commander and historic prisoner in Israeli custody announced Friday by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has inflamed the spirits of the Palestinian forces almost 10 months after the outbreak of the war in Gaza. The death coincides with complaints from various humanitarian organizations about the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli prison system. These NGOs corroborate the testimonies of some of those who have been released from Israeli prisons after being arrested since the war in Gaza began on October 7.
Mustafa Mohamed Abu Ara, 63, one of the leaders of Hamas in the occupied West Bank, has died in Israeli custody, the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs of the Palestinian Authority (PA) said in a statement. He had last been arrested in the early days of the conflict that began last October, when he was already having “serious health problems.” In recent days, he had been transferred from Ramon prison in the south of the country to a hospital, according to the Commission, which claims that he suffered “torture” and “lack of medical care.” The Palestinian authorities already denounced in April the death in Israeli custody of doctor Adnan al Bursh, head of Traumatology at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, who was arrested in the Strip in November.
The Palestinian fundamentalist movement has mourned Abu Ara’s death and accused the Israeli authorities of “murder due to deliberate medical negligence” and called for revenge, according to a statement. Up to 18 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli custody, according to the PA. The number of detainees in the West Bank has risen to 9,300 people due to the war, of whom more than a third are in administrative detention, meaning they are not charged or held in court.
The death of Mustafa Mohamed Abu Ara comes amid a controversy in Israel over allegations surrounding the Sde Teiman military detention centre, a military base some thirty kilometres from the Gaza Strip, where arrested Gazans are interrogated. Following pressure from the Supreme Court and various NGOs, the inmates are being moved to tents in a state prison system. One of the detainees in Sde Teiman told this newspaper how he witnessed the deaths of two of his fellow prisoners.
The lack of adequate conditions in these facilities has been highlighted by various Israeli doctors who agreed to treat the detainees, such as the one who recounted his time at the centre to this newspaper. “Being tied to a bed, unable to move, unable to see, unable to speak, unable to understand what is happening and in a diaper… In the cold. And this goes on for days and days, for weeks. I think that is already a form of torture,” he said.
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Testimonies of ill-treatment from those released are common. “From the first moment of arrest, they beat us. Until they released me.” This was one of the few things that 30-something patient Moazzaz Abyat stammered at the beginning of July when questioned for a few seconds in the emergency room of a hospital in Bethlehem (West Bank). “My head hurts, I’m tired… they beat me, my head hurts. Very tired,” he repeated from his bed.
Abyat arrived straight to the hospital after being released on July 9. He had spent almost nine months in a prison in southern Israel under administrative detention. His image, limping and without moving his right hand, in the video recorded at the prison gate bears no resemblance to that of the young bodybuilder who was arrested in the first days of the war.
His father and cousins did not hide in the hospital corridors that the family has traditionally been linked to the Palestinian resistance, but they insisted that Moazzaz Abyat had been released without any kind of sentence. Once in the assigned room, those who came to visit him lifted the sheet to see scars around his navel and legs, along with marks of what appear to be blows.
Palestinian prisoners “face routine violence and humiliation from guards when they leave their cells to visit their lawyers and receive medical care,” the Israeli organization Physicians for Human Rights denounced in a statement on July 11. Citing the testimonies of a dozen prisoners, it said that “such violence takes place in areas not covered by security cameras and includes kicking and beating restrained prisoners, denial of access to bathrooms and sexual degradation.” This is why “many prisoners forgo medical treatment and visits from their lawyers for fear of being assaulted.”
Similar allegations have also been made by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, which claims that in Abyat’s case, he was released “from Al Naqab prison in an alarming and difficult state of health” due to “the torture and mistreatment of prisoners since the beginning of the war.” Abyat was “brutally beaten during his detention, particularly on the legs. He subsequently faced a series of severe beatings and torture” as well as “starvation and medical neglect,” the statement from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said, warning that “thousands of prisoners are at risk of dying in Israeli prisons.”
In response to questions about the case of Moazzaz Abyat, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) said in a written message that “all prisoners are detained in accordance with the law” with “all basic rights.” “The prisoner was medically examined and treated by IPS’s top doctors throughout his imprisonment,” and in any case, “he has the right to file a complaint.” In another message, a day later, the IPS spokesperson attached a video captured from social media that mocks Abyat’s supposedly quick recovery.
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―I think social media has spoken.
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