October 7, 2023, was supposed to be Hussein al-Zuweidi's wedding day. He rented a large hall, invited 2.500 friends and relatives, and paid for the rental of a wedding dress. Instead of exchanging vows, he and his fiancée were forced to flee the far north of the Gaza Strip.
Zuweidi and his family ended up at a school in Jabaliya, near Gaza City. The wedding eventually took place there, a month later, without a celebration and without a wedding dress.
A month later, Zuweidi says, he was captured by the Israeli army when it took control of the school they had taken refuge in. He was released on October 13 of this year after 22 months in captivity, as part of an exchange for the last 20 living Israeli hostages held by Hamas and its affiliates in Gaza.
Today, at 26, Zuweidi sits in his family's tent in Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip. His parents' home in the north was destroyed in the war. Several of his relatives were killed. Zuweidi, however, knew nothing of it. He says he is still shocked by the devastation, as well as by how exhausted and starving his parents and siblings are. But above all, he seems deeply traumatized by what he endured in captivity.
After his capture, Zuweidi testified, he was taken to the Israeli Sde Teiman detention camp, where he spent 18 days with his hands tied and blindfolded. He and the other detainees were rarely allowed to use the toilet; most of the time they were forced to defecate where they had to squat. They were not allowed to lie down, speak, or raise their heads. They were only allowed to sleep for five hours at night. They were beaten repeatedly, he said.
Their meals consisted of a small piece of bread and half a spoonful of canned tuna, Zuveidi says. The mattresses were thin, as were the blankets, despite the cold in the corridors where the prisoners were locked up. Zuveidi says he was brutally beaten in other detention camps. When he fell ill with chickenpox, he says, he did not receive any treatment for a long time.
"I thought I was going to die," Zuveidi says of his time in Israeli captivity. "And every day I thanked God that I was still alive." He still has nightmares - and when he eats, he reflexively kneels on the floor and leans forward, the way he had to in prison.
Der Spiegel has reviewed Zuweidi's social media activity. His posts from previous years indicate possible sympathies for militant groups. He has repeatedly posted photos on Facebook in which he poses with an automatic rifle, while in some posts he has paid tribute to fighters. However, there is no evidence that he was a member of Hamas. In any case, none of this can justify the months of abuse and torture.
Zuweidi was one of about 1.700 Palestinians from Gaza who were captured during the war and released in mid-October. The vast majority of them were civilians, detained without charge as so-called irregular fighters. Many of them, like Zuweidi, later spoke of hunger, abuse and unbearable conditions of detention.
Their testimonies are consistent with reports by international media, including Der Spiegel, since mid-2024, as well as with the findings of Israeli and international human rights organizations. The Sde Teiman camp has since gained a notorious reputation as the "Israeli Guantanamo." However, the abuse is not limited to the military camp in the Negev desert. It appears to be widespread in almost all other detention camps and prisons. Israel denies this.
"Torture has become a deliberate and widespread tool of state policy," according to a report recently submitted to the UN Committee against Torture by several Israeli human rights organizations. "The practice is present throughout the entire detention process - from arrest, to interrogation, to imprisonment." The report claims that senior Israeli officials have approved these abuses, while judicial, administrative and medical mechanisms have failed to intervene. It adds that detainees are often denied access to lawyers and medical care for extended periods of time.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has repeatedly sought access to the detainees in recent years - without success. Israel currently holds around 9.200 Palestinians as so-called "security prisoners."
But it's not just about abuse. The Israeli organization Physicians for Human Rights (PHRI) has reviewed testimonies, official documents and other evidence, and has recorded 98 deaths since the start of the war.
According to PHRI, more than two-thirds of the deceased were from Gaza, while the rest were from the West Bank. The organization said 52 detainees died in military camps, with more than half of the deaths recorded in the Sde Teiman camp.
"We first requested information about prisoners through the courts in December 2023," said Naji Abbas, one of the authors of the PHRI report published last Monday. "After that, we were unofficially informed that people in Sde Teiman were dying every week."
It was only seven months later, he added, that the military first mentioned a specific number. "And to this day, they refuse to release additional information, such as the cause of death," Abbas said. He is convinced that the real death toll is much higher.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir pursued a policy of deliberately worsening conditions in detention centers and prisons as a form of "additional punishment," the PHRI report said. Thus, after the terrorist attack on October 7, 2023, detention facilities became "places of torture and abuse, where basic human rights were systematically denied."
This, it said, included denial of medical care, as well as "widespread use of daily physical violence." PHRI concludes that "the killing of Palestinians in captivity has become a normalized practice."
"In the ten cases where a doctor, through the courts, was able to examine the bodies, almost all of them found traces of violence and neglect," says Abbas. However, since in the vast majority of cases the families of the deceased were not provided with autopsy documentation, the exact causes of death cannot generally be reliably determined.
Abbas also cited the case of a 33-year-old man who suffered broken ribs and a broken sternum in Megiddo prison in northern Israel. According to other prisoners, more than a dozen prison guards beat him for several minutes.
Hussein al-Zuweidi, a released prisoner, confirms that violence was common not only in Sde Teiman, but also in three other detention facilities where he was held. During one interrogation, he said, his interrogators tied him to a chair for 12 hours and repeatedly beat him on the genitals. After that, he said, he had blood in his urine. He said he was brutally beaten, especially when being transferred from one detention facility to another. In one case, he added, another prisoner told him that he had been raped with a baton.
Zuweidi claims to have witnessed one fatality. He says he spent several months in a cell in Negev prison with a retired teacher in his 70s. When news of a possible ceasefire broke in late September, the prisoners began to celebrate, after which Israeli soldiers beat them and shot them with rubber bullets. The elderly man, according to Zuweidi, was shot in the head, began bleeding and lost consciousness.
"We begged the soldiers to take the injured man to a doctor, but it was two full days before they took him out of the cell," Zuweidi says. "They never brought him back, and it was clear to all of us that he was dead." PHRI researcher Abbas says he is not familiar with the specific case, but he finds it "credible, because we are very familiar with the pattern of abuse and denial of help after that."
The Israeli Prison Service categorically rejects the allegations of abuse. The military did not respond to SPIEGEL's inquiries by press time.
Looking away
Earlier this month, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza published a report on “systematic rape and sexual torture” of detainees. Among other forms of abuse, it described the insertion of a wooden stick into the rectum in one case and bottles into another. These descriptions are consistent with what several human rights organizations have reported since the start of the war in Gaza. A report by a United Nations panel of experts in March said that the “frequency, prevalence and severity” of these acts indicate “Israel’s increasing use of sexual and gender-based violence as a method of warfare.”
Witness accounts and other evidence point to a single conclusion: the abuse is ongoing and systematic. Yet it is denied or ignored by Israeli politics and much of society. Israeli media rarely reports on the abuse of prisoners, and when they do, they usually present it as isolated incidents. Often, the anger is directed not at the perpetrators, but at those who speak out about the abuse.
This was clearly seen in a case that caused a scandal in Israel and cost the military prosecutor her job a few weeks ago. It all began in July 2024, when a prisoner from Sde Teiman was taken to hospital with serious injuries; among other injuries, it was initially reported that he had been raped. It was later discovered that he had been "pierced with a sharp object", causing damage to his rectum.
Five reservists were accused of abusing prisoners and were taken into custody. They were part of a special unit tasked with guarding prisoners at Sde Teiman. Shortly thereafter, a right-wing group, including members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, first stormed Sde Teiman and then another military base in an attempt to free the reservists. Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police, called the arrests of the suspected perpetrators "nothing short of shameful."
A few days later, an Israeli television station released surveillance footage from inside Sde Teiman, allegedly showing the abuse of a Palestinian. The footage shows about two dozen prisoners lying face down behind metal fences and barbed wire. Soldiers can be seen dragging one prisoner and then pushing him against a wall. He stands with his back to them, as if being searched. What follows is mostly obscured by riot shields that soldiers use to block the view. The man falls to the ground. He appears to have been beaten or kicked.
In Israel, the debate sparked by the footage focused primarily on who leaked the footage, and much less on the content of the footage itself. In early November, more than a year after the incident, the culprit was revealed: the military prosecutor in charge of the case, Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi. She arranged for the footage to be shared with a journalist. She was briefly detained, and investigations are ongoing.
In her resignation letter, the military prosecutor justified her actions by saying she had authorized the release of the footage "to counter false propaganda directed against military law enforcement." The detainees included "terrorists and terrorist operatives of the worst kind," she wrote, but that does not change the fact that they must not be mistreated. "Unfortunately, that basic understanding - that there are actions that should never be taken even against the worst detainees - is no longer generally accepted."
In early November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the leaked footage, saying, "This is perhaps the most serious public relations attack that Israel has experienced since its founding." His defense minister accused the military prosecutor of "blood libel," or anti-Semitic incitement.
The military prosecutor is now seen as a traitor in the eyes of the Israeli right - despite the fact that during the two years of the war in Gaza she protected the army, including in actions that were illegal under international law.
The journalist to whom the footage was delivered was subjected to such threats that his television company allegedly hired bodyguards for his protection.
The Palestinian victim of the abuse has since been released. He was returned to Gaza as part of a hostage-taking deal and apparently was not even questioned by the investigating authorities. The release is unusual, as there are indications that he was a member of Hamas and may even have been involved in an attack on Israel. The Israeli government has previously categorically ruled out the possibility of releasing such prisoners.
Alleged perpetrators see themselves as victims
The question is whether the proceedings can be conducted without the victim's testimony, and the defense of the alleged perpetrators has already filed a motion to suspend the proceedings. In any case, the accused are not in custody. One of them has appeared on television several times, where he has sought to justify his actions. In early November, four of them, wearing masks, held a kind of press conference, at which they complained about the speed with which they claim they have been demonized. "Instead of confessions, we got accusations - and instead of gratitude, silence."
Journalist Roni Singer from Israeli Channel 11 has been following the case in detail. She does not see the military prosecutor as a heroine. Singer believes that the prosecutor feared retaliation and tried to protect herself by releasing the video.
"She wanted the Israelis to understand that she had no choice but to prosecute the soldiers." However, according to Singer, the military prosecutor had other options. By releasing the video, Singer argues, she effectively gave the Israeli government a "gift," which is now being used to continue its crackdown on the judiciary.
"Nobody really cares what goes on in prisons," Singer says. "Many Israelis think that's what happens. They're Hamas terrorists, so violence is a given." Even Singer, who is critical of the government, says she's convinced there's violence in Sde Teiman, but that torture is by no means a daily occurrence.
During the two years of war, only one soldier was convicted of beating Palestinian prisoners in Sde Teiman. He was sentenced to seven months in prison, a sentence that human rights organizations have criticized as too lenient.
"The military is still considered sacred in Israel," says Israeli international law expert Eitan Diamond of the Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Center. In addition, he adds, Netanyahu's government has created a political culture "fed with hatred." As a result, he sees "a widespread dehumanization of Palestinians." All of this, he says, is normalizing illegal behavior.
His conclusion is: "A military that allows crimes to become the norm is incapable of prosecuting individual crimes." It is all the more important, he believes, that the International Criminal Court continue its investigations and receive support in doing so, even despite opposition from the United States and Israel.
Arranged by: A. Š., NB
Bonus video:
