A few dozen Israelis gathered silently in front of the fence of the Sde Teiman military base in the Negev desert under the scorching sun of an April morning. “Sde Teiman, torture camp,” read one of the black banners they unfurled, in English and Arabic. Hundreds of Palestinians arrested by the military in Gaza are being held in the barracks behind the demonstrators. Since October 7, “the mistreatment [of Palestinians] has reached a particularly tragic peak, with ferocious violence motivated by revenge. This place embodies these crimes more than any other,” said Oneg Ben Dror, one of the organizers of the rally, her mouth dry and her hands trembling.

After 10 minutes or so, the sit-in dispersed. A few days earlier, on April 18, the NGO Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) – where Ben Dror also works – published a petition signed by over 1,000 Israeli and international doctors calling for the closure of Sde Teiman. “The presence of medical personnel in a place where treatment and conditions amount to torture is prohibited,” the petition reads. According to two sources familiar with detention conditions, at least 40 Palestinians from Gaza have died while in custody of the Israeli military.

The army has acknowledged some deaths, including those of detainees “suffering from pre-existing illnesses or wounded in combat,” without officially specifying the number. It claims that investigations have been opened into each case, but that they are still ongoing. Contacted by PHRI, the Israeli Ministry of Health indicated at the end of March that only one autopsy had been carried out since October 7, suggesting that the vast majority of deaths had not been subjected to such an examination.

No access to judges, lawyers

Israel refuses to divulge the number of Gazan prisoners held by the army, at Sde Teiman or elsewhere. Palestinians often have no idea why they have been arrested; they have no access to a judge or a lawyer. The only Gazan detainees counted are those held in Israeli prisons: 865 are jailed under the status of “illegal fighters.” Their names are not published. The families in Gaza “ask just one simple question: are their loved ones alive or not? For the past six months, we’ve been unable to give them an answer,” summed up Naji Abbas, who is in charge of the case at PHRI. “These are enforced disappearances.”

In mid-April, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, published a report based on the testimonies of 1,506 former Gaza detainees who met them at the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south of the enclave, the site where the military releases them. They recounted the systematic violence, having been forced to kneel all day, for 12 to 16 hours, hands tied, blindfolded. “There were people with Alzheimer’s, old people who were blind, people with disabilities who couldn’t walk, people who had shrapnel in their backs and couldn’t stand up,” said one of them, aged 46. “Torture was for everyone.”

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