Gaza workers expelled from Israel accuse Israeli authorities of abuse, including beatings

Following their expulsion from Israel last week, Palestinian laborers have accused Israeli officials of “torture,” claiming they were stripped naked, imprisoned, severely beaten, and, according to one worker’s account, shocked with electricity.

They humiliated us by breaking and beating us with metal sticks and batons. An further worker named Muqbel Abdullah Al Radia told CNN, “They have forced us to starve without food or water.”

Eight additional men, including Abdullah Al Radia, were interviewed by CNN on Friday as they crossed the Kerem Shalom border in southern Israel to return to Gaza. Al Radia, a Gaza native from the village of Beit Lahiya in the north, told CNN that he was among the thousands of Palestinians from Gaza who had licenses to work in Israel at the time of the conflict.

Most Gazan laborers are employed in agriculture or construction. Instead of traveling, they frequently spend weeks away from home, which is why so many of them were in Israel on Saturday, October 7, the day of Hamas’ deadly strike.

Al Radia claimed that he and a few other Gazan laborers had escaped to Rahat, a mostly Arab Bedouin city in southern Israel, as soon as the conflict broke out. There, he claims that locals turned them over to the Israeli army.

He claimed, “(The military) took our phones and money, we were given food on the floor in plastic bags, and we couldn’t communicate with our families.”

Israeli media first reported on concerns that the workers with permits were Hamas militants when the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel broke out. However, an Israeli security official later told CNN that the men were detained for entering Israel illegally after their work permits were revoked, not for suspected terrorist activity.

According to the security officer, in several instances, they were detained for their own safety since they were vulnerable to assault from Israeli populations.

Israel’s High Court has received a petition from six human rights organizations contending that these detentions were “without legal authority and without legal grounds.”

In a statement released last week, Gisha, an Israeli non-profit organization that works to protect Palestinians’ freedom of movement, stated that it had “reason to believe that the holding conditions in these facilities were extremely dire, and that detainees were subjected to extensive physical violence and psychological abuse, in addition to being held inhumane conditions.”

Numerous workers have claimed that they were unaware of their destination upon being taken into custody. According to the Palestinian Prisoners Society, a human rights organization located in the occupied West Bank, many of these individuals were held in two detention facilities: one situated in Ofer near Ramallah and another in Salem near Jenin.

Mahmoud Abu Darabeh, a worker hailing from Beit Lahiya, also detailed instances of physical abuse by individuals he believes to be Israeli forces.

Abu Darabeh disclosed that he was apprehended on the second day of the conflict. He recounted the harrowing conditions he and others endured, saying, “They placed us in enclosures like animals, subjected us to beatings and insults, and displayed a complete disregard for whether individuals were ill or not. Some of us sustained injuries, and their feet deteriorated due to the lack of medical attention.”

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“There have been cases of abuse towards the detainees outside of the official detention facilities. These cases were treated very seriously, and they were dealt with disciplinary measures,” an Israeli security official told CNN, speaking through a translator. The official also stated that, to their knowledge, two soldiers were placed in military prison for their conduct and four soldiers were removed from the IDF due to abuse incidents.

When questioned about the possibility of detainees dying due to mistreatment, the official acknowledged that two Gazan workers who had been detained did indeed pass away. However, he emphasized that these deaths were attributed to pre-existing chronic health conditions that the individuals had prior to their arrival in Israel, rather than being a consequence of abuse.

The official also clarified that, as far as he was aware, the reported abuses did not involve the use of electric shocks.