DayofPal– For months, senior doctors and surgeons from Gaza have been detained in Israeli prisons, enduring relentless torture, starvation, and humiliation without being charged for a specific crime.
These medical professionals, who dedicated their lives to saving others amid the horrors of war, found themselves subjected to brutal interrogations, physical abuse, and a total denial of medical care.
Their testimonies paint a harrowing picture of conditions inside Israeli detention facilities, where beatings were routine, food and water were scarce, and medical treatment was often withheld, even for those suffering from severe injuries sustained during their arrest.
On March 25, Israeli forces stormed Nasser Hospital, where Dr. Khaled Serr and his colleagues were working amid the destruction of war. Through drones mounted with loudspeakers, they were ordered to evacuate.
Stripped of their clothes and forced into a pit near the hospital, the doctors were then transported to Israel in military vehicles, where their ordeal escalated.
“They beat us mercilessly throughout the transfer,” said Dr. Serr, who suffered fractures along his right side but never received medical care.
Upon arrival at Sde Teiman detention camp, he and other detainees were blindfolded, their hands locked in metal cuffs, and forced to sit silently from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.. Any attempt to move or speak invited swift, violent punishment.
“I heard the screams of prisoners being singled out,” he recounted. “Many suffered permanent disabilities.”
The doctors describe a system of systematic abuse inside multiple detention centers, including Ofer Camp and Naqab Prison.
Dr. Mohammed Abu Selmia, a senior physician, recalled being tied to a chair for 15 hours at a time, deprived of food, water, and sleep. “They bent my back using their hands or legs, beating me with rifle butts,” he said.
At night, he was placed in a cell with bright lights on at all hours, cold air blasting, and cameras monitoring his every move. “All night, you hear people screaming,” he said. “Every day is humiliation. Every day is degradation.”
Dr. Issam Abu Ajwa was forced to sleep on a floor covered with sharp rocks, his hands and legs bound, blindfolded. Cold water was poured over him while air conditioners blasted freezing air.
“They made me stand on my tiptoes for hours before throwing me to the ground and spraying me with water. Then, they beat me—three or four soldiers at once.”
After months in detention, he was transferred to Negev Prison, where conditions were even worse.
“We were locked inside tents in the desert heat, denied basic hygiene. We contracted scabies after six months without washing or changing clothes. It felt like my body was burning, but they refused to give us treatment.”
Detainees were forced to drink from hot water pipes once a day, stand barefoot on scorching asphalt for hours in 37°C (99°F) heat, and survive on meager portions of rice and yogurt. Many lost half their body weight.
None of the doctors were ever charged with a crime. Many were arrested at checkpoints, hospitals, or while trying to flee the war with their families.
Dr. Bassam Miqdad was seized at a checkpoint while evacuating Khan Younis. Soldiers urinated on him and others, beat them with sticks, and forced them into a transport vehicle where prisoners were piled on top of each other, still blindfolded and handcuffed.
“When I fell and fractured my ankle, they made me walk with my back bent at 90 degrees,” he said.
For Dr. Ahmad Mhanna, the ordeal included a period in what prison guards called “the Disco”—a freezing interrogation room with deafening music blasting 24 hours a day. He was forced to sleep on gravel wearing only a thin tracksuit. “They poured the water that dogs drank from over me,” he said.
Interrogators forced him to stand for six hours in the cold, arms raised and shackled. When asked repeatedly if he belonged to any militant group, his answer never changed: “I am a doctor. I do not belong to anything else.”
In a statement, the Israel Defense army justified the arrests, claiming that “suspects of terrorist activities” had been detained and taken for questioning. Those deemed innocent, the army claimed, were released.
The army also insisted that detainees were given adequate food, water, medical care, and bedding, and that all detentions were carried out in compliance with Israeli and international law.
Yet the doctors’ testimonies, and the physical toll evident on their bodies after months in detention, tell a different story. Some returned emaciated, covered in bruises, and permanently disabled. Others say they witnessed people dying in their cells, without ever knowing why they were taken.
For the doctors who survived, the physical and psychological scars remain.
“I lost 25 kilos,” said Dr. Said Maarouf, who was arrested alongside his son, a first-year medical student. “I couldn’t stand, eat, or move. I was just waiting to die.”
Now released, these men struggle to recover from a different kind of devastation, one inflicted far from the battlefield, inside the walls of a prison they never should have entered.
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