Two Gaza Detainees Beaten to Death En Route to Infamous Sde Teiman

Two Palestinian detainees taken from Gaza to the Sde Teiman detention facility in occupied Palestine were beaten to death by the IOF, according to what two sources told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, citing an Israeli occupation forces Police investigation into the incident.

The two Palestinians were abducted by IOF troops in March from Khan Younis using the pretext that they were suspected members of the Palestinian Resistance. When they were taken, they were still alive, and the IOF strapped them and put them in a truck. 

However, when they arrived at Sde Teiman, a temporary IOF detention facility near Be’er Shevam, they were already dead. 

The IOF troops, unharmed, claimed that the two Palestinians possibly died due to the “extremely bumpy ride over rough terrain,” however, the investigation’s conclusions contradict these claims. 

It appears, based on the investigation, that the IOF troops beat the detainees in multiple areas across their bodies, with evidence indicating that one of them sustained a head injury. 

A deeper look into so-called investigations 

After the autopsy is done, the IOF will determine how to go on with this investigation. 

This incident was initially reported last month by the Israeli Kan channel and is being investigated by the Israeli Military Police Criminal Investigation Division. 

Reports say that multiple IOF troops have been questioned under caution, however, none of them has been arrested so far on suspicion of killing the two Palestinians, similar to the killing of 33 other Palestinians from Gaza detained by the IOF and brought to occupied Palestine. 

The Israeli occupation forces Police also claim that they have been investigating in recent months the “deaths” of 35 Palestinians who were abducted from Gaza and “died” in Israeli detention facilities or while in IOF custody.

Even though they said that these investigations were launched into all of these brutal cases, no Israeli soldier has been arrested in any of them, and they only make up half of the cases the IOF police claim they have been investigating.

IOF sources themselves say that two other Palestinian detainees “died suddenly” due to neglect or insufficient medical treatment, as well as diseases and infections that spread in the facility, reflecting a systematic policy of medical negligence.

The horrible conditions the Palestinian detainees are being forced to go through at Sde Teiman, widely reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz itself among others, is something Israeli occupation courts, which have miserably failed to hold any official accountable, will allegedly be looking into next week.

More sources speak on the horrors of Sde Teiman 

Speaking with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, a medical source said that the health situation in Sde Teiman is dire, emphasizing that “it’s an incubator of diseases” and noting that at least two of the detained Palestinians died from diseases and infections that developed there, as well as from highly documented medical neglect.

Another source told Haaretz that they were shocked by the cases of “sudden death” that are harder to explain, adding, “It’s another world, a black hole.”

In another shocking case in Ofer Prison, a detained Palestinian died in its clinic. Izz al-Din al-Bana was a 40-year-old wheelchair-bound Palestinian detained from Gaza who “suddenly” died, a source familiar with the case said. 

The source was really baffled by how a man living 18 years of his life with a disability “died suddenly”  and wondered what caused his condition to collapse, adding that they believe he died due to medical neglect. 

A lawyer who visited the detention center said that detainees informed him that al-Bana was paraplegic and had severe pressure sores. One detainee even said that he looked yellow and showed clear signs that he was dying, however, he received no care. 

Sde Teiman shackles and blindfolds Palestinian detainees 

According to the BBC on May 21, there have been great concerns over the treatment of sick and injured detainees in the military field hospital in the Sde Teiman base in southern occupied Palestine.

According to several medics in charge of treating patients, patients at the Sde Teiman hospital are kept blindfolded and permanently shackled to their beds by all four limbs. They are also forced to wear nappies instead of using a toilet. 

Still, the IOF tried to justify this, as some witnesses one of whom is the facility’s senior anaesthesiologist, Yoel Donchin, said that the use of nappies and handcuffs is universal in the hospital ward. 

Donchin told the BBC that “the army create the patient to be 100% dependent, like a baby,” adding, “You are cuffed, you are with diapers, you need water, you need everything – it’s dehumanization.”

He also emphasized that there was no individual evaluation of the need for restraints and that even those patients who were unable to walk, like those with leg amputations, were handcuffed to the bed, further labeling this practice as “stupid”.

Two witnesses at the facility back in October told the BBC that patients were kept naked under the blankets. 

One doctor with knowledge of the conditions there said that prolonged cuffing to beds would cause “huge suffering, horrible suffering,” labeling it as “torture”, adding that after hours, patients would begin feeling pain, while others also said that there is a risk of long-term nerve damage. 

The BBC said that footage of Palestinians detained in Gaza released after interrogation shows injuries and scarring around their wrists and legs. 

What more testimonies do they need?

A whistleblower who worked at the Sde Teiman field hospital shortly after October 7 described how patients were being given insufficient amounts of painkillers, including anesthetic. 

He also told the BBC that a doctor once rejected his request to give an elderly patient painkillers while opening up a recent infection amputation wound, stressing that “[the patient] started trembling from pain, and so I stop and say ‘we can’t go on, you need to give him analgesia’.”

The witness told the BBC that on another occasion, he was requested by a suspected Palestinian Resistance fighter to ask the surgical team to increase the levels of morphine and anesthetic during repeated surgeries, however, even though the message was delivered, when the Palestinian regained consciousness again during his next operation, he was in a lot of pain.

The whistleblower said that the doctor’s response was that it was too late to give him the painkillers and that such procedures “were routinely done without analgesia,” leading to “an unacceptable amount of pain.”