Israel accused of having tortured Palestinian workers to death
Palestinian workers were brutally mistreated during their detention in Israel after October 7, denounces a workers’ union.
By Mera Aladam,
The Palstinian workers detained during the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023 were mistreated by Israeli prison guards, some of them having been tortured to death or who disappeared, according to testimonies collected by a Palestinian union.
Wehbe Badarneh, legal advisor to the Union of Arab workers, told Arab48 that the union had asked for an investigation from the Israeli security and military centers in the fate of 46 Palestinian workers in Gaza after their disappearance on October 8, 2023.
The Israeli prison administration gave the Palestinian union a vague response confirming the death of 34 workers, who died in a detention center under “mysterious circumstances or following a heart attack”.
Mr. Badarneh explains that until October 7, 2023, 18,000 Palestinians from Gaza were in Israel with a work permit. However, after the attack, the Israeli authorities withdrew the work permits to the Palestinians of the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Mr. Badarneh explains that if he was simpler for those who came from the West Bank to return, the situation was much more difficult for workers of the besieged enclave.
“Chaos reigned in the border area between Israel and Gaza, called ‘Gaza envelope’, and confusion was total. No one knew who were the workers and who were infiltrated after the breakthrough and the collapse of the walls, “Badarneh told Arab48.
“Due to this chaos, the workers of Gaza were dispersed, some of them feared returning to Gaza, others have found refuge in the West Bank, and some of them were detained, arrested and brutally and Horribly abused at the military checkpoints in retaliation for the events which took place in the Gaza envelope. »»
According to Badarneh, hundreds of workers in Gaza have been transferred to prisons managed by Israel, in particular the sad detention centers of Sde Teiman and Ofer, which were denounced for the conditions and the abuses suffered by the Palestinians abducted at Gaza.
At first, the Union of Arab workers received numerous complaints and requests from Palestinians who had lost contact with their relatives, says Badarneh.
When the number of these complaints reached hundreds, we understood that the problem was serious and that it was no longer a few individuals, “he added.
The union contacted several Israeli services and authorities, but its requests for information were welcomed with indifference and contempt. This did not prevent the group from persevering in its efforts.
“We did not leave one unexplored entry,” said Badarneh. Yes, we went to the Supreme Court, and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz then published a report on the subject “. The journalist who worked on the file was then informed by a spokesperson for the Israeli army that the Body of some workers killed in the control posts had been transferred to Gaza to be buried there via the Erez control station.
‘Horrible forms of torture’
Some of the workers in Gaza who took refuge in the West Bank and were hosted in a Palestinian military college in Jericho gave information on the people who had been abducted. According to their testimonies and the videos that circulated at the time, the Palestinian workers detained were brutally beaten, undressed and subjected to various methods of torture. Consequently, the union came to the conclusion that the Palestinian workers had been tortured to death during their detention by Israel.
Subsequently, he submitted a report to European trade union organizations, whose members proposed to join the complaints filed against Israel to the International Court of Justice (CIJ). “Gaza workers were also summoned to Geneva to testify before the International Labor Organization, despite all the difficulties and restrictions,” adds Badarneh, in reference to the obstacles to the free movement imposed by Israel.
A certain number of previous surveys and reports, including the testimonies collected by Middle East Eye, seem to corroborate the declarations of Mr. Badarneh. “We were tortured, no one had mercy on us. They took our money and our clothes, they left us naked for three days while they tortured us. We were hungry, they kicked us and punches, they walked on our heads, and I am still suffering today, “said a worker in MEE in November 2023.
The same month, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor revealed that thousands of Gaza workers had been subject to “horrible forms of torture” by Israeli forces during their four-week captivity. The testimonies indicate that the workers have suffered abuses of unprecedented magnitude, in particular by being deprived of food and water for several days, tortured, electrocuted and burned, as well as sexually harassed and deliberately humiliated by urinating on their bodies “, Reported Euro-Med.
The organization added that many Palestinian workers had also been mistreated by their employers, who refused them payment of wages, spit them and submitted them to humiliations and insults.
Translation: JB for the media agency Palestine
Source: Middle East Eye
