‘We were ready to die’: Gaza sisters reveal Israeli detention horror

Alaa Al-Saqafi, director of the Addameer Foundation for Human Rights in Gaza, reports that at least 59 Palestinian women have been arrested in Gaza since October 7, 2023. While most were released during the war, four remained detained until the January ceasefire when they were freed alongside other Palestinian prisoners.

"These women were under administrative detention and were held without charge and subjected to physical and psychological torture, abusive language, and sexual harassment and were touched inappropriately by both male and female soldiers," says Al-Saqafi.

His organisation also documented systematic Israeli neglect of urgent medical treatment following severe beatings, particularly in sensitive areas of the body. "Some nursing mothers were also deprived of breastfeeding their infants," he tells TRT World.

This is the harrowing story of three sisters from Gaza. Pseudonyms have been used to protect their identities.

The ordeal begins

For Sara, Hala, and Shaza, three Palestinian sisters from Gaza, December 18, 2023. remains an unrelenting nightmare.

Like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, they were forcibly displaced from their homes in Gaza City soon after the events of October 7, when Israel embarked on a relentless war that left over 47,000 people killed, mostly women and children.

After their home was partially destroyed by Israeli air strikes, the sisters and their families sought refuge at Al-Ahli Hospital, the oldest and only Christian hospital in Gaza, situated between the Shujaiya and Zeitoun neighbourhoods.

"The whole family was there," Sara, 40, recalls. "But we soon learned that there was no safe place in Gaza."

On October 18, the hospital became the site of an Israeli massacre that reportedly killed 500 people.

"But that was not enough," Sara tells TRT World. "Weeks after storming the hospital, the Israelis came back, evacuated the hospital and arrested people."

The arrest

On December 18, a Monday, remembers Sara. "We were fasting."

At 12 noon loudspeakers blared orders from Israeli soldiers besieging Al-Ahli Hospital, forcing patients and displaced families to evacuate. But the women refused to leave.

"We didn't think they would do anything to us," Sara continues, "we thought we weren't important to them, until they asked everyone to take their clothes off."

As documented in countless reports, throughout this war, men have been rounded up by the Israeli military and stripped to their underwear. They were cattled in single file with their hands up holding their identification cards in scenes described as reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps. But when the sisters refused to remove their prayer garments, an Israeli soldier threatened them with death.

“We were ready to die that day," says Sara.

Sara's older sister Shaza, 48, remembers every moment of the excruciating ordeal.

"When we refused to strip, one of the soldiers said we could just come out and raise our arms to show our IDs," says Shaza.

That was when they rounded up the men.

"One hundred and fifty men were arrested, including my husband, my son-in-law, brother, nephew, and uncle," she says.

The three sisters deliberately joined three different groups to avoid being singled out and in the hopes that at least one of them would be released if the occupation forces randomly decided to free one of the groups.

"But our plan failed," says Shaza, explaining how they were suddenly surrounded in every direction by quad-copters, tanks, trucks, and bulldozers. "There were even snipers on the rooftops and ferocious dogs."

The loudspeakers blared out warnings to anyone who dared hide inside the hospital, threatening to unleash the "hungry dogs" on them.

Initial detention and searches

Sara was the first to be arrested and taken to a room in a shop near the hospital. "They took my ID then a female soldier asked me to take off all my clothes," Sara recalls. "When I objected that there were male soldiers nearby, she put a gun to my head and told me to turn my back to them."

Terrified, Sara started undressing. Only then, another female soldier asked the men to leave the room.

As she stood naked, the abuse escalated.

"The female soldier touched my body and breasts as she passed a metal detector over me and asked me to open my legs," says Sara. "When the device started beeping she pushed it inside me even though it was clear that my copper contraception IUD was causing the beep."

After the soldier finished her "search" Sara got dressed, but then the soldier blindfolded her, tied up her feet and hands, and sat her down on the sidewalk.

"I never felt as isolated from the whole world as I did at that moment," she recalls.

But before long, Shaza and Hala joined her after being subjected to the same search.

"Where are my children?" Sara asked. "We don't know anything," they replied.

Transport to military facilities

The three sisters told TRT World that by this point, they were mentally paralysed as the tanks moved towards them spewing smoke bombs.

"They left us there for three hours, we thought we were about to die," they said, but when we heard the officer say 'take them to Israel', they continued, "We knew that our lives were over; no one will ever find us."

They later learned that this was one of the Israeli occupation's psychological torture techniques used against detainees, to make them think they will be taken to the unknown.

Systematic abuse at Anatot Camp

At the notorious Anatot detention centre near Jerusalem, their suffering intensified. Forced to walk barefoot on freezing floors, they were made to wear thin pyjamas unsuitable for the harsh winter.

A recent report by the Commission of Detainees' Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner's Society, has confirmed detainees from Gaza held at the camp, were subjected to inhumane treatment. "We were given wet blankets to sleep with," Sara says. "The cold seeped into our bones."

The soldiers confiscated their money and cell phones and for the following three to four hours, when they were thirsty, a soldier would pour water over their heads and make them catch it in their open mouths.

"This camp was like a bird cage, perched on a high altitude which allowed us to see people and cars from far away, but no one could see us," says Shaza.

Denied basic hygiene, detainees drank from discarded yoghurt containers. When guards noticed, they confiscated them. Praying was strictly forbidden and punished with beatings.

“We prayed with our eyes under the blankets," they said.

Sara and Shaza, say that many women, including their younger sister Hala, 31 and unmarried, were so traumatised by the experience that they could no longer speak even after their release.

"One day Hala was on her period," says Sara. "Unable to wait for hours to get the sanitary pads she asked for, she was forced to use a former prisoner's underwear. It was utterly humiliating."

Interrogated for hours, their hands and feet tied to chairs, the sisters endured relentless questioning and isolation tactics designed to break their spirits.

Final days at Damon

The final phase of their captivity was at Damon prison inside Israel. Here, Sara was sexually harassed by an Israeli soldier.

"Tied up and blindfolded we were loaded on trucks," says Sara, "but a soldier started to touch me and put his hand on my lips. When I screamed he hit my head with the butt of his rifle and I lost consciousness."

Shaza says she heard it all, but couldn't see anything. She also heard the cries of a pregnant detainee who was brutally beaten, causing her to miscarry.

When they arrived at Damon prison after a torturous six-hour journey they joined Palestinian prisoners from the occupied West Bank, who gave them clean clothes, and food.

"We lived under relatively good conditions for the next 21 days," they recall, until the wardens decided to separate the West Bank detainees from the Gazans. But after three weeks, Israeli authorities segregated the Gaza detainees into filthy, dark cells infested with insects, allowing them outside only 15 minutes a day in the rain.

"The humiliation was unbearable," Sara says.

Release and aftermath

On the eve of February 2, 2024, the three sisters were interrogated once again.The next day, they were ordered to sign release papers.

"They asked us to smile at the camera and gave us water. 'Don't look back,' they said,” recalls Sara.

At the Kerem Abu Salem crossing, Red Cross workers reunited them with their families. Shaza’s husband, detained alongside them, had also been released. But for over a year, Sara remained separated from her husband and children, trapped in different parts of Gaza due to Israeli-imposed movement restrictions.

"We were haunted by fear for a whole year, unable to speak out about the torture we faced. The occupation threatened to harm our families and children if we spoke to the media," says Sara. "Now, we speak—for those who still cannot."

The article is published in collaboration with Egab.