Life in Palestine: 'I'd rather they break my arms and legs than take me into detention'

The Journal

5 hours ago

PEOPLE WHO LIVE under military occupation in the West Bank would rather be hospitalised than taken to an Israeli detention centre, Palestinian human rights activist Nasser Nawaj'ah has told
The Journal
.
Nawaj'ah comes from the village of Susiya in the West Bank and has been working with the Israeli human rights NGO B'Tselem for over 16 years.
He and his colleague Sarit Michaeli, B'Tselem's head of funding and international advocacy, sat down with
The Journal
during a visit to Dublin to discuss what happens to people in Israeli detention, and what it's like in the communities where arbitrary arrest is a constant threat.
'Today in the Palestinian community, you hear many people saying that if the army comes into my house in the middle of the night and knocks down the door, I would rather they break my arms and legs and beat me up than take me into detention, because I'd rather go into hospital for a few months rather than going into Israeli detention,' says Nawaj'ah.
The conditions in Israeli prisons, Nawaj'ah explains, have been made harsher recently as a way of exacting revenge for the Hamas-led attack against Israel on 7 October 2023. But even before then, basic services in detention
were already being deliberately degraded
by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's National Security Minister and the leader of the Jewish Power party.
'Prisoners should be shot in the head instead of being given more food,' Ben-Gvir said in response to complaints of overcrowding in Israeli jails in November 2024.
A map of Israel and Palestine based on the 1967 borderssSource: Alamy Stock Photo
'Revenge arrests' and 'torture camps'
The Hamas attack had reverberations beyond the besieged enclave of Gaza from which it was launched. That attack left almost 1,200 people dead and 251 people were taken hostage.
Israel continues to wage war on the population of Gaza, where more than 55,000 Palestinians have been killed, but it has also
ramped up assaults on West Bank communities
through military raids and settler violence.
'After 7 October, Israeli forces started engaging in revenge arrests and this is ongoing,' Nawaj'ah says.
Palestinians, including children, are routinely detained by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank for minor infractions, such as throwing stones, and sometimes for doing nothing at all.
'If soldiers discover any sort of 'incriminating' photo on a Palestinian phone, like, for example, some sort of documentation of events in Gaza, then they'll immediately use it as an excuse, a pretext, to detain them and in some cases to attack and assault them.
'But I hear again and again from people who are glad that they were only beaten up and not arrested.'
Nawaj'ah himself decided not to stay in his home for three months following the October 2023 attack, 'because I was worried about revenge arrests by the army'.
One example of the systemic mistreatment of Palestinians in detention is the fact that people might only be fed 'three tablespoons of rice a day', just enough to keep them alive, 'but they would be suffering constantly', Nawaj'ah says.
In April, a Palestinian teenager died in Israeli detention. An Israeli doctor who observed his autopsy
said the likely cause of death was starvation.
Palestinians released earlier this year also
showed signs of torture and starvation
, as well as suffering from scabies.
In July last year, Said Maarouf, a 57-year-old pediatrician taken by Israeli forces in Gaza City in December 2023
told Amnesty International
that guards kept him blindfolded and handcuffed for the entirety of his 45 days in detention. He described being starved, repeatedly beaten, and forced to sit on his knees for long periods.
'I think it's really important to remember that over half, or approximately half, of the Palestinians that are currently in Israeli detention have been detained without trial,' explains Sarit Michaeli.
CNN
/ YouTube
Palestinians taken from the West Bank without charge or trial are termed 'administrative detainees'. If they come from Gaza, they are detained under Israel's Unlawful Combatants law.
In both cases, people are not informed of the charges against them and are held incommunicado, without access to a lawyer or the chance to speak to their families.
'It's mind bogglingly shocking,' she says, adding that it's not just about the lack of due process, 'it's the fact that they're subjected to a hellish torture system.'
The Israeli prison system functions like a network of torture camps.
The Israeli detention facilities have been shown in multiple investigations to be the scenes of
abuse, torture and sexual assault.
Prisoners or hostages?
Since the October 2023 attack, media outlets and governments have come under scrutiny for the terms used to describe the people held captive in Gaza and the Palestinians held captive in Israel.
Israeli forces have been rounding up people in Gaza and transferring them to detention centres since they invaded the territory.
While those taken captive by Hamas during the October 2023 attack are clearly hostages under international law, the same designation can be given to many Palestinians in Israeli detention.
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The International Convention against the Taking of Hostages defines the offence as the seizure or detention of a person, combined with a threat to kill, injure or to continue to detain that person, in order to compel a third party to do – or to abstain from doing – something as an explicit or implicit condition for the hostage's release.
As of March 2025, Israel was holding captive 3,405 administrative and 1,555 Palestinians as 'unlawful combatants', all without trial, according to the Israeli human rights NGO
Hamoked
.
Legal experts, including the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, have previously told
The Journal
that Palestinians arrested and held without trial
can be seen as hostages
, especially those taken since October 2023.
This is because they were abducted without cause and held without trial in the expectation that they might be exchanged for people in Hamas captivity.
Michaeli tends to agree.
'We're talking about thousands of people who, over the last 20 months, have been detained either because they are political activists or because the Israeli authorities suspect them of doing something that they are not willing to put (forward) any evidence to prove.
'Or in some cases, and they're not a few cases, there's a very large number of them, by virtue of being in Gaza at a certain moment and basically being rounded up and taken.'
Footage emerged early on in the conflict of Israeli soldiers
corralling men stripped to their underwear, blindfolded and sitting cross-legged on the ground in Gaza.
'That is shocking,' she says.
Micheali mentions a recent illustrative example, the final round of captive exchanges during the last ceasefire in Gaza in March this year, when Israel released a number of women and children.
'Essentially, there was a clear admission by the Israeli authorities that these people had been kept in detention as bargaining chips, in order to then be able to have this cadre of people to release for Israeli hostages.'
In Arabic, Palestinians use the term prisoners for the people in Hamas captivity and those held in Israeli detention, according to Nawaj'ah and Michaeli.
In Israel, the majority of people call Palestinian detainees 'terrorists', regardless of whether or not they have committed, or even been charged with, a crime, Michaeli says.
Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
At the same time, Michaeil stresses, Hamas has also mistreated hostages. She herself is involved in campaigning with some families to get their loved ones – or at least their bodies – released.
Israelis who were taken hostage have described
being tortured and sexually assaulted
while in Hamas captivity. Others described
being held in appalling conditions and suffering starvation
, as well as being used in Hamas propaganda videos.
Taking and holding hostages, she notes, is a war crime. 'It's immoral, it's shocking'.
'The conditions that Israeli hostages have had to deal with are absolutely horrific.'
Still, she does believe that 'there is a real gap and a sort of double standard in the way the international community is treating the concept'.
Hamas fighters escort Israeli hostage Or Levy on a stage before handing him over to a Red Cross team in Deir el-Balah
Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
'I'm not saying it's an identical situation,' she says while pointing to Hamas parading hostages as one example of a difference.
Expressing frustration at her government's apparent lack of sincerity when it comes to prioritising the return of the hostages, Michaeli says the Israeli violation of the last ceasefire gave people reason to see the government's stated war aim as 'disingenuous'.
'All of this leads one to the unfortunate conclusion that the Israeli government is currently not interested in releasing the remaining hostages.'
Obviously, she says, responsibility for capturing them lies with Hamas, but 'one has to admit that the current impediment to their release is the Israeli government. And that is a shocking admission'.
'It's recognised, and I think it's very blatant, that the 'price' of a full hostage deal is ending our war on Gaza, and this means if we (Israel) end our war on Gaza, we can't reoccupy it and resettle it.'
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