In the Sde Teiman area, in the Negev desert in southern Israel, Palestinian prisoners are subjected to widespread physical and psychological violence. This has been recognized by two former local workers in the Guardian media. The sources anonymously denounce “terrifying behaviors”. It was reported that prisoners often joined hospital beds with their eyes covered and forced to use diapers. Both sources have explained that at least one person was cut off by a branch of his body due to wounds caused by the brushes.

One of the former workers worked as a guarantor of the detention area. He described to The Guardian how prisoners were forced to stand or kneel for hours, two measures known as torture mechanisms. “The detainees are held in a kind of cages, with burgundy eyes,” the source explains. He says that the Zionist military had no evidence that all the detainees were members of Sixteen. Many continued to question the reason for their arrest. “There was no formal charge against them, it was a filtration camp with provisional detainees.” The British media has explained that sources can withstand strong reprisals on account of this.

The Sde Teiman area campaign, which was a doctor in the hospital, reports to The Guardian that most of the detainees had untreated infected wounds, “war wounds.” It seems obvious that some of the prisoners were not fed. “Apart from the diaper they were naked.” He denounces that the hospital is made up of tents, and that in the emergency room the interventions are performed on the beds because there are no operating rooms. The source indicates that he heard that many of the detainees were transferred from Gaza hospitals. “They were arrested in hospitals that were being treated, with serious infections, screaming of pain.” She also confesses that she saw an operation in a prisoner without analgesics to ease the pain.

Request for closure of the detention area

The area of Sde Teiman is situated eighteen kilometres from the border between Gaza and Israel on a military base and is divided into two parts according to sources. Some 200 Palestinians have been captive in cages and severe cutbacks, on the one hand, and the field hospital, where dozens of wounded are associated with beds, “generally without pain relievers”.

A report by the NGO Israel, Doctors for Human Rights, denounces that all the inhabitants of Gaza are considered “illegal fighters” when they are detained since the beginning of the last Zionist offensive. This classification eliminates the status of “prisoner of war” and allows Israel to ban lawyers’ visits for a long time. The report warns that this eliminates the possibility of inspecting what is happening there, in case there is “a high risk of torture and very harsh prison conditions”. Israel is called upon by Doctors for Human Rights to close the detention camp.