A doctor at an Israeli field hospital inside a notorious detention center where hundreds of Palestinian prisoners are temporarily held is sounding the alarm about torture and horrific conditions at what some human rights defenders — including Israelis — are calling “Israel’s Guantánamo Bay” and even a “concentration camp.”
In a letter to Israel’s attorney general and defense and health ministers viewed by Haaretz — which reported the story Thursday — the anonymous physician describes likely war crimes being committed at the Israel Defense Forces’ Sde Teiman base near Beersheva. Palestinian militants captured by IDF troops, as well as many civilian hostages ranging in age from teenagers to septuagenarians, are held there in cages, 70-100 per cage, until they are transferred to regular Israeli prisons or released.
“From the first days of the medical facility’s operation until today, I have faced serious ethical dilemmas,” the doctor wrote. “More than that, I am writing to warn you that the facility’s operations do not comply with a single section among those dealing with health in the Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law.”
🚨Hostages are having their legs amputated from being zip-tied by all 4 limbs for months; they're being forced to defecate in diapers & fed through straws.
Those are Gazan hostages at Israel's Sde Teiman "concentration camp", so you won't see one word about it in Western media🧵 pic.twitter.com/jY5z5b12lQ
Gazans arrested and detained by Israeli forces are not legally considered prisoners of war by Israel because it does not recognize Gaza as a state. These detainees are mostly held under the Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows the........