Israel’s mass arrest campaign sows fear in northern Gaza
- Israel’s military said detainees are ‘treated according to protocol’ after images of stripped Palestinians in Gaza sparked outrage on social media
- Palestinian males as young as 12 and as old as 70 were bound, blindfolded and detained as Israeli forces hunted for Hamas fighters
The Israeli military has rounded up hundreds of Palestinians across the northern Gaza Strip, separating families and forcing men to strip to their underwear before trucking some to a detention camp on the beach, where they spent hours, in some cases days, subjected to hunger and cold, according to human rights activists, distraught relatives and released detainees themselves.
Palestinians detained in the shattered town of Beit Lahia, the urban refugee camp of Jabilia and neighbourhoods of Gaza City said they were bound, blindfolded and bundled into the backs of trucks.
Some said they were taken to the camp at an undisclosed location, nearly naked and with little water.
“We were treated like cattle, they even wrote numbers on our hands,” said Ibrahim Lubbad, a 30-year-old computer engineer arrested in Beit Lahia on December 7 with a dozen other family members and held overnight. “We could feel their hatred.”
The round-ups have laid bare an emerging tactic in Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza, experts say, as the military seeks to solidify control in evacuated areas in the north and collect intelligence about Hamas operations nearly 10 weeks after the group’s deadly October 7 attack on southern Israel.