“They don’t want to know anything”: the civilians of Gaza held in Israel did not say that the families had been killed | Israel-Gaza war

For six months after he became impossible, Ahmed Wael Dababish still dreamed of a simple meeting: the day he could still embrace his wife, asthma, his two daughters and his young son.

An nurse from Gaza, Dababish saw his family in the early hours of a night in December 2023, when the Israeli troops attacked a school where they had sought refuge.

The soldiers ordered men in the courtyard, then they retained many of them, including Dababish. He was held in Incomunicado for 13 months without accusation, trial, access to a lawyer or any communication with his family. So, when an Israeli shell killed Asma, 29 years old, and their younger daughter, three years old, in August 2024, there was no way to send him news.

Was released in February Under the agreement of ceased the fire After turning 33 in prison and was briefly overwhelmed when he saw his father and cousins ​​waiting to welcome him home.

“It was incredible to see someone I knew,” he said. The joy of being surrounded by family faces and loved, after a year of hunger, torture and isolation by all those he knew, lasted until he asked him wife and children.

Dababish’s father called a photo on his phone to help break the unbearable news. He showed that Ghina, his child, had burial next to his young cousin. “This is the moment when I still can’t believe,” Dababish said, breaking his memory again. “It never went through the head that could be killed.”

As he sobbed, his two surviving children, the six -year -old Muadh and eight -year -old Aisha, tried to comfort him with the hugs.

His tragedy is not unique. THE Observer spoke to three Palestinians from Gaza whose immediate family was killed while they were held by Israeli civil prisons or in the Israeli without accusation or trial. They learned their losses only when they were released months later.

The three men are civilians – an nurse, an official and a principal of an elementary school – who claim to have never taken weapons. They had no access to a lawyer in prison and were not authorized to communicate with their families.

Legal rights groups say that there will probably be many other gaza prisoners who have lost a close family in Israeli attacks, but have not been informed of their death.

The visits, letters or family calls were prohibited for the Palestinians held by Israel since 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched his surprise attack on Israel and televisions and the radio were removed from the cells.

“They are applying this isolation on prisoners. They don’t want to know anything about their families and loved ones,” said Tala Nasir of the organization of the rights of the Palestinian prisoners.

The prisoners who are able to guarantee legal representation can sometimes receive news from their lawyers, but there are certainly hundreds and probably thousands of prisoners from Gaza who do not have a lawyer.

Most are detained under the law of illegal fighters of Israel, which allows indefinite possession without producing evidence. The state can keep someone for 45 days before allowing access to a lawyer or bringing them to a judge to authorize detention. At the beginning of the war, those periods were extended to 180 and 75 days respectively.

Amnesty International said that the system “legalizes the incomunicado detention, allows a forced disappearance and must be repealed”. Despite thousands of detention, there have been no known evidence of anyone captured in Gaza since 7 October 2023.

There is no supply of government lawyers for Palestinian prisoners and it is impossible for legal assistance groups to support the prisoners on the scale now necessary, said Jessica Montell, executive director of Hamked, an Israeli group with decades of experience in struggle for Palestinian rights through the Israeli courts.

“I am sure that it is the case that the vast majority of the prisoners of Gaza has not seen a lawyer,” said Montell, adding that the Hamaked teams visited a few dozen prisoners from Gaza, by thousands of people held inside Israel. “There is nothing like the office of a public defender who will meet all of them. There is no obligation for the state to provide lawyers.”

The bureaucratic obstacles and the distance of many detention and prisons fields further limit visits. When lawyers manage to meet the prisoners from Gaza, the breaking of painful news is a regular part of their discussions, according to Nasir.

“Many of the prisoners we were following made one or two of their family members killed in Gaza and did not know it at all. He is so heartbreaking, and it is really difficult for the lawyer to tell this information to the prisoner.”

In December, the Israeli state declared that she held more than 3,400 Palestinians from Gaza pursuant to the Ilegal Law of the fighters, in response to a petition of the High Court of the group of campaigns against the Public Committee against Torture In Israel (Pcati).

At least 1,000 people held in Gaza after 7 October 2023 were released under the cease the fire agreement that broke this monthBut thousands are still in prison. Tale Steiner, director of Pcati, said that Israeli prisons hold about 1,500 detained by Gaza and that “it would be reasonable to estimate that several hundred detainees (Palestinians) are still detained in military fields”.

The Israeli army refused to say how many Palestinians from Gaza hold or those who met the lawyers, but said they had not limited the content of the legal meetings held with prisoners or what documents that lawyers could lead to them. “Many prisoners have already exercised their right to meet a lawyer,” the Israeli defense forces said in a note. “Israel rejects the statements that there is a policy to isolate Palestinian prisoners from the outside world.”

The Israeli army added the national and international law has added, respected in the treatment of prisoners and have rejected all the accusations relating to systemic abuse.

The public employee Ibrahim Dawood is among those released during the ceased the fire. He said he never had access to a lawyer and was physically attacked when he asked for the possibility of demonstrating his innocence.

“My friends taught me some words in Hebrew, how to politely ask the soldiers for a meeting with the officer, asking only justice. They would have beaten me on the road there and back,” he said. “I kept telling them that they should have listened to me and not to accuse me of things I didn’t do.” He spent 13 months in prison in the Negev desert, going seriously injured after an Israeli attack on the school where he was repairing with his family.

Bad health, hunger and beating have weighed on him, but the mental pain of being separated from his family was equally bad, he said. “I didn’t know anything about their destiny and I knew they had no information about what was happening to me.”

The relief of the release, when it came, was very fleeting. He discovered that the family home in Al-Fakhura, near Jabaliya, had been destroyed in an Israeli air attack that killed his father, his sister, his sister-in-law and his three children. The moment he heard the news – and collapsed with pain – was captured on video and widely shared on social media.

“The people who should have welcomed at home had been taken to me by the army (Israeli). At the top of the pain of injuries and imprisonment, the pain of losing beloved relatives that I will never see again.”

His surviving family is fragmented between the North and the South and cannot find space to bring together his wife, the children and the widowed mother under the same roof.

The Israel Prison Service (IPS), which manages civil prisons, said that “all prisoners are held according to the law”. As a question about the abuse and isolation described by Dababish and Dawood, a spokesman said: “We are not aware of the statements you have described and as far as we know, such events have not occurred based on IPS liability”.

Dababish said he had never seen a lawyer and that Israeli officials had accused him of being a member of Hamas because he was a nurse in a hospital who managed the state. Hamas ruled Gaza for almost two decades. “I replied that I was a clearer with my wife and children in an evacuation school, in an area that the army had designated as sure.”

The lack of contact with the outside world, or any just trial, violates the Geneva ConventionsThe groups for rights say. Dababish said he added to detention agonies, deepening the despair of prisoners.

“It seemed that we were living in a tomb. You couldn’t know anything about what was happening out, where your family was, what was going on.”

His house was bombed, so he lives with his parents and two children who survived a school transformed into a shelter – which hit painful memories of the night in which he was arrested – and has little sense of security.

All the worst tragedies of his family took place in schools in the same way proposed – destined to be places of relative security for civilians fleeing the Israel war to Hamas. His wife and daughter were killed in another school, when a shell hit a classroom in Sheikh’s Gaza Radwan district. “They were displaced in a refuge for evacuation. They did not do anything wrong,” he said.

Persecuted by the loss and the memories of detention, he is trying to move forward for his children.

“I went to the hospital, I recorded my name for work again and I’m waiting for them to call me.”