On 9 December 2023, Israeli soldiers raided the Abulkhair family home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. The family had been trapped in their home, under siege, for five days as Israel bombed the area. And when soldiers burst into the home, they were firing their weapons indiscriminately, in every direction.

Sojod Abulkhair, 19, watched in terror as her grandfather was hit with three bullets. He was disabled and had Alzheimer’s disease. The shots killed him immediately.

“We were all laying down jam-packed in the corridor,” said Sojod. “It was very dark and scary.” She said she was even more afraid when the hallway lit up with the tactical lights attached to the soldiers’ rifles. They shouted to each other in Hebrew and English.

The soldiers handcuffed her, her younger sister Toqa, 15, and her ailing grandmother and took them to a neighboring home that soldiers had occupied.

There, a male army officer, who Sojod said appeared to be of a higher rank, interrogated her in broken Arabic.

She described the interrogation as “silly.” “They asked me about the names of my friends, where Yahya Sinwar is hiding and whether there was a tunnel under my school.”

Forced to curse the resistance

After the interrogation, they took the women, including 15-year-old Toqa, to an army truck.

“As they were driving me out handcuffed to the back, I saw all my male relatives, including my brother and father, in lines and on their knees naked, handcuffed, blindfolded and beaten,” Sojod said.

Once inside the truck, they were forced to chant praises to Israel and to curse the resistance.

They drove Sojod and her minor-aged sister and grandmother to the Sde Teiman military camp and detention center in the Naqab desert, where she endured 55 days of abuse and transfers to three other detention centers.

Sojod and Toqa were detained at Sde Teiman for four days. They were then transferred to Anatot military detention center and subsequently to Damon prison for women south of Haifa.

At Sde Teiman, Sojod was often cold, as the uniform was very thin. Nearly the entire time she was in handcuffs, which alternated between plastic and metal.

One other woman who was being detained had recently given birth, and the woman’s wound from her cesarean section opened due to the stiff poses the women were forced to hold.

From 5 am to 10 pm, they sat with their knees bent, with no room to stretch.

The food rations were meager: cucumber, tomato and a piece of bread. They were once given plates of plain rice and ordered to eat with plastic forks while still handcuffed. It produced a mess and was another source of humiliation, as the guarding soldiers laughed at the girls and women.

Water was provided once a day, from a rusty tap.

Sojod and Toqa were transferred to Anatot military detention center near Jerusalem and there the women were allowed to bathe for the first time. Each time she was transferred she was not told where they were going.

Toqa was by her side most of the time, but they were not allowed to speak to each other.

Toqa was also present during the interview, but she was very shy and not able to speak of her detention.

Released, with a sweet

They were not told when they were going to be released. But at the end of January 2024, Sojod and Toqa were driven to the Karem Abu Salem checkpoint in southern Gaza and told to just keep moving.

Before the soldiers released the group of women and girls, they gave them each a sweet and photographed them.

Sojod and Toqa ran to a nearby school where people were taking shelter and fell asleep on the floor, exhausted.

Eventually Sojod was reunited with some members of her family in al-Mawasi, where they live in a makeshift tent.

Their family had no idea where they had been or whether they were alive. They were effectively disappeared by the Israeli army.

Sojod learnt that her brother had been detained at Sde Teiman for 17 days, and her father for 19 days.

“My grandmother is now unable to walk even a step after her release,” she said.

During the raid, Israeli soldiers stole over $2,000 from Sojod’s grandmother, as well as all of their phones, which were not returned during the course of their detention.

Sojod herself has scars on her wrists from the handcuffs. Less visible is the psychological trauma from the past 10 months. She said she will never be able to forget when Israeli soldiers tormented a young man with an army dog. The screams were agonizing.

Ghada Msabeh is a writer in Gaza.

Tags

• Sde Teiman
• arbitrary detention
• abuse

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