Once just an obscure military barracks, the Israeli Sde Teman camp, which opened after the outbreak of the war in the Gaza Strip, gained widespread fame recently after Israel was accused of using it to torture thousands of detainees, including people who were later determined to have no connection to Hamas or other armed groups. .

The American newspaper "The New York Times" conducted a three-month investigation into the camp, in which it conducted interviews with former detainees, Israeli military officers, doctors and soldiers who served there, and also examined data related to the released detainees provided by the army.

The newspaper found that 1,200 Palestinian civilians were detained in Sde Teman in humiliating conditions, without the ability to plead their cases before a judge for up to 75 days.

Detainees were also denied access to lawyers for up to 90 days, and their whereabouts were withheld from their relatives, lawyers and human rights groups, as well as from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which some legal experts say is a violation of international law.

A number of former detainees described to the New York Times their beatings and other abuses at the camp, where they said they were held in overcrowded cages, had their hands tied and blindfolded at all times, and were prohibited from speaking loudly, and from standing or sleeping except when allowed to do so. They were completely isolated from the outside world, and were sometimes forced to listen to extremely loud music that prevented them from sleeping.

The Israeli army allowed The New York Times to briefly view part of the detention center in the Sde Teman camp, as well as to conduct interviews with a number of leaders and officials of the camp, on the condition of anonymity.

According to camp leaders, by late May, Israel had arrested nearly 4,000 people from Gaza at Sde Teman, including dozens of people captured during a Hamas attack in October.

Muhammad al-Kurdi (38 years old), an ambulance driver who was detained in Sde Teman late last year, said: “My colleagues did not know whether I was alive or dead.” He added that he was arrested in November after the convoy of ambulances he was driving attempted to pass through an Israeli military checkpoint south of Gaza City. He continued: "I was imprisoned for 32 days, but it felt like 32 years."

Eight other former detainees said they were punched, kicked, and beaten with batons, gun butts, and a portable metal detector while in detention. One said his “ribs were broken” after a soldier kicked him in the chest, while another said they were broken after he was kicked and hit with a rifle, an assault a third detainee said he witnessed.

Seven former detainees said that they were stripped of their clothes and forced to wear diapers during interrogation, while three others confirmed that they were subjected to electric shocks during interrogation. Most of these accusations were echoed in interviews conducted by officials from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) with former detainees in the camp, while others pointed out

Use of electric shocks. 
An Israeli soldier who served at the site said that his fellow soldiers regularly bragged about beating detainees. The soldier, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid prosecution, said that one of the detainees was taken for treatment at the temporary field hospital at the site because of a broken bone during his detention, while another was briefly taken out of sight and returned with bleeding around his rib cage. The soldier said that a person died in Sde Teman from wounds to his chest, although he noted that it was unclear whether his injury occurred before or after his arrival at the base.

Of the 4,000 detainees who have been housed at Sde Teman since October, 35 died either on site or after being transferred to nearby civilian hospitals, according to officers at the base who spoke to the New York Times.

Yoel Donchin, a military doctor serving at the site, said he did not understand why Israeli soldiers captured so many of the people he treated there, some of whom were unlikely to be fighters who participated in the attack on Israel.

He explained, "One of them was paraplegic, another weighed about 300 pounds (136 kilos), and the third had been breathing since childhood through a tube that was inserted into his neck." He added: "Why did they bring those people to the camp? I don't know. They seemed to be detaining anyone."

In turn, Fadi Bakr, a law student from Gaza City, said that he was arrested on January 5, as he was searching for flour for his family, but during his search an exchange of gunfire occurred in which he was injured by accident, falling to the ground bleeding, and then the soldiers arrested him thinking he was armed. A member of Hamas, they stripped him of his clothes, confiscated his phone and savings, and beat him repeatedly, not believing that he was an unarmed civilian.

The conditions of Bakr's detention mirror those of other former detainees interviewed by The New York Times.
Younis Al-Hamalawi (39 years old), a senior nurse, said that he was arrested in November after leaving Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City during an Israeli raid on the site, which Israel considers a Hamas command center.