In light of Israel’s continued return of hundreds of Palestinian bodies who were killed under torture, blindfolded, restrained, bearing marks of abuse and fatal gunshots, many of them so mutilated that they were interred as unidentified, it has become essential to reopen the file of mass abductions, torture, and extrajudicial killings targeting Palestinians from Gaza. The scale and gravity of these violations require immediate investigation through all available legal, diplomatic, and humanitarian avenues to safeguard the tens of thousands whose fate remains unknown.

The disturbing images of Palestinian prisoners of war tortured to death were not the only scenes to shake Palestinians. Equally horrifying were the testimonies of civilian hostages recently released by Israeli authorities after establishing that they bore no affiliation to Palestinian resistance groups. These civilians describe harrowing abuse, severe torture, degrading treatment, humiliation, and assaults that violate their dignity, humanity, and personal honor, violations rendered even more acute within a conservative cultural context. The methods described reflect an extreme level of brutality, challenging the limits of human comprehension and constituting serious breaches of international humanitarian law.

The British newspaper The Guardian has disclosed the existence of an underground Israeli detention torture facility, while testimonies from civilians recently permitted to return to Gaza revealed the existence of additional similar sites. Israel continues to conceal thousands of civilians and combatants who disappeared from Gaza and its surrounding areas, withholding their identities, actual numbers, location, and fate. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Israel has denied all requests and blocked all attempts for access to visit them, an alarming sign of the opacity surrounding their safety.

Such practices amount to enforced disappearance and torture of protected persons under international humanitarian law, whether they are prisoners of war captured by Israeli forces during hostilities or civilians seized during the fighting, in occupied territory. These acts........

© Middle East Monitor