Medical workers in "Israel" informed the BBC that Palestinian detainees from Gaza are routinely kept shackled to hospital beds, blindfolded, sometimes naked, and forced to wear nappies, a practice labeled by one medic as "torture".

Details were given by a whistleblower on how procedures in one military hospital were "routinely" carried out without painkillers, causing "an unacceptable amount of pain" to detainees. 

Painkillers were used "selectively" and "in a very limited way" during an invasive medical procedure on a Gazan detainee in a public hospital, another whistleblower told the BBC. 

The whistleblower also added that critically ill patients were being kept in makeshift military facilities and denied proper treatment due to the reluctance of the occupation's public hospitals to transfer and treat them.

Speaking with the BBC, an ex-detainee from Gaza said that his leg had to be amputated because the Israeli occupation denied treatment for an infected wound.

Even though a senior doctor working inside the military hospital in question rejected that any amputations were caused by the conditions there, he confirmed the use of shackles and other restraints by guards by labeling them as "dehumanization". 

The BBC said that both whistleblowers were in positions to evaluate the medical treatment of detainees, adding that a report published by Physicians for Human Rights in "Israel" supported their statements and said that the Israeli occupation's "civilian and military" prisons had become "an apparatus of retribution and revenge", and that human rights, specifically the right to health, were being violated. 

Sde Teiman military base 

According to the BBC, there have been great concerns over the treatment of sick and injured detainees in the military field hospital in the Sde Teiman base in southern occupied Palestine.

This field hospital was opened post-Oct 7 specifically to treat detainees from Gaza after some of the occupation's hospitals and staff were hesitant in treating Palestinian Resistance freedom fighters detained following October 7.

The BBC added that since then, the IOF detained a large number of Palestinians from Gaza and took them to bases like Sde Teiman for "interrogation." 

According to several medics in charge of treating patients, patients at the Sde Teiman hospital are kept blindfolded and permanently shackled to their beds by all four limbs and they are also forced to wear nappies instead of using a toilet. 

Still, the IOF tried to justify this, as some witnesses one of whom is the facility's senior anaesthesiologist, Yoel Donchin, said that the use of nappies and handcuffs is universal in the hospital ward. 

Donchin told the BBC that "The army create the patient to be 100% dependent, like a baby," adding "You are cuffed, you are with diapers, you need water, you need everything – it’s dehumanization."

He also emphasized that there was no individual evaluation of the need for restraints, and that even those patients who were unable to walk, like those with leg amputations, were handcuffed to the bed, further labeling this practice as "stupid". 

Two witnesses at the facility back in October told the BBC that patients were kept naked under the blankets. 

One doctor with knowledge of conditions there said that prolonged cuffing to beds would cause "huge suffering, horrible suffering," labeling it as "torture", adding that after hours, patients would begin feeling pain, while others also said that there is a risk of long-term nerve damage. 

Related News

Jenin detainee Samir al-Rifai dies after seven days in Israeli custody

Al Mayadeen’s al-Lahham to be freed after 9 days in Israeli detention

The BBC said that footage of Palestinians detained in Gaza released after interrogation shows injuries and scarring around their wrists and legs. 

Attitudes from medical staff

The BBC said that reports indicate that attitudes of medical staff in all hospitals vary widely toward detainees. 

A whistleblower who worked at the Sde Teiman field hospital shortly after October 7 described how patients were being given insufficient amounts of painkillers, including anesthetic. 

He also told the BBC that a doctor once rejected his request to give an elderly patient painkillers while opening up a recent infection amputation wound, stressing that "[The patient] started trembling from pain, and so I stop and say ‘we can’t go on, you need to give him analgesia’."

The whistleblower said that the doctor's response was that it was too late to give him the painkillers, and that such procedures "were routinely done without analgesia" leading to "an unacceptable amount of pain."

The witness told the BBC that on another occasion, he was requested by a suspected Palestinian Resistance freedom fighter to ask the surgical team to increase the levels of morphine and anesthetic during repeated surgeries, however, even though the message was delivered, when the Palestinian regained consciousness again during his next operation, he was in a lot of pain. 

The whistleblower told the BBC that his colleagues shared his feeling that it was a deliberate act of revenge. 

Public hospitals the same

Another whistleblower told the BBC, which labeled him as "Yoni", that this situation at Sde Teiman was only part of the problem, as the latter extended to the public hospitals.

Yoni said, "There were instances where I heard staff discuss whether detainees from Gaza should get painkillers. Or ways to perform certain procedures that can turn the treatment into punishment," adding that these conversations were not uncommon, even if actual instances seemed very rare. 

He told the BBC, "I have knowledge of one case where painkillers were used selectively, in a very limited way, during a procedure."

"The patient did not receive any explanation of what was going on. So, if you put together [that] someone is undergoing an invasive procedure, which involves even incisions, and doesn’t know about that, and is blindfolded, then the line between treatment and assault thins out," he added. 

Yoni told the BBC that the Sde Teiman field hospital was not equipped enough to treat severely injured patients, emphasizing that regardless, those detained there in the early months following October 7 suffered from fresh gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen. 

'I was detained with two legs and now I only have one'

A 43-year-old taxi driver from Khan Younis, one of the dozens of men detained during Israeli raids, Saufian Abu Salah, said that when he was taken to a military base, IOF soldiers beat him up severely on the way, and on arrival at the base where he was also refused treatment for a minor wound on his foot causing infection. 

He told the BBC, "My leg got infected and turned blue, and as soft as a sponge."

Abu Salah added that after a week, the guards took him to the hospital and beat him on his injured leg to the point where two operations done to clean his wound were not successful.

"Afterwards, they took me to a public hospital, where the doctor gave me two options: my leg or my life," he told the BBC, adding that he chose his life then he was taken to the military base before being released and went back to Gaza. 

"This period was mental and physical torture," he said, then added, "I can’t describe it. I was detained with two legs and now I have only one. Every now and then, I cry."

According to the BBC, the situation in Sde Teiman was described by some as "an unprecedented low point for the medical profession, and medical ethics."

One doctor told the BBC, "I fear that what we’re doing in Sde Teiman won’t allow a return to the way it was before,' adding, "Because things that looked unreasonable to us before, will look reasonable when this crisis is over."