Israel maintains a shadowy hospital in the desert for Gaza detainees. Critics allege mistreatment

JERUSALEM – Patients mendacity shackled and blindfolded on greater than a dozen beds inside of a white tent in the desert. Surgeries carried out with out ok painkillers. Doctors who stay nameless.

These are a few of the prerequisites at Israel’s simplest hospital devoted to treating Palestinians detained through the army in the Gaza Strip, 3 individuals who have labored there instructed The Associated Press, confirming equivalent accounts from human rights teams.

While Israel says it detains simplest suspected militants, many sufferers have grew to become out to be non-combatants taken right through raids, held with out trial and in the end returned to war-torn Gaza.

Eight months into the Israel-Hamas war, accusations of inhumane remedy at the Sde Teiman army box hospital are on the upward thrust, and the Israeli executive is beneath rising power to close it down. Rights teams and different critics say what started as a transient position to carry and deal with militants after Oct. 7 has morphed into a harsh detention middle with too little responsibility.

The army denies the allegations of inhumane remedy and says all detainees desiring scientific consideration obtain it.

The hospital is close to the town of Beersheba in southern Israel. It opened beside a detention middle on a army base after the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel as a result of some civilian hospitals refused to regard wounded militants. Of the 3 staff interviewed through AP, two spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they feared executive retribution and public rebuke.

“We are condemned by the left because we are not fulfilling ethical issues,” stated Dr. Yoel Donchin, an anesthesiologist who has labored at Sde Teiman hospital since its earliest days and nonetheless works there. “We are condemned from the right because they think we are criminals for treating terrorists.”

The army this week stated it shaped a committee to research detention middle prerequisites, nevertheless it used to be unclear if that incorporated the hospital. Next week Israel’s absolute best courtroom is about to listen to arguments from human rights teams searching for to close it down.

Israel has no longer granted reporters or the International Committee of the Red Cross get right of entry to to the Sde Teiman amenities.

Israel has detained some 4,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, consistent with legit figures, regardless that more or less 1,500 had been launched after the army made up our minds they weren’t affiliated with Hamas. Israeli human rights teams say the majority of detainees have in the future handed thru Sde Teiman, the nation’s greatest detention middle.

Doctors there say they have got handled many that gave the impression to be non-combatants.

“Now we have patients that are not so young, sick patients with diabetes and high blood pressure,” stated Donchin, the anesthesiologist.

A soldier who labored at the hospital recounted an aged guy who underwent surgical operation on his leg with out ache drugs. “He was screaming and shaking,” stated the soldier.

Between scientific therapies, the soldier stated sufferers had been housed in the detention middle, the place they had been uncovered to squalid prerequisites and their wounds regularly evolved infections. There used to be a separate space the place older folks slept on skinny mattresses beneath floodlights, and a putrid odor hung in the air, he stated.

The army stated in a remark that every one detainees are “reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorist activity.” It stated they obtain check-ups upon arrival and are transferred to the hospital after they require extra severe remedy.

A scientific employee who noticed sufferers at the facility in the wintry weather recounted educating hospital staff wash wounds.

Donchin, who in large part defended the facility towards allegations of mistreatment however used to be important of a few of its practices, stated maximum sufferers are diapered and no longer allowed to make use of the toilet, shackled round their legs and arms and blindfolded.

“Their eyes are covered all the time. I don’t know what the security reason for this is,” he stated.

The army disputed the accounts supplied to AP, announcing sufferers had been handcuffed “in cases where the security risk requires it” and got rid of after they brought about damage. Patients are infrequently diapered, it stated.

Dr. Michael Barilan, a professor at the Tel Aviv University Medical School who stated he has spoken with over 15 hospital personnel, disputed accounts of scientific negligence. He stated docs are doing their perfect beneath tough cases, and that the blindfolds originated out of a “fear (patients) would retaliate against those taking care of them.”

Days after Oct. 7, roughly 100 Israelis clashed with police outside one of the country’s main hospitals in response to false rumors it was treating a militant.

In the aftermath, some hospitals refused to treat detainees, fearful that doing so could endanger staff and disrupt operations. They were already overwhelmed by people wounded during the Hamas attack and expecting casualties to rise from an impending ground invasion.

As Israel pulled in scores of wounded Palestinians to Sde Teiman, it became clear the facility’s infirmary was not large enough, according to Barilan. An adjacent field hospital was built from scratch.

Israel’s Health Ministry laid out plans for the hospital in a December memo obtained by AP.

It said patients would be treated while handcuffed and blindfolded. Doctors, drafted into service by the military, would be kept anonymous to protect their “safety, lives and well-being.” The ministry referred all questions to the military when reached for comment.

Still, an April report from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, drawing on interviews with hospital workers, said doctors at the facility faced “ethical, professional and even emotional distress.” Barilan stated turnover has been prime.

Patients with more complicated injuries have been transferred from the field hospital to civilian hospitals, but it has been done covertly to avoid arousing the public’s attention, Barilan said. And the process is fraught: The medical worker who spoke with AP said one detainee with a gunshot wound was discharged prematurely from a civilian hospital to Sde Teiman within hours of being treated, endangering his life.

The field hospital is overseen by military and health officials, but Donchin said parts of its operations are managed by KLP, a private logistics and security company whose website says it specializes in “high-risk environments.” The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Because it’s not under the same command as the military’s medical corps, the field hospital is not subject to Israel’s Patients Rights Act, according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.

A group from the Israeli Medical Association visited the hospital earlier this year but kept its findings private. The association did not respond to requests for comment.

The military told AP that 36 people from Gaza have died in Israel’s detention centers since Oct. 7, some of them because of illnesses or wounds sustained in the war. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has alleged that some died from medical negligence.

Khaled Hammouda, a surgeon from Gaza, spent 22 days at one of Israel’s detention centers. He does not know where he was taken because he was blindfolded while he was transported. But he said he recognized a picture of Sde Teiman and said he saw at least one detainee, a prominent Gaza doctor who is believed to have been there.

Hammouda recalled asking a soldier if a pale 18-year-old who appeared to be suffering from internal bleeding could be taken to a doctor. The soldier took the teenager away, gave him intravenous fluids for a few hours, and then returned him.

“I told them, ‘He could die,'” Hammouda said. “‘They told me this is the limit.’”

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AP author Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this record.