Mohammed Nazzal’s family cried out in horror when they saw him for the first time in three months. His hands were wrapped in white cloth, and he was unable to move them. He had also lost a lot of weight.
Mohammed, 17, was one of dozens of Palestinian children released as part of an exchange deal between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas.
A total of 240 Palestinian women and children were freed from incarceration over the course of a week, in exchange for more than 80 Israeli captives held in the Gaza Strip.
Painful Memories
On August 24, twenty Israeli soldiers stormed Mohammed’s house in the town of Qabatiya, south of Jenin. They arrested him despite his young age, tied him up, and blindfolded him.
“They beat me in front of my family, my brother was screaming at them, so they beat him too. They took me outside the house to the military vehicle, then to the Dotan settlement, west of Jenin,” he said.
Along the way, Mohammed was kicked and beaten endlessly with Israeli soldiers’ rifles, to the point that he was screaming in pain.
He told Palestine Chronicle that he was transferred to the Huwwara military camp, south of Nablus. There the situation was deplorable. Palestinian prisoners were subjected to ill-treatment, starvation, and humiliation.
“The Israeli soldiers were screaming and mocking us all the time. The food was dirty and there were no clothes,” he said.
After nine days, Mohammed was transferred to Megiddo Prison. There, conditions improved slightly, but the prison administration refused to place him in the children’s section under the pretext that he was close to 18 years old.
Without charge or trial, he was placed in administrative detention for a period of six months. This period can be extended according to the mood of the Israeli intelligence, which decides how many times it can be extended.
I’ve been reading stories like this for thirty years. If this is the kind of people some god favors, that’s the kind of god that needs to die.