'I thought I might die': A Palestinian mother's account of Israeli detention
Each night, Saeda al-Shrafi feels as though she is back in the cell: boots in the corridor, a headcount barked in the dark, the cold of Damon prison seeping into her bones.
Even now in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian mother says she cannot leave that world behind.
Detained during the mass displacement from northern Gaza in late 2023, Shrafi was among hundreds stopped at Israeli military checkpoints as civilians were ordered south.
She had set out along what the army described as a “safe corridor”, travelling with her brother-in-law, Youssef, and her two young children - three-year-old Zain al-Din and baby Adam - hoping to escape the relentless bombardment.
Before the war, she lived quietly in Jabalia refugee camp. When the Israeli genocide began in 2023, her husband, Mohammed, a musician, went missing. Weeks later, as shells struck their building, she fled south under Israeli orders.
Near a checkpoint on Salah al-Din Street, a soldier singled her out over a loudspeaker.
“The lady with the purple shawl, give your boy to the young man with you and come towards us,” the soldier said, according to Shrafi.
“My one-year-old son, Adam, clung to my clothes in terror until I was forced to hand him to Youssef,” she told Middle East Eye.
She began to cry, fearing it might be the last time she would see her children. She promised to return, not knowing if she could.
When she approached the soldiers, they immediately shackled her. Two female soldiers took her to a nearby tent-like structure and forced her to strip for a search.
“They told me to take off my clothes, threw me to the ground, blindfolded me and beat me,” she recalled.
'They moved us by beating us and pulling our hair. I thought I might die under the torture'
- Saeda al-Shrafi, Palestinian mother
In the first interrogation room, she was accused of involvement in the Hamas-led 7 October attacks. She denied this, explaining she was a housewife.
When she repeatedly asked for her children, she said they were used as leverage.
“The soldiers told me my children were in their custody and would only be released if I answered their questions.”
She says soldiers beat her again before trying to load her onto a truck with other detainees.
She resisted, but they carried her by her limbs and threw her inside, beginning a six-week ordeal in Israeli custody that would change her forever.
Interrogation
Shrafi says she did not know where she was being taken until she arrived at a facility, still blindfolded, where soldiers beat her again, insulted her continuously, and treated her as a “criminal”. That’s when she understood she had been taken to a detention facility or a prison.
At one point, she recalls, a woman nearby - her voice older - asked for water.
What followed, she says, was sudden and terrifying: dogs were brought close, barking loudly. She felt saliva drip onto her hand and believed she had been singled out.
“I felt extreme fear, started trembling, and lost control of myself,” she said.
The dogs were eventually pulled away, but she says the beating continued.
She and others were later transported by bus, blindfolded, while being beaten and verbally abused along the way. When the blindfold was finally removed, she found herself in a crowded cell with six other Palestinian women. More detainees were brought in over time.
Shrafi says she spent a week there without being told where she was or why she had been detained. At first, she avoided speaking to others, unable to trust anyone, her thoughts fixed on her children.
By the third day, she says, detainees were being taken one by one for interrogation.
“Some returned silent, unable to speak from fear; others were moved to solitary confinement.”
When her turn came, Shrafi says the interrogator repeated the same questions to her, threatening to kill her children and bomb her family and relatives in Gaza if she didn't tell the truth.
Then another female interrogator asked the same questions again.
“I was about to lose my mind,” Shrafi said. “She asked me about my children. I told her they were killed. She thought I had gone mad and stopped interacting with me."
‘You are in hell’
After interrogation, Israeli soldiers told Shrafi and the other detainees they were being released and returned to Gaza. Instead, they were transferred to Dimona prison in the Negev desert.
On arrival, she says, the guards insulted and beat them. One leaned in and whispered: “You are in Dimona. You are in hell.”
“They didn’t order us to move,” she recalled. “They moved us by beating us and pulling our hair. I thought I might die under the torture.”
Shrafi says she was placed in a cell measuring roughly 2.5m by 1.5 m, shared with other Palestinian detainees. Within days, there were 12 women inside.
Conditions, she says, were dire: minimal food, unclean drinking water, a single shared toilet, no access to medical care, and a ban on speaking.
“It was unbearable,” she said.
'Palestinian prisoners live in a dark world of torture that can break a person’s mind'
- Saeda al-Shrafi, Palestinian mother
“A 24-year-old pregnant detainee from Gaza miscarried in the cell toilet. She was in severe mental distress after soldiers told her they had killed her husband,” Shrafi recalled.
“She needed medical attention, but no one in the prison cared for her. Only we, the Palestinian detainees, tried to help.”
Searches were frequent. During one, Shrafi says guards mocked her as she cried, claiming her family in Gaza had been killed. The taunts escalated until she collapsed in a panic attack.
Throughout her detention, she heard nothing from her family. Each new arrival from Gaza brought grim updates.
In mid-December 2024, two detainees were taken from the cell. Shrafi and others asked them to pass on messages if released, though she says such promises were often withdrawn.
“The soldiers sometimes said we would be released, then took it back. It was just another way to break us.”
Days later, guards again said the women would be freed, including Shrafi.
“I didn’t believe them,” she said. “But I tried to memorise phone numbers and names of other detainees to pass on to families if I got out.”
When the time came, prison guards told the women to return their uniforms after they had prepared for release.
Instead, they were transferred to another facility in Beersheba, where they spent the next three days in equally harsh conditions.
“We were kept blindfolded and made to sit on the ground in a prostration position. They beat me with their military boots. Another woman beside me fainted from the strain of being forced to remain in that position.”
‘I think about the prisoners every day’
After the three days, at exactly 8am on Friday 12 January 2024, Israeli soldiers handed Shrafi and the other women over to the Red Cross in southern Gaza.
They were then transferred to Rafah, where dozens of families had gathered, waiting for the release of Palestinian women detainees announced earlier.
Shrafi was first met by her aunt, who had been waiting for her. She immediately asked about her children and her family.
“She told me that more than 50 people from my family had been killed, including my brother Mansour and my brother-in-law.
“But she said my children were alive. I couldn’t believe it until they arrived and I held them.”
She had been detained for around a month and a half, but says the aftermath was immediate and disorienting.
“When I came home, my youngest son, Adam, didn’t recognise me. He was afraid of me.”
Even after her release, she says she cannot leave the experience behind.
“I think about the prisoners every day,” she said.
“When I try to sleep, I imagine what they are going through - whether they have eaten, or whether their cells are being raided.”
Israeli forces have kidnapped thousands of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip since the genocide began in 2023.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have also escalated arrest raids since then, detaining scores of people daily.
Today, more than 9,600 Palestinian and Arab prisoners are held in Israeli jails. Around half are held without charge or trial. The figure does not include those detained in military facilities.
Marking Palestinian Prisoners’ Day on 17 April, the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association and other rights bodies said detainees today face the “harshest levels of torture, abuse, and extermination in the history of the Israeli occupation”.
For the past three years, the group said, Israeli prison authorities have committed “severe and widespread crimes” against thousands of Palestinian prisoners.
Under these conditions, at least 89 prisoners are known to have died in custody. The true number who died under torture is believed to be higher. Dozens of prisoners from Gaza also remain forcibly disappeared.
“Palestinian prisoners live in a dark world of torture that can break a person’s mind,” Shrafi said.
“I still hold on to the same wish I had in prison: that Palestinian prisoners will not be forgotten, and that they will be free soon.”
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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