Fadi Rajab ‘Abdel Kareem Hamoudah (16) a Grade 10 student from Jabalia.

I lived with my parents and 8 siblings in an apartment on the 2^nd floor of a 4-strorey house, where my uncles also lived.

Since the Israeli aggression started on Gaza on October 7^th, we remained in the house despite the Israeli heavy airstrikes, fire belts and the warplanes opening fire at the houses at night.  We were also hearing nearby roar of tanks and bulldozers.

At around 08:00 on 24 December 2023, the bombardment intensified in the area and we could hear the tanks and bulldozers moving away.  My 43-year-old father, my uncles, my grandfather, ‘Abdel Karim Hamoudah (75), and grandmother decided to leave the house and come back when the bombardment is over. We went to my deceased maternal grandfather’s house, which was around 200 meters away to the east.

When we all arrived at the house, it was empty as my uncle, his family and grandmother left, but we did not know where.

We remained there for 2 days without food or water and when we felt hungry, my father decided to leave the house raising a white flag and I went after him.  We were surprised with 2 Israeli soldiers pointing their weapons at us and one of them ordered us to put our hands on our heads and kneel.  He then ordered my father to call all those in the house to get out.

All of them got out, and the soldiers separated women from men, ordering men to raise their hands and kneel while women were told to walk away and leave the area.  They then called the women to come and take the children with them, and when my mom tried to take me, the soldier ordered her to leave.  She told him I was 15 years old and still young, so he called another soldier who came with a device and asked for my name and ID number, but I told him I did not have an ID card.  The soldier then stepped toward my father and took his ID’s slide and gave it back to him.  He checked on that device and then told my mom that they would take me.  My mom begged them to take me and cried a lot to convince them I was a child but the soldier forcefully pushed her and she fell on the ground.  He ordered her to leave and she left with in tears.

I was arrested with my 45-year-old uncle Tariq, my grandfather, my 32-year-old uncle Ahmed and cousin ‘Abdel Karim Tariq Hamoudah (20), whom the soldier told to knock all the houses’ doors and force residents out of the neighborhood.  I was surprised with the number of people who were staying in the area as I thought there were not a lot of men and women. Children and women were released while we, around 150 men, were held.  The soldiers then separated young men from elderlies while I was left alone.  They forced each 7 persons to sit horizontally while holding their ID cards in front of them.  They arrested 25 persons, tied their hands behind their back with plastic zip ties and blindfolded them with a piece of cloth.  They took them 10 meters away from me to the east and released the others.

A soldier then called me in Arabic to come.  He violently tied my hands behind my back with plastic zip ties and blindfolded me with a piece of cloth, taking me and the other detainees to hold us in one of the houses.  They placed us in a room on the fourth floor- I counted the stairs to know- and my father, uncles and cousin were with me.

The ties hurt me a lot as they were very tight, so I called the soldier to tell him to loosen it, but he kicked me with his boots all over my body and then hit me on the head with his riffle.  When one of the soldiers saw him, he ordered him to stop and leave me alone.  He ordered me to kneel and look down.  We stayed there until 17:00.

One of the soldiers came and ordered me to stand up and held my neck from the back.  He dragged me downstairs beating and pushing me whenever I wanted to lean against the wall. As soon as he had taken me outside the building, he made me stand behind a truck with one solider on my right and another on my left.  They carried me and then threw me inside the truck, which drove us for 45 minutes and then stopped in a military site but I did not know in what area.  They threw me on the ground, so I fell on my shoulder and it hurt me.  One of the soldiers came and ordered me to stand up, and I told him I could not.  He pulled me from my shoulder, forcing me to stand.  He walked me around 30 meters while beating me and pushing my back.  He then ordered me to kneel on the floor and look down for around an hour. I was then taken to a room to find a soldier there who asked me about my name and age and took 20 shekels that I had.  They pushed me inside a tile-floored room and spent there 2 days without offering me any food or water.  On the third day, we were taken to a bus that drove us to an unknown destination.

They brought me down and walked me to a room, where I was untied but remained blindfolded. they forced me to take off my clothes except for the boxers and gave me a grey pajama.  I wore it and they tied my hands with metal cuffs.  They sat me on a gravel floor for an hour and a half.  A soldier then arrived and took me to a room, sitting me down on a chair.  Another one interrogated me and asked for my personal data (name, age, ID number and cellphone number), I told him that I did not have an ID number and told him that I had my father, Rajab, here, so he called one of the soldiers to bring him.  They brought my dad and the interrogator asked him, “is that your son and is he 15 years old?” and my dad said yes. He was then taken out and that was the last time I heard his voice.  The soldier then took me out of the room to another, where there was a doctor.  He asked if I had any diseases, smoke cigarettes or weed, and I said no.  They then put a plastic bracelet around my hand holding number 059286, which was my number in detention, and took me to a bus.  The bus drove us for 30 minutes and then stopped.  They took me down and gave me a very light mattress and a blanket.  They called one of the detainees (man-of-all-work), who took me inside a barrack lined with barbed wires, floored with concrete and roofed with tinplate.  It was 22:00 when I asked him for food, and after 15 minutes he brought me two loafs of bread and an apple.  I lifted the blindfold a little to see 80 other detainees with me in the barrack.  I tried to sleep on the mattress but the man-of-all-work warned me not to sleep because the soldiers would come and beat me.  He told me to wait a little as they would come for an inmate count.  Half an hour later, they counted us and then I slept.

I remained in detention for 23 days, during which, I was interrogated once after 8 days of being held in the barrack.  They took me for interrogation which was about October 7^th, the tunnels, and if I knew anyone from Hamas.  The interrogation continued for 15 minutes.

At 19:00 on day 10 of detention, the soldiers came with their large dogs, ordering us to sleep on stomach and putting hands on head, and they warned us whoever moved, they would fuck him. They then unleashed the dogs towards us; one of which walked over my back.  The dogs were smelling us and barking while the soldiers were insulting us saying “you women sons of bitches.”

Detainees suffered from scarcity of food.  At 06:00, they brought us breakfast, which was two loafs of bread, cheese and a cucumber, while lunch was 4 sandwiches with a tomato and for dinner they brought labneh with 2 loafs of bread and an apple.  Showers were allowed only on Monday and Thursday, and we performed Tayammum instead of Wudu’ to pray. Tayammum means to wipe face and hands with the purpose of purification for prayer by using soil, purified sand, or dust. While in detention, we were not allowed to stand, but to kneel on the floor with our hands tied with metal cuffs in front and blindfolded from 5:00 to 23:00.

There was one of the detainees appointed by the warden as a man-of-all-work, who distributed food and water from the tap or took us to the bathroom.

The inmate count called “Asfara” in Hebrew was done 4 times a day at 06:00, at 12:00, at 18:00 and at 22:00 before bedtime.

At 09:00 on Thursday, 18 January 2024, a soldier came with a list of names and called 12 detainees, including me.  He checked our numbers and left.  At around 22:30, the soldier came back and called us, ordering to bring the mattress and blanket with us and sleep near the barrack door.

At 03:00 on Friday, 19 January 2024, the soldier took us out of the barrack, untied the iron cuffs and replaced them with plastic zip ties tying them behind the back.  He blindfolded me and then gave me an envelope with the 20 shekels they previously took from me and put me on a bus with other detainees.  After around 2 hours, the bus drove us for 2 hours when we arrived at Kerem Shalom crossing.  They dropped us there and untied us.  we were 35 detainees, including 5 women, and the Israeli soldiers ordered us to walk ahead.  We walked 200 meters away and then turned right.  At that time, we knew we took the wrong direction, so the soldiers opened fire in the air and we stepped back and walked another 100 meters to find an UNRWA bus.  We got on the bus that drove us 200 meters away to the west, where there was a barrack for the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC).  We entered the bathroom, they gave us clothes to wear and food.  They took our personal data and then transferred us to a shelter, al-Ta’ef Preparatory School for Boys in Tal al-Sultan in Rafah, where we were placed in tents; each 7 in one tent. Some of us reunited with their families, but my family are still in North Gaza and I have not yet been able to contact them.  ICRC gave me 500 shekels, but I spent them all and now I do not have a single penny.  I suffer from bitter cold in the tent, and when it rains, the tent floods; we spend all time washing it out. Meanwhile for food, I depend on canned food given by the shelter and beg for bread from people there.  I hope that this war would end and I reunite with my family, who does not know anything about me as I had not been able to reach or know anything about them.