Hadeel Yousef ‘Issa al-Dahdouh (24), a mother of 2 children from al-Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City, gave her testimony to PCHR on 10 March 2024.

I am married to Rushdi Ziyad Rushdi Al Zaza (31) and have two children: Mohammed (4) and Zain (9 months).

On 08 October 2023, we heard our neighbors screaming on the street that Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) would bomb our neighbor’s house, so the residents of nearby houses were evacuating and running on the street to stay as far as possible from the house warned to be bombed. Immediately, my husband and I took our children down to the ground floor to my brother-in-law’s house, to seek shelter from the bombing, and stayed in a relatively safe place. The house was then bombed that strongly shook our house, and thankfully none of us was injured.

For four days after the war erupted, I stayed in my apartment on the 4^th floor, witnessing all the bombardment and fire belts pounding the Shija’iyah neighborhood. We were very terrified by heavy fire belts and my children were screaming out of fear.

The bombing and fire belts dramatically intensified and became closer to our house. We were scared to death and nervous all the time. All I did was sitting and hugging my children who were screaming out of fear.

We could not call any ambulances due to the total communications blackout, so our neighbors evacuated those injured to al-Shifa Hospital in their own cars.

After the truce ended, intense bombing and fire belts returned to heavily pound the nearby areas, shaking our house. We were feeling pain in the ears out of the intensive fire belts that were constantly targeting entire residential neighborhoods in the area. We were extremely terrified that our house might be bombed next over our heads, so my father-in-law decided to seek shelter in our neighbor’s basement next to our house, but I refused and asked my husband to go to my family house.

Terrifying moments

My husband told me to go to our neighbor’s house and stay with his family in the basement, so we went there and spent the whole day. The next day, I told my husband that we had no bread to feed the children and I want to go home to bake some. Meanwhile, my brother-in-law and his wife wanted to go as well to wash their clothes, so we went together.

Detention

Genetic testing due to my children’s skin color

I was drugged as well, but before that, the female soldier asked me if anesthesia affects me, I told her yes because I do not want to lose consciousness like other men. The female soldier then gave me an epidural anesthesia and then took a sample from my back and another from my husband to do a DNA test.

The carrier drove us far away and on 08 December 2023, we arrived in Israel, where the soldiers put us in two separate tents; one for men and the other for women. I was taken to the women’s tent, which had a wet pebbled floor, where I fainted out of severe fatigue, and the women detained there thought I died. I later learned from them that they desperately tried to wake me up by shaking me, but I remained unconscious until the next morning.

While I was in Damon prison, I was crying all the time and very sad about what happened to my husband, children and family. We were more than 120 female detainees from the Gaza Strip and all of them were trying to calm me down, but I could not stop crying. I was in section No. (9), and there was a small hole in the cell door (a bean slot) through which the food trays are passed. Our breakfast was an egg and for lunch they gave us one cheese toast and soup, while the dinner was an egg. They gave us a break for half an hour and then it was extended for an hour. I spent 49 days in Damon prison, where I was interrogated 5 times; during which, the investigators asked me the same questions and there was no strip search. Throughout my detention in Damon prison, I was not tortured or beaten.

Release from Detention