On the morning of December 16, 2023, Israeli military forces stormed Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, Gaza, where Dr. Ahmad Mhanna, the former director of the facility, was treating wounded patients. According to verified testimonies and documentation from Amnesty International, Mhanna was seized without warning, blindfolded and handcuffed while still wearing his surgical scrubs. His arrest marked the beginning of a 22-month ordeal that would expose systematic abuses against Palestinian medical personnel—a pattern Amnesty International has classified as violations of international humanitarian law.
Mhanna’s detention followed a well-documented Israeli military tactic: the forced extraction of healthcare workers from hospitals operating in conflict zones. Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have detained at least 1,200 Palestinians in Gaza, including dozens of doctors, nurses, and paramedics, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and independent human rights monitors. The Israeli military has justified these arrests under its Unlawful Combatants Law, a legal framework critics argue is used to bypass due process. Mhanna’s case, however, reveals a far more brutal reality—one where detention was not just arbitrary but designed to break resistance through psychological and physical torment.
The first 48 hours of Mhanna’s captivity began in a house near Al-Awda, where he was left overnight on a stairwell, restrained, and unquestioned. “They didn’t ask me anything,” he recalled in a detailed account obtained by Amnesty International. “In the middle of the night, a bulldozer started demolishing something nearby. The vibrations shook the entire building. I thought it would collapse on me.” By dawn, soldiers removed his restraints but only to escort him back to the hospital under threat: *”If you refuse to cooperate, the gun will speak.”* Mhanna, who had spent his career saving lives, was then forced to compile a list of all staff and patients, identifying males aged 16 to 60 for interrogation—a process that violated medical confidentiality and the Geneva Conventions’ protections for healthcare facilities.
Among those singled out were patients with severe injuries, including a man with an amputated leg, and several of Mhanna’s colleagues. The interrogations that followed were not merely questions but a ritual of degradation. “We were told to strip to our underwear in freezing temperatures,” Mhanna said. “One soldier looked at me and said, *‘My colleagues in Tel Aviv want to have a drink with you.’* That was when I knew I wasn’t being released.” His arrest was indefinite, with no legal justification provided at the time.
From Hospital to Hell: The Detention System
Mhanna’s transfer to Israeli custody began with a journey through the Erez crossing, where soldiers noticed he had not been blindfolded. They responded with violence, punching him in the chest before restoring his restraints and ordering him to keep his head down. Upon arrival at the first detention facility, he was taken to a room dubbed the *”disco room”*—a bare stone chamber covered only by a yoga mat, where blaring Israeli music played nonstop for 24 hours to deprive prisoners of sleep. This tactic, documented in other Israeli detention centers, is recognized by medical professionals as a form of auditory torture.
Interrogations in the following days were marked by physical abuse and threats. Mhanna was accused of providing medical treatment to fighters, a charge he denied. When he refused to implicate colleagues, a soldier identifying as a general threatened to break his bones. “They beat me and cursed at me,” he said. “I told them I was a doctor, not a soldier. But they didn’t care.” His case file would later oscillate between accusations of affiliation with Hamas and the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), a legal inconsistency that underscores the arbitrary nature of his detention.
By January 2024, Mhanna was moved to Sde Teiman, an Israeli military base repurposed as a detention center. There, interrogators escalated their tactics, threatening to harm his wife and daughters. “They told me if I didn’t cooperate, they would make sure my family never saw me again,” he recalled. The psychological warfare extended to sensory deprivation: handcuffed for 24 days without judicial review, he was later transferred to Al-Kallaba, a facility where detainees were subjected to attack dogs. “A dog was placed directly on my back,” Mhanna said. “I could feel its weight, its breath. It was meant to terrify us.”
Ketziot: A Year and Two Months of Engineered Suffering
Mhanna’s most prolonged imprisonment occurred in the Negev/Naqab (Ketziot) detention center, where he endured a year and two months under conditions that Amnesty International has described as amounting to torture. Upon arrival, detainees underwent the tashrifa, a ritual of beatings and humiliation involving boiling water thrown on prisoners. “It was designed to break you before you even had a chance to resist,” Mhanna said. The facility itself was a tented prison, where 40 men were crammed into a 50-square-meter space, sleeping on the floor.
Hunger was a deliberate tool of control. Rations were meager, often dirty, and sometimes laced with cigarette ash. “If we saved scraps, the guards would punish the entire cell,” Mhanna explained. Hygiene was nonexistent: no soap, no toothbrushes, and no showers for six months led to widespread scabies. When two detainees died in his presence—one from ascites—Mhanna pleaded for antibiotics. A guard’s response was chilling: *”You are not a doctor here. You are a terrorist.”* His first appearance before a judge came three months into detention, via a brief video call, where he was informed he was being held on “secret evidence” under the Unlawful Combatants Law.
Legal proceedings were a farce. Mhanna’s charges fluctuated between Hamas and PFLP affiliation, with no consistent evidence presented. His only “crime,” as he puts it, was being a doctor in Gaza. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) did not visit him until October 2025, seven months after his arrest—a delay that left his family in the dark about his fate. When a lawyer finally visited, she revealed that his wife, Alaa, had conducted an exhaustive search for him, traveling to multiple detention centers and hospitals. “That was the first time I felt human again,” Mhanna said.
A Return Without Justice
Mhanna’s release on October 11, 2025, came after the ICRC informed him he was on a list of detainees to be freed. The announcement included a “dignity kit,” a term that struck him as ironic given the months of degradation he had endured. Upon arrival at Nasser Hospital, he weighed 28 kilograms less than at his arrest. Al-Awda Hospital, where he had once directed medical operations, remained inaccessible behind Israel’s Yellow Line, a military demarcation that has effectively sealed off northern Gaza from humanitarian aid.
Today, Mhanna struggles with insomnia, anxiety, and trauma. Yet despite the physical and psychological toll, he remains committed to his work. “They tried to erase who I was,” he said. “But I am still a doctor. And I will return to my patients when I can.” His case is one of hundreds documented by human rights organizations, yet no Israeli official has faced consequences for the abuses he endured. The Unlawful Combatants Law remains in effect, and Palestinian medical workers continue to be detained without charge.
The Israeli military has not responded to specific allegations in Mhanna’s testimony, though a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated in a general comment that all detentions comply with international law. The ICRC has repeatedly called for unimpeded access to detainees and an end to arbitrary arrests, but as of May 2026, no independent investigation into systemic abuses has been initiated. The cycle of detention, torture, and silence persists.
