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Photos: Published by Haaretz
From left, the brothers Aysar, Mohammed and Tamim Abu Hashhash, at home in the Al-Fawar camp last week. Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

A Palestinian boy in the Al-Fawar refugee camp in 2021. It's one of the less violent camps; it has no local armed groups like those in the camps of the northern West Bank. Credit: Alex Levac

Sari Abu Hashhash. A broken man. Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

Mussa Abu Hashhash and his three sons. The troops took them to the kitchen, one after the other, and beat them up, Mussa says. Credit: Tomer Appelbaum

Hana with her children, Bayalsin and Mahmoud. The troops threw her medication in the garbage, the family says.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum
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Israeli soldiers abused people during a raid on a remote refugee camp in the territories. During their violent rampage, the troops detained 30 inhabitants, of whom 27 were released the next day

by Gideon Levy
Oct 25, 2024

It was a night inhabitants of the Al-Fawar refugee camp won't soon forget. Located in a remote part of the West Bank, south of Hebron, Al-Fawar is one of the less violent camps; it has no local armed groups like those in the camps of the northern West Bank. But still this camp, on which Israel has imposed a partial siege since the start of the war – compounded by almost total unemployment due to the ban on workers entering Israel – is also being subjected to frequent raids by the Israel Defense Forces.

The raid on the night of September 18-19 was perhaps the most vicious of all, in recent memory. No one was killed, but the soldiers' behavior was violent – at times downright sadistic, according to the local residents we spoke with this week.

Late the next day, the troops left Al-Fawar with their "booty": three young detainees. All the other young men they had taken into custody and had questioned overnight had quickly been released. The main purpose of the operation seems to have been to abuse the inhabitants, to put on a show of strength. Maybe also to provide some "action" for the soldiers, who must be envious of their buddies in the Gaza Strip, where perpetration of violence on the population is rampant. Maybe it was aimed at giving these troops the feeling that they're doing "meaningful service." It's hard to find any other explanation for the invasion of Al-Fawar.

The main entrance to the camp, from Highway 60, the main West Bank thoroughfare, has been blocked by an iron barrier since the start of the war; we managed to enter via another route, through the city of Yatta. There was a semblance of routine life on the main street: hundreds of children on the way home from school, stores open, people walking about.

But the scene was deceptive, and rooted in the deepest despair. Most of the men in Al-Fawar have been jobless and idle for more than a year. The humiliation of the night of September 19 has only amplified their feelings of utter hopelessness.

Mohammed Abu Hashhash, an unmarried man of 52 who was in the past incarcerated in Israel for 11 years, is the camp's mukhtar and head of its branch of the Fatah movement. He is a magnet for complaints about each and every form of distress that afflicts the residents. UNRWA, the United Nations refugee agency, provides welfare payments of a meager 250 shekels (about $67) per family a month (only to needy families), besides the salary the agency pays its local employees: teachers, and health and sanitation personnel. Palestinian Authority staff have had their salary cut recently, because of the PA's economic situation. Abu Hashhash tries to help, though the coffers are empty: He says he doesn't remember such a dramatic level of economic distress in the camp.

He's a cordial person who speaks good Hebrew, and he strolls with us leisurely through the streets of the camp. You might think we were walking around Tel Aviv. He was compelled to shut down the pirate gas station he owns on the main thoroughfare because of the partial closure that Israeli authorities have imposed on the camp. The Shin Bet security service calls him frequently, demanding that he undertake to prevent stones from being thrown at settler cars on Highway 60.

"Can the Shin Bet prevent stone throwing? How can I guarantee that children won't throw stones?" he tells them – and us, too. "We don't believe in war, but look at the television... Children were burned [to death] in a Gaza hospital. This is a war on children. How can I tell them not to throw stones? They see what is happening in Gaza." Three weeks ago, Abu Hashhash adds, soldiers burst into his home and beat him, after a Shin Bet agent ordered him to come to his office at 4 A.M., and he refused.

Seven of Al-Fawar's residents have been killed by the army since October 7, 2023. One of them, a cleaning worker, Yahya Awad, 29, was killed last month in a hail of bullets as he tried to flee soldiers; a video clip shows him running for his life. He left a wife and two small children. Manal al-Ja'bri, a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, counted almost 100 bullet holes in proximity to the incident, near the camp's cellphone store. She and the other B'Tselem field researcher in the Hebron area, Basel al-Adraa, also investigated the events of September 18-19.

"In the past, the soldiers respected old people, children and women," Mohammed Abu Hashhash says. "Today they don't respect anyone, they have no respect for any Palestinian."

Outrageous abuse

The army stormed the camp at about 10 P.M. on September 18, only pulling out late the next afternoon. Throughout that entire time, the inhabitants were trapped in their homes.

Mohammed's brother, Sari, 45, is sitting on the sofa in Mohammed's fine home on the camp's main street. He's a broken person; he's lost 30 kilograms (66 pounds) in the past few months. Sari was shot in the stomach by soldiers last December while he was crossing the road late at night. He says he was heading for a nearby grocery store, not knowing troops were in the camp. Now there's a stoma bag attached to his digestive tract; he's waiting, brutally thin, for another operation.

The two brothers, who thought they'd already seen everything, are distraught over what happened on that fateful night. Mohammed estimates that soldiers entered 50 homes in the camp, 19 of them belonging to members of his extended family. The troops shattered windows, broke down doors, ransacked the homes and roughed up the inhabitants.

His nephew was subjected to outrageous abuse, the mukhtar explains, referring to Mohammed Abdallah Abu Hashhash, a student of 24. "He's a lovely kid, he didn't do a thing," his uncle says. The student did not want to meet with us, but the mukhtar told us what happened: Soldiers forced him to lie in his stomach on the floor of the bathroom in his house, and stuffed sugar, hot peppers and sage into his anus.

That same night troops expelled all 20 people living in the home of the family of Mohammed al-Hatib, who's 75, and turned the dwelling into a makeshift Shin Bet interrogation center. It was there that the soldiers brought their initial booty – 30 detainees – for questioning.

Ensconced at home, also located on the camp's main street, is Mussa Abu Hashhash – one of the mukhtar's many siblings; he is 54 and a father of five. In 2001, he was shot in the head while working for the Palestinian police in the town of Samua, in the far south of the West Bank. Today Mussa is partially paralyzed, his speech is heavy, his gait is unsteady and his head is misshapen. On September 19, soldiers burst into his home, too. The outcome was brutal, the family tells us.

The front door was breached at 4 A.M. and approximately 30 soldiers entered. The first person they encountered was Mussa's 20-year-old son Aysar, who's studying nuclear medicine at Palestine Polytechnic University in Hebron. The troops ordered him to gather the six family members who were at home in the living room, confiscated their cellphones and ID cards, and forced them to kneel on the floor. That was just a prelude to the brutality.

The troops took each of Mussa's three sons to the kitchen separately. On a tablet the soldiers had brought with them, they showed the three a photograph of a rifle and demanded to know to whom it belonged and where it was hidden. When Aysar and his two brothers – Mohammed, 23, and Thamim, 16 – said they knew nothing about the weapon, they were beaten all over their bodies. The soldiers called their commander to ask whether they should take Mohammed into custody.

The three handsome young brothers are now sitting in the living room, dressed in black. Mohammed seems to be in the worst shape. He relates to us, somewhat reluctantly, that he was handcuffed and shoved into the bathroom by the soldiers; they thrust his head into the toilet bowl and tried to close the seat top on him, and then poured water from the toilet's tank over his head. This series of abuse was repeated three or four times, he says. When Mohammed was brought back to the living room, a soldier poked a finger into his eye – and his mother, Arij, 48, screamed: "Enough!"

Mussa, the disabled father, could not contain himself in the face of what his sons were enduring. Enraged, he pounded his hands on his knees, and a soldier slapped him in the face. The family says a soldier also struck 20-year-old Bathul, Aysar's twin sister.

Finally the troops decided to take Mohammed to the house, some 200 meters away, that had been converted into an interrogation center. The Shin Bet was using two of its rooms to interrogate the men who'd been brought there and forced to kneel, blindfolded, on the floor – one room under the auspices of "Captain Zaidan," the other the domain of "Captain Eid."

Mohammed was forced to kneel during his interrogation, but his blindfold was removed. Captain Zaidan threatened that if he didn't reveal where the rifle was hidden, his whole family would be arrested. Meanwhile, it turns out that soldiers who remained in the house threatened Mussa that his children would be expelled to Gaza.

Zaidan told Mohammed that he was stuck in a deep pit and that only he, the Shin Bet agent, could rescue him. Naturally, he demanded some sort of collaboration in return. Mohammed, who was released in February after serving four years for security violations, reminded his interrogator that this was the fifth time the Shin Bet had proposed that he become an informer. He had refused the previous times, he insisted, and would refuse this time as well. "In other words, now you're insisting on going back to jail," the agent threatened, taking out a form and attaching it with tape to Mohammed's arm.

At 5 P.M., as the incursion into the camp was winding down, Mohammed was released. Soldiers were still in his home when he got there. The family says that in the intervening hours the soldiers ate and drank in a ground-floor room of the house.

Just a toy

The next family we visited will also never forget the horrors of that same night last month. This is the home of Haitham Ganza, 56, a father of six. His daughter Bayalsin, 26, is a graduate of the PA's Military Academy and serves as an officer in the Palestinian intelligence agency. She too was in the house that night, with her sick mother and Hebrew-speaking father, who until the war worked as a house painter and plastering expert in Be'er Sheva.

There, too, the troops forced their way into the house at 4 A.M. All 20 or so people inside were ordered to go down to the apartment of an uncle who lives on the ground floor. Haithan's son Mahmoud, 24, was taken to the kitchen and beaten, including on his genitals. Afterward he was unable to stand up. His siblings tried to explain to the soldiers that their mother, Hana, who's 54, had recently undergone surgery. Nothing helped. She too was forced to sit on the floor. The troops threw her medication in the garbage; they also put the male and female members of the family in separate rooms.

Here too the troops were searching for a weapon, and again they found nothing – other than a toy rifle. "I felt there was something really bad about the way they looked at us," Bayalsin recalls. Hana, who was praying on the floor, was ordered to stop; she tried to protest but a soldier silenced her. Bayalsin heard them calling her a "babe." "Thank God I didn't hear that," her father mutters in Hebrew. "We would not have kept silent over something like that. I was on my knees for three and a half hours. I almost died. I started to sweat like I never did before, not even during work in Be'er Sheva."

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit stated this week in response that the army's forces "carried out an operation in September to thwart and arrest terror activists in the Al-Fawar refugee camp. The allegations that have been presented here are not known to the IDF. If complaints are received, they will be examined according to the regular procedures."

Mahmoud shows us his cellphone, which was smashed by the troops along with ashtrays and other items. He says one soldier prayed and blew the shofar. The soldiers helped themselves to chocolates and fruit left over in the family's refrigerator from the wedding of a relative. "But they made coffee at their own expense – [Israeli] Elite coffee," his father says, a bitter smile crossing his face.

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