Rafah - Saba:
Faris, along with nine of his friends—teenagers between the ages of 15 and 17—was taken by Israeli occupation soldiers while attempting to obtain food aid from distribution centers in Rafah, southern Gaza.
Their goal was simple: to secure a morsel of food to ease the escalating hunger in the besieged and devastated strip.
The boys later gave shocking testimonies, confirming they had endured "severe violations and brutal torture." Before their arrest, occupation soldiers had opened fire on four civilians, including a child, killing them and wounding dozens.
One of the released boys recounted: "My mother would split a loaf of bread in half—half for the morning, half for the evening. I saw her tears every day, but I couldn’t do anything... I decided to go out and find food, even if it meant dying."* But death was not quicker than suffering.
The barefoot child, who had set out to bring his mother a loaf of bread, found himself handcuffed, blindfolded, and subjected to relentless interrogation and torture in closed rooms the detainees called "disco rooms."There, the air was heated to the point of suffocation, and they were denied sleep or food unless shackled.
The boy continued, describing how soldiers stormed their rooms almost every night, beating them violently with batons and throwing stun grenades into their cells. The wounded were denied medical care despite their peers' pleas, while he himself suffered repeated convulsions and bleeding from the ear.
Another boy shared a harrowing ordeal: "A soldier grabbed me by the neck and leg and told me he would throw me off a fifth-floor roof. Another soldier intervened, took me, and began interrogating me—asking about where I lived, the displacement camps, and Hamas members. I told him, ‘I don’t know, I’m just a kid—all I do is study.’ He called me a liar, tied a rope around my neck and feet, and threw me from the fifth floor. I felt an indescribable fear, but the rope didn’t reach the ground—it left me dangling half a meter above it. Then he pulled me back up and said, ‘I’ll kill you.’"
On July 24, the boys were released through the Kerem Shalom crossing and taken to Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in severe physical and psychological condition—a reflection of the torture and humiliation they endured after a journey of starvation, detention, and the utter violation of human dignity.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights documented their testimonies, stating that these abuses amount to "compound crimes" aimed at humiliating, starving, and even killing Palestinians—targeting them directly, even in aid distribution areas that should be safe havens, not death traps.
The center strongly condemned the targeting of children, stressing that the current aid distribution mechanism fails all humanitarian standards and is instead exploited politically and militarily to tighten the siege and displacement of Gaza’s population. It called for immediate international intervention to halt these violations and release all detained children.
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