Beatings, theft and murder: The day Israeli soldiers came to Gaza’s Yarmouk Stadium
IDF troops in the Gaza Strip on Saturday 30 December 2023
Maha Hussaini and Mohammed Qreiqe report in Middle East Eye on 20 February 2024
After weeks of dodging Israeli bombs in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood of northern Gaza, Youssef Hamdan al-Mubayyed took refuge with his family in Yarmouk stadium in Gaza City with hundreds of other Palestinians. Mubayyed thought it would be the safest place for him to be in Gaza, as the stadium was exclusively used by those displaced by Israel’s military offensive since 7 October.
Instead it became somewhere he would be tortured, humiliated and threatened with death alongside dozens of other Palestinians.
Middle East Eye has spoken to Mubayyed and others who gave similar accounts, a sports stadium turned into a makeshift “interrogation and torture camp”. A place that became the scene of numerous atrocities, including murder. Founded in 1952, the Yarmouk Stadium is considered one of the largest and oldest sports stadiums in the Gaza Strip.
Following the Israeli invasion, images of the site appeared on social media, featuring hundreds of Palestinians, including children, stripped down to their underwear and watched over by Israeli soldiers.
Stadium encircled
The events Mubayyed described took place on 24 December. He recalls being awakened at 4.30am, as Israeli tanks and soldiers encircled the stadium. At around 6.30am, the Israeli army used loudspeakers to inform those in the stadium that the men among them would be separated for security checks.
“One soldier asked for someone who spoke English and I told him I did,” Mubayyed said. “He ordered me to tell the men to take their clothes off and sit in lines,” he told Middle East Eye. The 24-year-old said that he and the other men were forced to drop their clothes in the dirt and sit in the cold, before the soldiers took interest in him for being able to speak English.
“A soldier counted the men in the line. One, two, three and four, that was me,” Mubayyed recalled. “He said ‘come’ and then the first thing he did was grab me by the neck, and hit me against the wall around two to three times. “He said, you are Hamas but you don’t want to admit it.”
The soldier accused Mubayyed of being taught English by Hamas, an accusation he denied, but despite his denials the soldier continued to level accusations at him. “You are one of the saboteurs, and you will work with us whether you like it or not,” he recalled the soldier saying. For his refusal to cooperate, Mubayyed was beaten with the butt of an M16 rifle before being made to sit up and being struck by a shoe.
“He asked for my personal information and I told him I was from the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood.” The revelation resulted in more violence, the soldier struck Mubayyed again and others joined in. “I lost count and I could not figure out where the strikes and punches were coming from,” he said. The young Palestinian described being throttled by one soldier, as another soldier warned that he would allow his colleague to strangle him to death if he did not confess to being a member of Hamas. The same soldier then twisted his arm in an attempt to break it. “I was tortured for an hour, before an officer threw me to the ground and ordered me not to raise my head. He told the others to shoot me if I raised my head. I stayed like that for around 20 minutes.” Mubayyed’s torment ended when he was taken to a checkpoint, cleared by other soldiers and instructed to leave the stadium.
As he walked out, he could hear the sound of shelling in nearby areas and could see snipers on the roofs of buildings, shooting anyone who looked back at what was happening in the stadium.
He was shot himself when he turned around to look for his father. He took bullets in his arm and his lower back. He recalled that nobody helped him and he lay on the ground for some time, before slowly making his way up and walking towards the Al-Shifa hospital around a mile away, which he eventually reached.