The two brothers said soldiers beat, spat on, and threw objects at them, leaving one with a broken hand and genital injuries. When their lawyer complained about Israeli military police investigators laughing during the report, she was told they ‘were young and couldn’t help it’
Israeli soldiers violently assaulted and humiliated two Palestinian brothers in the West Bank in January, and when one of them filed a complaint with the military police, investigators laughed at him as he recounted the incident.
According to the brothers, the assault involved verbal abuse, spitting, sexual assault and the throwing of objects. One of them suffered a broken hand and injuries to his genitals.
When one of them complained to military police, he was laughed at – and when their lawyer contacted the military police to protest his treatment, she was told that the investigators were “young soldiers who couldn’t control themselves.” A formal complaint regarding the investigators’ conduct has been submitted to the Military Advocate General.
The attack took place in mid-January when family members from the West Bank village of Al-Mughayyir were on a nearby plot of land where their family tent stands, accompanied by foreign and Israeli activists. “Suddenly, a white Toyota with military plates arrived carrying soldiers,” said one of the brothers, Rabea, a 34-year-old father of three.
According to the two brothers and another Israeli activist, nothing unusual happened before the assault, except for a car observing them from a nearby outpost. Video footage from the beginning of the incident shows three masked soldiers and another wearing sunglasses arriving at the scene. In another video, one soldier is seen dancing and singing in front of the camera, taunting an activist who was filming and refusing to step away.
The two brothers and an Israeli activist who was with them said the soldiers claimed they had come to dismantle portable toilets that had been placed on the land. They then demanded the key to an unregistered car parked there, but the family did not hand it over. The soldiers confiscated the passports of two foreign activists, along with the phones and ID cards of the Palestinians.
The soldiers then produced a closed military zone order and demanded that the Israeli and foreign activists leave. Rabea drove them away after promising to return. By that point, the soldiers had already been at the site for about two hours.
While Rabea was driving the activists, the soldiers detained his brother, Mohammed. “They found a picture of an armed person on my phone, which wasn’t mine,” Mohammed said. “It probably got downloaded automatically from a Telegram group.
“They claimed I was a terrorist and that it was me in the picture,” he continued. “They slammed my head against the car window, threw me to the ground and dragged me into the tent, where they beat me with their fists and weapons.”
Mohammed said that after the assault, most soldiers left the tent except for one – the same soldier previously seen taunting the activist who was filming.
Meanwhile, Rabea returned and was surprised to find his family gone. Another military jeep arrived at that moment. “As I approached in my car, the soldiers started shouting: ‘Turn it off! Turn it off!'” he said. “Then one soldier took my keys through the window, and another opened the door and grabbed me by the neck.” According to Rabea, the soldiers violently searched him, shoved him into the tent and threw him to the ground.
“Inside the tent, I found my brother lying face down,” he said. “The soldier was stepping on his head, and every time my brother tried to turn his head, the soldier hit him. My face was on the ground, and whenever I tried to turn my head, he kicked my face and cursed at me terribly.
“He told me, ‘I want to fuck you,'” Rabea said, noting that the soldiers said this in Arabic. He added that the soldier then lifted his head while he was still lying on the ground and spat in his face. He said the soldier also stepped heavily on his hand for an extended period until he heard a cracking sound – later revealed to be a broken bone.
Afterward, Rabea said, the soldier threw kitchen utensils from inside the tent at him. “He threw a kettle and a coffee-making pot at me,” he said. Among the objects thrown was a hard plastic plate. “He put his foot under my stomach, lifted me up, placed the plate beneath me, and then stepped on me,” he said.
According to Rabea, the powerful blow he received while the plate was under his genitals caused an injury that led to bleeding and loss of sensation in the area for ten days. His screams, he added, caused other soldiers to enter the tent. “It was clear the other soldiers heard me screaming, and they heard when he threw the utensils at me,” he said. “You hear this and don’t come to see what’s happening?”
The soldiers demanded that the brothers call a relative to bring the key to the unregistered car. In the meantime, the violent soldier remained alone with them.
“He told me, ‘I want to fuck your mother and your sister,'” Rabea said. “Then he stepped back, grabbed my pants, and tried to pull them down. I grabbed his hand and told him to back off. When I said that, he told me, ‘I want to fuck you, you son of a whore.'”
His brother, who was there the entire time, said he heard Rabea shouting at the soldier to take his hands off him. According to the two brothers, about five minutes later, after the car key was delivered, the soldiers released them, filming the moment as they returned their passports and phones.
Rabea said he drove away using only one hand until he met a relative who drove him to the hospital. “When my wife and children saw me, they started screaming and crying,” he said. “I collapsed to the ground, unable to move. They placed me in the backseat, and my relative drove us to the clinic.”
The two brothers were treated at the hospital. Rabea said that when he arrived, he was given a catheter because he was unable to urinate. He was released that evening but later returned when the pain in his hand persisted, at which point doctors confirmed it was broken.
According to a report from the Palestinian Health Ministry, Rabea was wounded in the abdomen, testicle, thigh and shoulder, and his broken hand required surgery. He is scheduled for another operation in two months and is taking medication for his injuries.
On February 19, the brothers went to file a complaint about the assault at the military police station near the Beit El settlement. Mohammed entered first. “When I started telling them what happened to Rabea, they began laughing among themselves and taunting me,” he said.
“One of them said, ‘Did they beat you well? Did they kick you? Did they beat your brother in the ass?” Mohammed said. “I asked them if it would take long, and they said ‘Yes, you’re going to be here a long time.'”
According to him, while he was giving his testimony, the investigators spoke among themselves in Hebrew and laughed. “I don’t want to go back there again,” he said.
Attorney Riham Nassra, who represents the two brothers, said that when she called the military police to complain about their treatment, the soldier who answered did not deny what had happened. “[The soldier who took the complaint] said they were laughing because they were young soldiers who couldn’t control themselves,” Nassra said.
Rabea said that before the assault, he didn’t believe soldiers could behave this way. “When I heard about what’s happening with prisoners from Gaza and what they’re doing to them, truthfully, I didn’t quite believe it,” he said, referencing reports of detainee abuse at the military’s Sde Teiman base. “But after what happened to me, I believe it. I didn’t cry because of what happened to me, but because of the position they put me in. Because this is how they treat someone who did nothing.”
In response to a request for comment, the Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit stated: “A Military Police investigation has been opened into the incident. As the investigation is ongoing, no further details can be provided at this time.”