New Details | They told us: "You will die"
We dug more into this case and obtained testimony from the only known survivor of the incident.
According to G, a wheelchair-bound man from Beit Lahiya who was detained alongside Nadi and Ali and witnessed the events, Ali Marouf, Nadi Marouf, and Um Yahya Marouf, Nadi’s disabled sister, were forcibly disappeared by Israeli forces in November last year. No explanation was ever provided for their detention. G said he first encountered them at the initial military position where soldiers were holding all of them.
During their captivity, they were denied food, water, and access to a toilet, forced to sleep on the floor, and beaten with rifle butts and boots. The woman were spared from the beating part. According to the testimony, G was dragged out of his wheelchair and beaten on the ground along with Ali and Nadi, sustaining injuries that still affect him a year later.
At one point, an officer identified as the unit’s doctor told the detainees that they would be handed over to the Red Cross for evacuation to southern Gaza. “I was relieved to hear that,” G recalled. “But they lied to us.” Instead, the group was driven in a military jeep to a sandy road near a junction in northern Beit Lahiya. When they asked when the Red Cross would arrive, the medical officer replied: “No Red Cross yalla, drag your wheelchairs to the south.”
The unit commander then told them in a calm tone and plainly, “You are going to die.” According to G, this statement was made on two separate occasions.
After being forced to move several hundred meters, the group was taken by another unit into a school being used as a military base they were held there for some hours. Inside, they saw another Palestinian being forced to perform tasks for the stationed soldiers.
Later that evening, the detainees were released. Ali was exhausted and struggled to move, so Nadi alternated between pushing Um Yahya’s wheelchair and G’s one, moving only a few meters at a time through the sand.
According to G, after only some hundred meters, a shell was suddenly fired at them, followed immediately by heavy bullets. Ali and Nadi were both killed instantly. The scene was so brutal that G saw some parts of Nadi’s remains on his wheelchair, Nadi was dragging UM Yahya’s wheelchair when the attack started. “I don’t know why and how I survived,” he said. G then left Um Yahya who also survived the incident, who was unable to move her wheelchair, and pushed his own down the sandy road, shouting for help to retrieve Um Yahya and the bodies of Ali and Nadi.
We can reveal that Um Yahya was recently killed in a separate Israeli military attack. G remains the only known survivor.
The soldiers hve also stolen the group’s phones and money and never returned them back.