Mahmoud Abu Foul returned to Gaza after spending more than nine months in Israeli detention. But when he was back on home soil, amid hundreds of people who had gathered to greet the released detainees, he could not even look around to find his family because he lost his eyesight while imprisoned.
The 28-year-old Palestinian, who lost his left leg in a 2015 Israeli airstrike, said he was subjected to repeated beatings and torture at a notorious Israeli military prison that left him blind.
“I walked out of prison, wishing and dreaming that I could see even with just one eye,” Abu Foul said, speaking to a CBC News freelance videographer from a tent in Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip, where he now lives with his mother.
Abu Foul was detained by the Israel Defence Forces on Dec. 27, 2024, at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, where he was receiving treatment for his amputated leg after losing it in an Israeli airstrike on Jabalia a decade ago.
When troops raided the facility, they forced the evacuation of hundreds of staff and detained others — including Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a hospital director who became the face of the struggle to treat patients under Israeli siege and bombardment, and who remains detained.
On Oct. 13, Abu Foul was among more than 1,700 Palestinian detainees who were released by Israel under its current ceasefire deal with Hamas, after being seized from Gaza during the war and held without charge. Hundreds of others were released in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, while 154 people were deported to Egypt.
“When we arrived, I could smell the air of my country. But the joy was much more muted without the ability to see,” he said.
His mother, Umm Ahed Abu Foul, said she found him at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis several hours after the detainees had returned.
“It was the shock of my life to approach my son [after he was released] … to see that he had lost his eyesight,” she told CBC News.
“As you can see in the photo, my son was like a blossoming flower,” Umm Ahed, 59, said, pointing to a picture on her phone that showed her son smiling. “Since the day I saw my son, the tears won’t dry from my heart, not my eyes.”
Mahmoud Abu Foul was detained by the Israeli military in late December after troops raided Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. The 28-year-old had previously lost his left leg in an Israeli airstrike on Jabalia in 2015. After spending more than nine months in Israeli detention without charge before being released this month, he says he was left blind as a result of the torture he suffered. The Israel Defence Forces, which runs some detention centres, previously said it categorically rejects allegations of systematic abuse reported by the United Nations and other human rights groups.
‘I could only hear their voices’
Abu Foul was set to travel abroad for a prosthetic leg before the war broke out in October 2023, following a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and saw 250 taken hostage. Israel’s military response has killed about 68,000 Palestinians, Gaza health authorities say, and destroyed much of the enclave.
But despite the loss of his leg years earlier, and having to continuously be on the move since war broke out in 2023, Abu Foul said losing his vision was the most difficult thing he has faced.
“I wished I could’ve seen the destruction, I wished I could’ve seen everything … my family — I could only hear their voices,” he told CBC News freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife.
Crowds in Gaza and the occupied West Bank celebrated the return of Palestinian prisoners and detainees released as part of a negotiated exchange with Israel.
Abu Foul said he was accused of terrorism and subjected to regular beatings by guards during interrogation when he was taken to Sde Teiman, in the Negev desert in southern Israel.
“They detained me like they detain everyone else — false accusations of terrorism that they place on all detainees. We’re not terrorists,” he said.
CBC News reached out to Israel’s Justice Ministry, its prison service and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). The Office of the Minister of Justice acknowledged the request but did not respond in time for publication.
Regular, severe beatings alleged
The obscure barracks where Abu Foul was held are on a military base that doubled as a detention facility during Israel’s war on Gaza. Sde Teiman became the centre of accusations that the Israeli military were severely abusing Palestinian detainees some months into the war.
“[The guards] unleash all their torture on you … the barracks were torture,” he said.
Recalling his time there, he said he and others were also forced to repeat insults about themselves and their family as a form of humiliation.
“Nobody could accept it for themselves. It’s the most difficult thing, to say these foul, ridiculous things about your family — your mom, your sisters, your wife,” Abu Foul said.
Abu Foul said he also suffered severe back pain from the beatings and from being forced to sit on the ground all day without moving his head or leaning against anything for support — making it difficult now for him to walk or move.
One day, he was knocked unconscious for two hours after being hit on the head by a prison guard, he said, and awoke to find he had lost his vision. Abu Foul said he repeatedly asked for medical treatment and was given eye drops, which did nothing to help his eyes, including the pain and discharge he was experiencing.
The Israeli military, which runs some detention facilities where Palestinian prisoners have been held, has previously said it operated according to the rule of law and that any specific claims of abuse were investigated.
“The IDF categorically rejects allegations of systematic abuse, including sexual abuse, in its detention facilities,” it previously told Reuters in August 2024 in response to a report by Israeli human rights group titled Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps. The Israeli military added that monitoring mechanisms were in place to ensure facilities were run in accordance with the law.
‘Systematic’ torture documented in Israeli prisons
In the report from last year, B’Tselem said Israel has conducted a systematic policy of prisoner abuse and torture since the start of the war in Gaza, subjecting Palestinian detainees to acts ranging from arbitrary violence to sexual abuse.
“The testimonies clearly indicate a systematic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel,” the report said.
Ibrahim Salem’s photo at the Sde Teiman prison in Israel’s Negev desert went viral after it was leaked to CNN and spread on social media. Salem says standing at the fence with his arms up, as he was seen doing in the photo, was a form of punishment he endured during his 52-day detention in the military base turned jail.
Addameer, a Palestinian prisoner rights group, says some 2,673 Palestinians from Gaza are currently detained under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law — describing it as a form of administrative detention.
Last month, the United Nations called on Israeli authorities to “urgently end the systematic torture and other ill-treatment of Palestinians held in their prisons and other places of detention and protect and ensure their right to life.” It has previously called out Israel for holding Palestinians under arbitrary, prolonged and incommunicado detention.
In a news release, the UN said the documented treatment of Palestinian prisoners by Israel included “repeated beatings, waterboarding, stress positions, the use of rape and other sexual and gender-based violence and the imposition of deliberately inhumane conditions such as starvation and the denial of clean clothes, hygiene necessities and medical care.”
The UN’s Human Rights Office in the occupied Palestinian territory documented at least 75 Palestinians who died in Israeli detention, including 49 from Gaza, between Oct. 7, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2025.
“Israeli authorities have deliberately imposed conditions of detention that amount to torture or other forms of ill-treatment and that have contributed to the deaths of detainees, while the culture of impunity and the denial of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access have predictably fostered extreme violence against Palestinians in Israeli jails,” the UN news release added.
For Abu Foul, he said all he wants is to be able to seek medical treatment abroad that could potentially help him see again.
