US officials attend Gaza aid meetings on site of Israeli prison accused of ‘horrific’ torture

Officials from the US’s main humanitarian agency attend daily meetings on an Israeli military base that also hosts a notorious prison for Palestinian detainees where torture reportedly runs rampant, the Guardian has learned.

According to three officials with the US Agency for International Development (USAid), Israel’s humanitarian relief hub began operating at the desert military base Sde Teiman on 29 July, with a regular US presence. USAid is tasked with facilitating urgently needed humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

Sde Teiman was set up as a temporary holding facility for detainees from Gaza after last year’s 7 October attack and the ensuing war. Human rights groups and released detainees say the thousands of of Palestinians who have been through the facility have been subjected to severe abuse and torture.

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In July, Israel consolidated the various mechanisms approving aid operations in Gaza into one body, the Joint Coordination Board. The JCB sits at Sde Teiman and coordinates logistics with the US, the United Nations and a number of international NGOs.

The Guardian viewed an internal USAid document that referred to “the present JCB location on Sde Teiman IDF base”, located outside of Be’er Sheva in southern Israel. In the document, the base’s name links to its Wikipedia entry, which features photos of blindfolded Palestinian prisoners and details their mistreatment.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Guardian that two USAid officials travel to Sde Teiman daily for JCB meetings with Israeli and UN officials.

“I can’t sleep at night knowing that it’s going on,” one US official told the Guardian. “It’s another form of psychological torture to make someone work there.”

The IDF confirmed the location of the JCB but did not respond to questions about the prison.

It is not clear whether USAid officials have seen the part of the base where Palestinian prisoners reside. The IDF division that oversees the entry of humanitarian aid works out of “a handful of makeshift trailers” on the base, Jewish Insider has reported .

“USAid is working closely to ensure more effective dialogue between humanitarian partners and the Israeli government to improve the safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of humanitarian movements into and throughout Gaza,” a USAid spokesperson wrote by email. “Due to security considerations, we do not comment on the specific locations of our staff.”

Human rights groups, whistleblowers and prisoners released from Sde Teiman have described severe violence meted out by Israeli soldiers in the facility, including rape, beatings, electric shocks and force feedings. An Israeli doctor who worked at the camp reported prisoners “routinely” had limbs amputated as a result of prolonged handcuffing.

In May, the New York Times reported that 4,000 Palestinians had been through the prison since 7 October. At least 35 died, either at the site or nearby hospitals.

“The situation there is more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo,” Khaled Mahajneh, a lawyer who visited Sde Teiman, told +972 Magazine.

In a lawsuit surrounding the conditions in Sde Teiman, the Israeli government reported to the country’s high court of justice that 24 prisoners remained there and that conditions were set to improve with the opening of a new wing.

“We have no indication that the living conditions in the camp have indeed been improved, as our lawyers have still not had access to the camp to assess that,” Tal Steiner, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, told the Guardian.

The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reports that Sde Teiman is part of a network of detention facilities where torture has become widespread in the last year.

Israel is investigating 10 IDF soldiers and reservists who were posted at the prison for sexual violence, after one prisoner was hospitalized in critical condition. The investigations sparked violent far-right attacks on two military bases in support of the soldiers under investigation. The state department spokesperson, Matt Miller, called the allegations of sexual abuse “horrific” and said those involved “ought to be held accountable”.

Israel previously coordinated humanitarian operations out of site 61 on Hatzor airbase near Ashdod, north of Gaza. Weeks before the operation moved to Sde Teiman, Samantha Power, the USAid administrator, visited site 61 . “I think what’s happening in this room is incredibly important,” she said .

Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (Cogat), which oversees the JCB, holds daily meetings at the Sde Teiman base with USAid and UN representatives, the American officials told the Guardian. “It’s a very big base,” a Cogat spokesperson said.

The sources say that the relocation of the humanitarian operations center to Sde Teiman has been a closely guarded secret, and that USAid documents and internal correspondence list the location as Be’er Sheva.

An Israeli military factsheet confirms the consolidation of the JCB at the end of July without naming its location. “Members meet every morning to discuss the day’s planned activities in detail,” the factsheet says. “These efforts underscore Israel’s commitment to work in close collaboration with humanitarian actors and constantly improve existing mechanisms so that humanitarian teams can operate effectively, and that aid reaches those in need.”

But the officials who spoke with the Guardian said that the Israeli military has undermined coordination with the UN and humanitarian organizations over the past year, and the relocation of the JCB to Sde Teiman reflected that. “It seems like trolling,” one of them told the Guardian.

Power, the administrator of USAid, established herself two decades ago as one of America’s most prominent advocates for a foreign policy that centers human rights. But over the past year, she has come under fire from her own staff for not getting Israel to allow more aid into Gaza.

USAid staff have coordinated dissent memos on private group chats, held vigils for slain aid workers outside of the Washington office, and confronted USAid leadership in meetings. Seventy-six staffers sent a letter in March to the leadership of the agency’s Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security criticizing USAid’s “silence on the suffering of Gaza”.

In a separate open letter from January, 128 USAid officials wrote to the agency’s global health leader, Atul Gawande, seeking “greater advocacy for the protection of civilian life and to salvage the little that remains of the health care system in Gaza”.

Gawande responded by saying he and USAid leadership were “pressing for Israel to restore water, food, fuel, communications, and electricity in Gaza and to adhere to international humanitarian law”. But USAid staffers question the efficacy of their efforts without a sustained ceasefire.

Power has been actively involved in the US’s response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. On 6 September, she and Maj Gen Ghassan Alian, the head of Cogat, “discussed immediate actions that can be taken to improve the operation of the Joint Coordination Board”, according to a USAid statement .