For around a year, Hamada al-Banna was missing after he set out to obtain a sack of wheat flour from humanitarian aid trucks near Zikim in northern Gaza.
His family did not know his whereabouts or whether he was still alive or had been killed alongside his brother, who was with him that day.
As his family began to lose hope, his fiancee, Reem Jadallah, held on to the last remaining possibility. She sold her gold to hire a lawyer to find out whether he was being held in Israeli prisons.
But the news she finally received was the one she had spent months fearing: that Banna had been killed under torture.
Months later, Banna called his family and told them he was alive.
The 23-year-old was released from Israeli detention on Sunday after being forcibly disappeared for around a year in Israeli custody.
Speaking to Middle East Eye, Banna said: “On that day, I had gone to the Zikim area with my brother Adham, it was 9 August 2025. We used to go there during starvation to try to get flour. But after I managed to get back, my friends told me that my brother was killed.
“I dropped the sack of flour and went looking for him. I moved towards an area that appeared to be close to where the Israeli army was stationed, but I didn’t realise that at the time.”
The Israeli military fired a shell towards Banna, leaving him unconscious.
“A huge explosion hurled me about ten metres through the air before I hit the ground. I was wounded in my leg and chest, and after that I remember nothing,” Banna said.
“Later, I learned that I had been in a coma for six months. I woke up in Israel's Soroka Hospital suffering from memory loss. I didn’t know who I was or why I was there.”
Doctors and officers told Banna what had happened, and gradually his memory returned.
“Once I became fully aware of my surroundings, a soldier came to speak to me. He began provoking me and hurling obscene insults at my mother. I couldn’t tolerate it, so I threw my IV fluid bag at him,” Banna recalled.
The soldier violently assaulted him before the Israeli military transferred him to the notorious Sde Teiman prison.
There, Banna spent another four months in solitary confinement, during which he was subjected to various forms of torture.
“They would suddenly enter my cell and beat me brutally for no reason. They sprayed me with pepper spray, beat my genitals, and threw stun grenades into my cell,” he said. “On one occasion, for six full days, they kept me in the disco room.”
“Disco rooms” are known among Palestinians detainees as spaces in Israeli prisons designed to break down their mental and physical resilience through prolonged exposure to deafening noise and music, causing severe sleep deprivation, confusion, and psychological distress, particularly before or during interrogation sessions.
'They sprayed me with pepper spray, beat my genitals, and threw stun grenades into my cell. On one occasion, for six full days, they kept me in the disco room'
Banna was later removed from solitary confinement and transferred to another section of Sde Teiman prison.
By then, his family had already been informed that he had been killed under torture.
