Inside the Israeli raid where Palestinians were marked with numbers

Dozens of Palestinians were rounded up, interrogated and marked with numbers after Israeli forces raided the occupied West Bank town of Qabatiya on Monday in a deliberately humiliating practice, which comes amid Israel's continuing military incursions, mass arrests and raids across the territory.

Israeli forces entered Qabatiya, near Jenin, on Monday shortly after dawn prayers, searching more than 100 buildings and detaining residents for questioning.

Among the buildings seized during the raid was the home of Mahmoud Fayed, which Israeli forces turned into a makeshift interrogation site.

“The detainees were indeed numbered,” Fayed, the son of one of those detained, told The New Arab. “The numbers were placed on the detainees so they could take them and question or interrogate them at my house.

"My house was an interrogation point.”

Fayed said Israeli forces broke down the doors of the building where he lived with his brother and father before taking it over and using it to interrogate Palestinians from the area.

His father, Mufeed Nazzal, was among those detained. Israeli forces marked the number six on his hand.

“Some young men had numbers written on their foreheads, while others had numbers written on their shirts,” Fayed recalled.

One of those detained, Ahmed Al-Hatnawi, a local resident, told Palestinian media that around 50 Palestinians, including blindfolded women, had been gathered inside the house where he was interrogated.

Al-Hatnawi, who said he had been released from Israeli detention just 10 days earlier after being detained four times, said he had never previously been marked in this way.

Photos from the raid showed detainees, including local journalist Mahmoud Zakarneh and Al-Hatnawi, with black numbers visibly marked on their foreheads and arms.

After footage of the raid was shared on social media, the Israeli army acknowledged that its soldiers had marked Palestinian detainees with numbers. In a statement on Tuesday, it said commanders had made clear to troops “the seriousness of the act” and that “lessons have been learned”.

'Pattern of degrading treatment'

Palestinian rights advocates said the markings were part of a broader pattern of degrading treatment of Palestinians by Israeli forces.

“The practice…confirms that the Israeli occupation system has given the army the green light to carry out all forms of abuse and humiliation that undermine human dignity against the Palestinian people,” Muzaffar Zouqan, from the Palestinian Prisoners Society, told The New Arab.

Zouqan said the practice of marking Palestinians with numbers had also been documented during Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

He also drew a comparison with the Nazis' use of numbers to identify Jewish prisoners in concentration camps during World War II, where prisoners were subjected to systematic persecution and mass killing.