Hamas has built makeshift torture chambers inside Gazan hospitals and schools where its men are interrogating and abusing fellow Palestinians suspected of disloyalty. The reign of terror comes as Hamas moves aggressively to reassert its power over the Gaza Strip, according to video testimonials and official government documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
More than eight months after a fragile ceasefire with Israel left Hamas badly wounded, the terror group has largely turned inward, establishing a strict police state and moving internal security operations—its dreaded “Interior Ministry”—back into the same civilian outposts it commandeered to wage war on Israel. Eyewitness accounts from three Gazans reveal that Hamas has again laid claim to al-Shifa hospital, the Gaza Strip’s largest medical complex, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, and the al-Ma’amadani Hospital in Gaza City. The terror group has done the same with schools across Gaza, turning classrooms into prisons and detention centers where civilians are often subjected to brutal beatings and more creative forms of torture.
“They have prisons inside the schools, rooms that function like prisons,” recounted one Gazan activist who says he was abducted by Hamas and beaten for several days. “The same goes for hospitals. They have rooms underground in the basement that they use as a prison, as if they were military and security sites.” At the Nasser Hospital, said a second Gazan woman, “inside the Hind al-Daghma Dialysis Center, people are beaten and shot in the legs. If they send someone to the renal department at Nasser, it basically means it’s over.”
Jonathan Schanzer, a veteran regional analyst and executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, said it is no surprise that Hamas is again staking claim to Gaza’s most important civilian centers.
“Hamas has always exploited the civilian infrastructure that it has wielded to deter Israel from attacking its military structures,” he said. “The co-opting of institutions is a long-standing practice of this terrorist organization dating back to its very founding.”
Like others quoted in this report, the Gazan witnesses to Hamas’s torture operation have asked to remain anonymous in order to protect themselves from Hamas retaliation. The video testimonials were secretly filmed inside Gaza by Jusoor News, an independent Arab-run media outlet that frequently documents life under Hamas control, and provided to the Free Beacon along with Hamas-run Interior Ministry documents that show civilians being summoned to hospitals for interrogation.
The testimonials and documentation provide some of the firmest evidence to date that Hamas is not only torturing Palestinians, but also continuing to breach international law by using civilian buildings as military outposts. Israel targeted several of the aforementioned hospitals during the war in Gaza and provided extensive evidence that Hamas used these medical facilities for its operations, with Hamas operatives often working alongside humanitarian aid workers.
At the same time, anti-Israel elements of the international community and the media have paid little attention as Hamas rebuilds its authoritarian state and have focused instead on criticizing Israel. The New York Times last month published a largely discredited opinion column by Nicholas Kristof, which alleged that Israelis were raping “Palestinian journalists” with carrots and dogs.
While it became clear as early as October that Hamas was reestablishing bases inside schools and hospitals, the eyewitness accounts reveal the grim reality of what is taking place inside these protected spaces.
“They raided the place I had fled to and took me to Shifa hospital,” said the Gazan activist, who said he was arrested by Hamas police on suspicion of spying. “At the hospital, they treated us as if it were a military base or a prison. They did not treat it as a space protected by international law. They treated us in an inhumane manner. We were assaulted verbally and physically.”
The man said he was one of several citizens imprisoned in Shifa Hospital, where Hamas militants “treated us as if we are spies and collaborators.”
“If you don’t like what’s going on,” he said, “they treat you as a spy, or that you are working for a foreign agenda, that you are against the resistance.”
A third Gazan man whose adult son was abducted by the notorious Hamas-aligned al-Qassam Brigades said the terror faction hid the young man in several hospitals over a period of two months.
“I tracked him down at the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after he was severely beaten, and had his money and phone stolen,” the father said in an interview with Jusoor. “He spent five days in al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, underground in the basement. They used the harshest methods against him, including beating him with clubs.” Other torture methods included “gagging, hitting his teeth, hitting his nose, and hitting his hands and legs.” The man said his son still “suffers from joint pain, bone pain, back pain, and head pain due to the severity of the beatings. It got to the point where he suffered kidney failure.”
The Gazan woman—who resides near the al-Aqsa hospital and said she has witnessed armed militants moving in and out of the facility—made clear that “Hamas does not hide” its activities there, or keep them “a secret” from the general population. “They make it known to the youth and send out official summons to come to the hospital for interrogation.”
Official documents from the Hamas-run Interior Ministry, provided by Jusoor to the Free Beacon, confirm this account. Both summons letters were sent by Hamas’s internal security and police forces, and directed the individuals to appear at the Nasser medical complex in person.
“We request your attendance before us immediately,” the first letter states, instructing the recipient to appear on April 18 at the “Nasser Hospital Diagnostic Department” along with “this letter, the identity card, and a copy of the identity card.” The notice makes clear that it originated from the “Nasser Hospital Investigation Office.”
The second summons similarly instructed its recipient to appear at the Nasser Hospital on Oct. 16, 2025. “Your attendance is mandatory and legally required,” it states. “Please bring your ID card or passport.” The individual was additionally instructed to “bring your personal mobile phone.”
At Nasser Hospital, al-Shifa, and others, the Gazan woman recounted in her interview, “the signs of Hamas’s presence in the hospital are clear and visible to everyone—their cars, their weapons, and men are constantly going in and out of the hospital.”
Hamas, she added, “continues to fill the hospitals. They haven’t been deterred or stopped, despite the people’s pleas for them to stop hiding inside the hospitals. The beatings, torture, and dragging of people in the hospitals does not happen in secret or through covert intelligence operations. It happens right in front of the people’s eyes to plant terror and to reinforce our fear and our feeling that Hamas is present.”
The Gazan father whose son was abducted, meanwhile, expressed horror that Hamas is still embedded within Gaza’s civilian facilities.
“Exploiting the sanctity of schools and hospitals is unacceptable, as these are institutions strictly meant for civilians,” the father said. “If this shows anything, it’s that these people are despicable. They were raised on malice and hatred toward anyone who does not comply with their specific demands.”
Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser and expert on regional jihadist groups, told the Free Beacon that Hamas is, as expected, bouncing back.
“Hamas is playing from their usual playbook. Go to ground, delay disarmament, and then when diplomats look elsewhere, re-consolidate control,” he said. Hamas has always known they can’t count on Gazan hearts and minds.”
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