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KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Shadi Abu Sido said his world shattered in Israeli detention when guards told him his wife and two children had been killed in the Gaza war.
“I got hysterical,” the Gaza Palestinian photographer said.
It wasn’t until his release on Monday, part of the US-mediated ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel that halted two years of war, that he discovered his loved ones were alive.
His wife, Hanaa Bahlul, raced down the hallway of his family’s house in Khan Younis and leapt into his arms. He spun her in the air as they clung to each other. Abu Sido kissed his children’s cheeks again and again, murmuring “my love” as he held the daughter and son he thought he would never see again.
“I heard her voice, I heard the voice of my children, I was astonished, it cannot be explained, they were alive. I saw my wife and children alive. Imagine amid death — life,” he said.
Abu Sido, a photojournalist, said he was detained at Shifa hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on March 18, 2024.
He was among 1,700 Palestinians detained by Israeli forces during the devastating war in Gaza and released on Monday, along with 250 prisoners convicted or suspected of involvement in deadly attacks, in exchange for 20 Israeli hostages held by Hamas since its October 2023 cross-border assault.
DETAINED UNDER THE ‘UNLAWFUL COMBATANTS’ LAW
Bahlul said a lawyer from Addameer, a Palestinian human rights group, had told her Abu Sido was being held under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law — a form of administrative detention.
Omer Shatz, an Israeli international law expert at Sciences Po university in Paris, said the law allows Israel to limit access to lawyers, incarcerate people without charge or trial, and arbitrarily detain many Palestinians in Gaza.
According to Addameer, 2,673 Gazans are currently detained under this law.
The Israeli military said in a statement sent to Reuters that its detention policy was “in full alignment with Israeli law and the Geneva Conventions” on legal standards for humanitarian treatment in wartime.
Israel’s Justice Ministry did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
In March 2024 the Israeli military said it raided Shifa hospital, accusing Hamas of operating from the premises. Hamas has denied Israeli allegations it had command posts underneath Shifa and other Gaza hospitals. Reuters could not independently verify the assertions of either side.

’A GRAVEYARD FOR THE LIVING’
Abu Sido said he was severely beaten, handcuffed, blindfolded and forced to kneel for long periods while in detention. His wrists looked raw during his meeting with Reuters, which he said had been caused by the shackles. Reuters could not independently verify the details of his account.
He was first held at Israel’s Sde Teiman military detention camp, then transferred to the Ofer military camp — which is in the Israeli-occupied West Bank — and later to Ketziot prison in Israel, according to his wife.
Bahlul said Abu Sido was arrested only for being “a journalist for a Palestinian institution.”
A spokesperson for the Israeli Prison Service said all inmates were held according to legal procedures and their rights upheld. “We are not aware of the claims described, and to the best of our knowledge, no such incidents occurred under IPS responsibility,” the spokesperson said.
The Israeli military statement said mistreatment of detainees was “strictly prohibited.” The military said that prolonged restraint was only allowed in “exceptional cases” with significant security risks, and denied that detainees were forced to remain in a crouching position.
An Israeli military official told Reuters in September that of around 100 criminal investigations related to the Gaza war, most concerned allegations of abuse or death of detainees in military custody. Two cases have led to indictments, and one soldier was sentenced to 17 months in prison.
Reuters previously spoke to released Palestinian prisoners who said they suffered abuses in Israeli detention.
Many of the Israeli hostages released by Hamas have also described torture, sexual assault, psychological abuse, and denial of food and medical care.
Amany Srahneh of the Palestinian Prisoners Society said conditions for Palestinian inmates deteriorated dramatically after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, with reports of sexual assault, beatings, denial of medication, and food shortages.
She said conditions were even worse for Gaza Palestinians held in military detention.
Abu Sido said that prison was “the graveyard of the living. When I returned to Gaza, it was like my soul returned to my body. But when I saw the destruction..., how can I start again?“

DUBAI: With climate disasters increasingly disrupting agriculture, finance and infrastructure, experts at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils on Cybersecurity in Dubai warned that humanity has crossed critical environmental thresholds — but said innovation could still help restore planetary balance.

A session titled “Emerging Technologies for the Planet” explored how scientific advances can strengthen Earth’s resilience at a time when, according to a recent World Economic Forum report, humanity has breached seven of the nine planetary boundaries that regulate the planet’s stability — from biodiversity loss to ocean acidification — pushing the Earth’s system beyond its safe operating space.

Yet experts said that technologies such as green concrete, precision fermentation and lab grown proteins could still help reverse some of the damage.

Prof. Drew Shindell of Duke University said that reducing methane emissions must become a global priority.

“Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and it creates ozone in the lower atmosphere, which is toxic to forests,” he said. “It is about 40 percent as responsible for global warming as CO2.”

He added that while emissions from fossil fuels and waste can be measured and mitigated, the agricultural sector remains far more complex.

“With companies, solutions are more straightforward; there is detection and money available to track methane’s damage,” he said. “But in agriculture we need new techniques and we might also need to explore ways to get people to change their diet as other ways to reduce the methane.”

Shindell urged stronger public-private partnerships to scale technologies worldwide and called for agricultural policies focusing on methane, soil carbon and nitrogen use.

Dr. Leigh Ann Winowiecki, global research lead for Soil and Land Health at CIFOR-ICRAF, said soil systems are central to both food security and climate stability.

“What is soil? It is the biological layer of the Earth’s surface, and we depend on healthy soil for water regulation, for food and nutrition security,” she said. “It is the most biodiverse ecosystem in the world. It is also important to store carbon if we manage it properly.”

She added that new technological tools have revolutionized how scientists study underground ecosystems.

“We just launched the first ever Global Future Council on Soil and Land Health,” she said. “This wasn’t possible 20 or 30 years ago; the technology to understand the biodiversity of the soil wasn’t there, now we are capable of doing so much more with the studies and advancements we have.”

The discussion took place ahead of the UN COP30 conference, which will be held in Belem, in the Brazilian Amazon in November.

In a recent op-ed for Arab News, Iranian American political scientist Dr. Majid Rafizadeh called COP30 “perhaps the most significant climate summit yet,” as the world faces escalating environmental risks.

Masami Onoda, director of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s International Relations and Research Department, said satellite observation has fundamentally changed how humans monitor the planet.

“Earth observation technology not only allows us to work with all the different areas we need to look into the planet, but it also brings a perspective shift,” she said. “There are hundreds of thousands of satellites tirelessly circling around the world to observe it, producing massive amounts of information for scientists to study.”

From a technological deployment perspective, Yousef Yousef, CEO and environmental innovation leader in water technology, said scalability is essential to impact.

“The key is not only in finding new technologies, but in how to scale it,” he said. “We used ultrasound, for example, to kill algae on water surfaces. It took about five years after the research to go from a pilot to being active in 67 countries. Once you scale the technology, you can create the impact.”

As the discussion concluded, speakers agreed that although the planet’s ecological boundaries are under severe strain, global cooperation and technology-driven innovation remain essential to restoring balance and resilience.