Fares went to his brother for a few minutes only. That was what he told his wife and his mother at home. On his way out of his brother’s home, around 3:00 pm, he reached the middle of the corridor, when he saw someone with a crate in his hands. Because of passing from the dark stairway and the sunny entrance, his eyes were dazzled. This why he first thought mistakenly that the man, who walked towards him, dropped the crate from his hands and suddenly hugged him around the hips, was his friend. When the second man appeared – also looking like a Palestinian – and caught him fron behind, the idea that these were thieves suddenly flashed through his mind. "Who are you?" he asked them in Arabic. Not for a minute he thought that they were Israeli Jews.

The neighbors who watched what was happening in their street concluded at once that these persons had to be people from the special Israeli units, who impersonate Palestinians. Now the truth can be told about their existence without it being denied [by Israeli authorities] and attributed to the inventions of an Oriental imagination. What happened next was that suddenly a Volkswagen minibus with Gaza license plates stopped nearby. About ten men wearing civilian clothes jumped out of it. "They looked like Arabs", so describes them a neighbor, "not like soldiers". But the minute the person who says so saw them, he ran away as fast as he could. In the meantime military vehicles arrived and soldiers poured out of them. They stood at both ends of the street, imposing a curfew on it. No one could enter or leave. One neighbor, who lives in al Hindi, was ordered by one of those dressed in civilian clothing to get into his house immediately. The neighbor climbed the stairs but did not go home. He peeked out through a window. He saw them take Fares into the "Abir" office, and beat him. And how the floor was turning red.

Earlier, in the corridor, the attackers answered Fares’ question about who they were: "Jish" ["soldiers"], they replied in Arabic, and went through his pockets. He stopped resisting, tried to say that he was a lawyer, but it did no good. Today he thinks with horror about the posssibility that he would have struggled with them as one should with a violent attacker. They would have accused him of assaulting a soldier. But the truth is that Maher Fares looks too thin and delicate to attack anyone, even if he is attacked first. The pair handcuffed him with plastic handcuffs and pulled him into the office. On the way he noticed another person lying down with his head on the floor. They made him lie down also, and started hitting his head from behind with a blunt instrument, apparently a gun. Again he tried to tell them that he was a lawyer. Again they did not listen and just continued to beat him. One kicked him on his head in additon, he says. And another put a gun to his eye and said: "Do not utter even one word". A week after the beating he describes it as if he were still in a state of shock. "They seemed like bulls to me, those who beat me. I could not say anything. I felt like being nothing". He raised his head – he continues to recount in an almost choked voice – and felt blood dripping from his face on the floor. Only when reaching the description of his hands tied behind him with the plastic handcuffs, and the pain they caused him, he seems upset. He does not remember the pain of the blows on his head, because his hands hurt so much.

Then the army arrived, recounts Fares. Soldiers in uniform. One of them asked him his name, poured water on his head and bandaged the wound. Bandaged and still hancuffed he was taken to a military jeep, along with four others. One was laid on the floor of the jeep. The rest were ordered to sit with their heads bowed. His eyes had already been blindfolded. At the Civil Administration yard each one was placed separately. He was forced to kneel on his knees next to a tree, his arms tied behind him, his eyes blindfolded. His wound continued to bleed.

Later he was taken to a military physician or a medic. At the clinic they released him, to his relief, from the handcuffs and the blindfold. They cleaned his face and head and bandaged him again. Once more he was taken to the yard, forced to a kneeling position, his arms tied again behind him, and his eyes bliindfolded. Again he told the soldier that it hurts, and the soldier, he says, just tightened the knot more: Luckily the time was already 5:00 p,m. and the sun was not strong. He was not offered water and did not remember to ask for any. Ants started crawling over him and he did not manage to shake them from his body. Everyone who passed by him asked his name. He did not see who asked or how many were asking.

Then they raised him up and took him to the interrogation rooms. He had been interrogated in the past when he requested a permit to travel to Egypt in order to study. Now he was led blindfolded to one of the rooms. There the fabric was removed from his eyes. They sat him on a chair. His hands remaind handcuffed, behind him. On the wall, Fares recalls, there were two pictures. A photograph of Bedouins and a photograph of an area of Sinai and a large map, perhaps of Khan Yunis. The air conditioning was on in the room, and he was shirtless, but he did not feel the cold, only his painful hands. He said once or twice that they hurt. But the interrogator did not move and only told him that in his address book there were names of Intifada activists and of activists abroad. But the only foreign number was that of his brother, who lives in Saudi Arabia. Fares tried to convince him of this and told him that the other numbers were those of other lawyers, of insurance agencies in Israel, of the [Israeli] tax offices in Jerusalem. Then the interrogator left the room. He locked it from outside with a bolt. He returned some time later. "Why were you in that office?" he asked. He replied: "I was at my brother’s. And I said hello to the woman lawyer who was standing there, at the entrance". He was asked further: "Do you know her?" And Fares did not understand: "Who, who, why are you doing this to me?" The interrogator went out again and came back. Fares tried again to say that his hands were tied too tightly. The interrogator called someone in to remove the plastic handcuffs. A week later Fares is horrified to remember how swollen and red his hands were then. The Palestinians present in the room. listening to his experiences, were a bit amused by his detailed description of the pain in his hands. "What is it, being handcuffed for one, two, three hours? That is nothing. You can see how inexperienced he is". Along with that, they admit that the plastic handcuffs hurt much more than the steel ones. And the more you move your hand, the grip only gets tighter.

The second person spoke to him in a more relaxed tone. That was the good interrogator, Fares concluded. And the good interrogator asked him if he had ever been in prison. No. he answered. He looked at his documents (a permit to travel during curfews, a permit to travel to Israel without a magnetic card. a permit to enter prisons in Israel). He asked him if he had a brother in detention Yes, he replied, in Ketziot. Sentenced one year ago to 25 months imprisonment. As if he were an Intifada activist, but actually he was a thief. He even stole things from him. Broke into houses masked, and that is how he was caught.

Then the interrogator apologized to him for the mistake, took him out of the room and returned him to the tree in the yard. Fares wanted to put on the stained shirt. The good interrogator suggested that he should not wear it, because people should not walk around in a blood soaked shirt. But Fares did not want to go around half naked. Fares just thought that he should get home quickly, before the night curfew. It was already seven and at home they wre going crazy with worry and his mother has a heart disease. He was released. A private car stopped and drove him home. His wife fainted when she saw him. Then they took him to the hospital. Seven stitches. A tetanus injection. He felt no pain in his head. For many hours he did not understand what was hapeening to him, did not realize where he was, did not know how to get out of the hospital, which he actually knows well. Now he is filing a complaint. Not so much for him, he says, but so that perhaps they would act differently next time. Along with that, in the interrogation room – he recalls a week later – the good interrogator after he apologized said something that sounds like a proverb in Arabic: "Where will you go to complain when your father is the judge". But those present in the room, who heard Fares? story do not know such a proverb. The interrogator apparently wanted to indicate that there was no one to complain to. The proverb he meant, apparently, goes: "If the judge is your adversary, to whom you are going to complain?"

From the office of the IDF Spokesman it was reported that the affair of attorney Fares, as raised in this article, is under examination.