When Hamas launched the Oct. 7 attacks that killed some 1,200 people across southern Israel, Maher Skaik, a 62-year-old from the Gaza Strip, was working in the Tel Aviv neighborhood where he had been a pastry maker for more than two years.

A week later, Skaik said police officers came to the apartment he shared with several other Palestinian workers and took them into custody. Skaik was detained for a few days in a small cell where a group of detainees, several of whom he said were beaten by guards, slept on the floor squeezed together.