The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) has published a report detailing what it calls widespread sexual violence and humiliation of Palestinians held by Israeli forces during the Gaza war.
Based on testimonies from recently released detainees, the organisation said Israeli soldiers and prison officials allegedly carried out systematic sexual assaults on men, women, and minors, including instances of rape, forced nudity, and other forms of sexual abuse. These acts were described as part of a broader pattern of physical and psychological torture.
Earlier in November, Major-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the Israeli military’s chief legal officer, stepped down after admitting to leaking footage appeared to show the gang rape of a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman prison in August 2024.
The leaked video reportedly depicted soldiers escorting a blindfolded prisoner before surrounding him with riot shields, concealing the assault from view.
PCHR said its team of lawyers and field researchers interviewed several Palestinians who had been detained from homes, hospitals, and checkpoints across Gaza since late 2023 and later released, many of whom described severe abuse while in custody, Maktoob Media reported.
According to testimonies gathered in recent weeks, the PCHR reported that detainees described what they called a “systematic and organised” use of sexual torture by Israeli forces. The accounts detailed acts such as rape, forced nudity, sexual assault with objects, and threats of sexual violence directed at both detainees and their families.
The organisation said these abuses were often accompanied by filming, verbal humiliation, and behaviour intended to degrade victims and destroy their sense of identity. The report emphasised that such cases were not isolated, but part of a deliberate policy forming what PCHR characterised as a component of a broader campaign of genocide against Gaza’s population.
The findings also pointed to alleged sexual abuse within Israel’s Sde Teiman military camp near Beersheba, a detention facility that has long faced accusations of mistreatment of Gazan prisoners and remains inaccessible to international monitoring bodies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross.
PCHR said the victims were civilians of all ages, including men and women, many of whom were detained without charges or trial. It claimed that arrests were arbitrary and formed part of a collective punishment strategy against Gaza’s residents.
Testimonies from different detention sites reportedly revealed consistent patterns of sexualised violence and torture, which PCHR said indicated an organised and coordinated system rather than random or individual acts of abuse.
PCHR said that if the allegations in its report are proven, they would amount to serious breaches of international law — including the UN Convention Against Torture and the Fourth Geneva Convention, both of which prohibit torture, inhumane treatment, and acts that offend personal dignity.
The organisation argued that the abuses it documented extend beyond torture and could meet the legal definition of genocide under Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention. That article includes acts intended to cause serious physical or psychological harm to members of a group, or to impose living conditions designed to destroy the group in whole or in part.
PCHR also expressed concern for detainees’ safety, warning that they remain at “imminent risk of death” after the Israeli Knesset approved a draft bill on November 3 introducing the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism-related crimes. The group said many of those facing such charges had confessed under duress, creating what it called the possibility of “mass executions” in violation of international humanitarian law.
Israeli authorities, meanwhile, have consistently rejected accusations of systematic abuse or torture of Palestinian detainees, maintaining that interrogations and detentions are conducted under judicial oversight. Access to Israeli military detention centres in and around Gaza has been heavily restricted, and international organisations such as the Red Cross have not been permitted to visit since the conflict escalated in 2023.
In previous cases, the Israeli military has stated that it investigates credible allegations of misconduct and operates within both domestic and international legal frameworks. However, it has not yet issued a response to PCHR’s latest findings.