Allegations of Sexual Violence in Israeli Custody Draw International Scrutiny

For decades, human rights organizations have documented claims of sexual violence and abuse against Palestinian detainees within Israeli detention facilities. Since October 2023, reports indicate a significant escalation in the frequency and severity of these alleged violations, with accounts detailing brutal assaults by Israeli prison guards and soldiers. A recent documentary, 'Bodies of Evidence,' presented personal testimonies from Palestinian survivors, shedding light on the alleged systemic mechanisms enabling sexual torture against Palestinian women, men, and children. This accumulating evidence paints a troubling picture of widespread sexual violence within the Israeli detention system, reportedly utilized for humiliation, domination, dehumanization, and destruction. There is an increasing assertion that sexual violence has been weaponized as part of a broader campaign against the Palestinian population.

Israel has maintained an extensive detention system to manage the occupied Palestinian population since 1967, with estimates suggesting over 750,000 Palestinians have been held in Israeli prisons during this period. Currently, approximately 9,500 Palestinian detainees are in Israeli prisons, including more than 360 children. Around 3,500 Palestinians are reportedly held in administrative detention without charge or trial, and over 1,300 Palestinians from Gaza are in military detention centers.

Scope of Alleged Abuse and Shared Responsibility

Survivor accounts suggest that abuse is not limited to detention centers but reportedly occurs at various stages of detention, including during arrests in home raids, hospital raids, checkpoint stops, and military operations, as well as during transfers, interrogations, imprisonment, and appearances before military courts. This broad scope of alleged incidents implies shared responsibility among different elements of the Israeli security apparatus, including the army, police, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) under the Ministry of National Security, and the intelligence service Shin Bet, which operates under the Prime Minister's authority.

An Israeli media outlet, Haaretz, recently identified several Israeli officials as alleged 'collaborators' in Palestinian prisoner abuse. These individuals reportedly include National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, IPS chief commissioner Kobi Yaakobi, IPS legal adviser Eiran Nahon, and IPS chief medical officer Dr. Liav Goldstein.

Palestinian detainees have reported experiencing various forms of abuse, such as stripping, blindfolding, handcuffing, beating, starvation, sleep deprivation, targeting of genitalia, sexual assault, rape with objects or dogs, humiliation before soldiers and other detainees, denial of medical care, and obstruction of legal oversight. Following October 7, 2023, the Israeli army began detaining Palestinians from Gaza en masse, transferring them to military-run detention camps. Sde Teiman, an Israeli military base repurposed as a detention center, gained notoriety for widespread alleged abuse, with one leaked video depicting soldiers assaulting a Palestinian detainee sparking international condemnation, though no accountability has reportedly followed.

Systematic Nature and Legal Implications

The consistent documentation of these alleged abuses is significant due to the pattern they reveal. Reports, survivor testimonies, and information gathered by human rights organizations challenge the notion that these incidents are isolated acts by a few individuals. Instead, they suggest a broader pattern of systematic violence allegedly perpetrated by state authorities. Legally, this distinction is critical: an isolated act of sexual violence is treated differently from repeated and widespread assaults. A single act of sexual violence within a belligerent occupation might constitute a war crime. However, if such acts are systematic, they can amount to crimes against humanity. When sexual torture is inflicted upon members of a protected group with the intent to destroy that group, in whole or in part, it may also be considered genocide.

In contexts of alleged genocide, sexual violence is understood to attack the individual through the group and the group through the individual, weaponizing stigma and transforming the body into a battlefield for group destruction.

Testimonies from Palestinian survivors reportedly highlight dehumanization, which is often considered an ideological foundation of genocide. Genocidal actions often begin by altering how a targeted group is perceived. Victims are first stripped of their individuality, then dignity, and ultimately their humanity. From the outset of the conflict in Gaza, senior Israeli officials reportedly referred to Palestinians as 'human animals,' which some argue has normalized and even celebrated violence. Accounts of soldiers allegedly laughing, filming, applauding, mocking, and boasting about sexual and other violence are legally significant, suggesting not only that abuse occurred but that it may have been normalized.

The Genocide Convention defines genocide not solely as killing but also includes causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a protected group, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s destruction, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. Sexual violence can fall under these categories. It does not need to result in sterilization to be relevant to the Convention's prohibition on measures intended to prevent births. Sexual torture can lead to lasting physical harm to reproductive organs, increasing risks of infertility, pregnancy complications, and chronic reproductive health problems. It can also cause severe psychological trauma and difficulties with intimacy, relationships, and future parenting. Violence targeting genitalia, rape with objects, electrocution, forced nudity, threats of sexual exposure, and the psychological destruction of sexual and family life can all be practices carried out with the intent to annihilate a group's capacity to reproduce biologically and socially.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda acknowledged this in the landmark Akayesu judgment, ruling that rape and sexual violence could constitute genocide when committed with genocidal intent, thus recognizing sexual violence as a method of group destruction. Similar patterns were observed in Bosnia, where sexual violence was used as a weapon of ethnic persecution, and in Myanmar, where gendered crimes against the Rohingya are considered integral to the alleged genocidal campaign.

Calls for International Investigation and Accountability

Reports indicate that the Israeli justice system is unwilling or unable to prosecute serious crimes, including sexual violence, allegedly committed by Israeli nationals against Palestinians. Independent UN Commissions of Inquiry have repeatedly documented what they describe as structural, procedural, and institutional shortcomings within the Israeli military justice system, which undermine effective accountability for alleged violations of international law. Where a justice system reportedly shields alleged perpetrators rather than delivering accountability, it is argued that it fails to deter serious violations, enabling continued unlawful conduct, including severe forms of abuse.

Given a consistent pattern of serious allegations, there is an urgent call for an investigation at the appropriate legal level. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is urged to investigate sexual violence against Palestinians not only as a war crime but, in light of its widespread and systematic nature, as potentially constituting crimes against humanity. Furthermore, considering the context of alleged devastation in Gaza, mass detention, forced displacement, starvation, dehumanization, and systematic torture, the ICC Office of the Prosecutor is pressed to investigate sexual violence as a potential genocidal act.

The systematic nature of alleged sexual violence against Palestinians necessitates that investigations extend beyond direct perpetrators. In cases of alleged acts in prisons or military detention facilities, the investigative scope must encompass the full chain of responsibility, including individuals directly involved, immediate supervisors, and facility-level commanders. For military detention, this could include unit commanders, military police authorities, and the Israeli Military Advocate General. For civilian prison structures like the IPS, responsibility may extend to prison wardens, regional commanders, and senior administrative officials responsible for detention policy and conditions. At the policy and oversight level, scrutiny may further include defense establishment authorities and, where relevant, ministerial-level officials responsible for prison administration, detention policy, and approval of systemic practices affecting detainees.

Failure by the ICC to prosecute these alleged criminal acts would not only result in impunity but also risk eroding the deterrent function of international criminal law. In contexts where serious violations are widely and repeatedly documented, persistent non-prosecution risks normalizing patterns of abuse and embedding them within institutional practice. The absence of meaningful accountability could create a permissive environment where violations recur with reduced fear of investigation or sanction, thus allowing impunity to become self-reinforcing and enabling the persistence and expansion of severe forms of ill-treatment, including sexual torture.

Source: The ICC must investigate Israel’s genocidal use of sexual violence