Gaza /PNN /
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights has documented what it describes as among the most horrific abuses that can be inflicted on a human being in the modern era. In recent weeks, the Center’s staff collected new testimonies from several Palestinians from the Gaza Strip who were recently released from Israeli prisons and detention camps. Their accounts describe the systematic and organized use of sexual torture — including rape, forced stripping, coerced filming, sexual assault with objects and dogs — as well as deliberate psychological humiliation aimed at crushing human dignity and erasing personal identity.
The Center stressed that the testimonies do not represent isolated or exceptional incidents but rather form part of a systematic policy carried out in the context of an ongoing genocidal campaign against the more than two million residents of the Gaza Strip, including thousands of detainees held in Israeli prisons and military camps that remain closed to international oversight, including the International Committee of the Red Cross.
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Testimonies documented by the Center’s lawyers and researchers describe harrowing accounts of rape committed by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians, including women, who were arrested from various parts of Gaza during the past two years. The accounts indicate that these arrests were conducted without legal justification other than the individuals’ mere presence as residents of Gaza, reflecting a broader policy of collective punishment intended to humiliate Palestinians and inflict maximum physical and psychological harm — practices the Center says constitute one of the methods used in the ongoing crime of genocide against the Palestinian people.
Among the documented cases is that of N.A., a 42-year-old Palestinian woman and mother, who was detained in November 2024 while crossing an Israeli checkpoint in northern Gaza. In her testimony to the Center, she described multiple forms of torture and sexual violence, including being raped four times by Israeli soldiers, repeated verbal abuse, forced stripping, being filmed naked, electric shocks, and severe beatings across her body. N.A. told the Center’s lawyer:
“At dawn, I heard soldiers shouting that morning prayers were forbidden. I think it was my fourth day of detention since being taken from Gaza. I was moved by soldiers to a place I couldn’t identify because my eyes were covered. They ordered me to remove my clothes, and I did. They placed me on a metal table, pressed my chest and head against it, tied my hands to the bed frame, spread my legs violently, and I felt a man penetrating me from behind. I screamed, and they beat my back and head while I remained blindfolded. I felt the man ejaculating inside me. I kept screaming as they hit me. I heard the sound of a camera clicking; I believe they were filming me. The assault lasted around 10 minutes. Then they left me for an hour in the same position — naked, tied to the bed.”
She recounted being raped again shortly afterward in the same position, this time vaginally, while several soldiers looked on, laughing, and photographing her. She described another assault later that night, during which a masked soldier removed her blindfold, revealed his face, told her he was Russian, and demanded that she perform a sexual act. When she refused, he beat her again.
“That day I was raped twice. The next day twice more. On the third day I was left naked, and soldiers watched me through the door and filmed me. One soldier told me they would post my photos online. I began menstruating while still in the room. Only then did they give me clothes and move me elsewhere.”
Another case involves A.A., a 35-year-old Palestinian man and father who was detained at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital in March 2024. He described 19 months of severe torture, including forced stripping, verbal abuse, threats of rape against him and his family, and ultimately sexual assault by a trained dog at the Sde Teiman military camp. He told the Center:
“They took us to a corridor away from cameras. They stripped us completely. Soldiers brought in dogs. One dog urinated on me, then another raped me, clearly trained to do exactly what it was doing. Soldiers beat us continuously and sprayed pepper gas on our faces. The dog assaulted me for about three minutes. The entire operation lasted around three hours. We were all badly injured. I suffered a deep head wound that a doctor stitched with seven stitches without anesthesia, bruises, and fractures in my ribs.”
Another detainee, T.Q., a 41-year-old Palestinian father who was arrested while seeking shelter at Kamal Adwan Hospital in December 2023, spent 22 months in Israeli custody. He was subjected to sexual torture, including threats to bring his wife to the detention site and rape her. He said that he himself was raped with a piece of wood:
“A soldier inserted a wooden stick violently into my rectum, pulled it out, then shoved it in again harder. I screamed. After about a minute he pulled it out and forced it into my mouth, ordering me to lick it. I lost consciousness from the humiliation. When I woke up, a female officer forced them to stop. I was bleeding from the rectum and asked to go to the restroom. There I saw the blood. When I came out they blindfolded me again and tied my hands.”
The Center also documented the testimony of M.A., an 18-year-old who was re-arrested this year near a humanitarian aid distribution center after having previously been detained and released. He described being sexually assaulted with a bottle — a method used repeatedly on him and on other detainees:
The soldiers forced me and six others to kneel. They raped us with a bottle, inserting and removing it repeatedly. It happened to me four times — twice alone and twice with other detainees. In one instance there were 12 of us. I saw what they did to each person. A dog stood behind us as if it were the one assaulting us. They destroyed our dignity, our minds, our hope. I wanted to continue my education. Now I feel lost.”
In May 2025, the Center published a detailed report based on testimonies from 100 released detainees describing widespread torture, degrading treatment, and inhumane conditions inside Israeli prisons and detention camps. The report concluded that the abuse inflicted by Israeli forces, intelligence agencies, and prison personnel not only meets the definition of torture under international law but also constitutes acts of genocide — specifically:Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; and Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction in whole or in part.
Given the severity of these crimes, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights is calling on the international community — including States Parties to the U.N. Convention Against Torture, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, the U.N. Secretary-General, relevant U.N. Special Procedures, and all human rights and humanitarian bodies — to take urgent action to end the systemic torture and enforced disappearance of Palestinian detainees. The Center urges concrete measures to pressure Israel to release all Palestinians held arbitrarily, disclose the fate and whereabouts of all forcibly disappeared detainees, and allow the International Committee of the Red Cross unrestricted access to all detention sites.
The Center warns that thousands of Palestinian detainees now face an imminent risk of death. On November 3, 2025, the Knesset’s National Security Committee approved a draft law permitting the execution of Palestinian prisoners. According to the Center’s documentation, Israel has extracted numerous forced confessions under brutal torture and threats, meaning the proposed law could lead to the mass execution of all remaining detainees — in clear violation of international humanitarian and human rights law.
The Center is also urging the international community, the Palestinian Authority, authorities in Gaza, and all relevant local and international institutions to provide immediate protection, as well as comprehensive psychological and medical care, for survivors of torture, while ensuring their confidentiality and safety.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights affirmed its commitment to continue documenting these crimes, gathering evidence and testimonies, and submitting them to U.N. mechanisms, the International Criminal Court, and other international accountability bodies — in pursuit of justice for the victims and accountability for those responsible.
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