For decades before October 2023, human rights organizations documented allegations of sexual violence and abuse against Palestinian detainees in Israeli custody. Since October 2023, these organizations have reported a marked increase in the frequency and severity of such violations, documenting brutal assaults by Israeli prison guards and soldiers.
Al Jazeera's recently released documentary, 'Bodies of Evidence,' offers shocking personal testimonies from Palestinian survivors and details about the inner workings of the system that has enabled sexual torture against Palestinian women, men, and children. With the accumulation of evidence, a disturbing picture emerges of a broader pattern of sexual violence in the Israeli detention system aimed at humiliation, domination, dehumanization, and destruction.
Israel has used a vast detention system to control the occupied Palestinian population since 1967. According to estimates, more than 750,000 Palestinians have been held in Israeli prisons since then. Currently, at least 9,500 Palestinian detainees are in Israeli prisons, including more than 360 children. Around 3,500 Palestinians are held in 'administrative detention' – without charge or trial. Additionally, more than 1,300 Palestinians from Gaza are held in military detention centers.
Survivor testimonies show that abuse occurs at every stage of detention: from arrest during home raids, hospital raids, checkpoint stops, and military operations, to transfer, interrogation, imprisonment, and appearance before military courts. Responsibility is shared between various actors within the Israeli security apparatus: the army, the police, the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), and the Shin Bet intelligence service.
The Israeli media outlet Haaretz has named various Israeli officials as 'collaborators' in Palestinian prisoner abuse, including 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 being subjected to stripping, blindfolding, handcuffing, beating, starvation, sleep deprivation, targeting of genitalia, sexual assault, rape with objects or dogs, humiliation, denial of medical care, and obstruction of legal scrutiny.
After October 7, 2023, the Israeli army began detaining Palestinians from Gaza en masse and sending them to military-run detention camps. Sde Teiman, an Israeli military base converted into a detention center, became notorious for widespread abuse, with one leaked video of soldiers assaulting a Palestinian detainee sparking international condemnation but resulting in no accountability.
The significance of documenting these repeated abuses lies in the pattern they reveal. Reports, survivor testimonies, and information gathered by human rights organizations undermine the claim that such incidents are isolated acts committed by a few 'bad apples.' Rather, they point to a broader pattern of systematic violence perpetrated by state authorities.
Legally, the distinction is crucial: an isolated act of sexual violence may amount to a war crime. However, when such acts are systematic, they can constitute crimes against humanity. When sexual torture is inflicted on members of a protected group with the intent to destroy that group in whole or in part, it may also constitute genocide.
In genocidal contexts, sexual violence attacks the individual through the group and the group through the individual. It weaponizes stigma. Testimonies of Palestinian survivors clearly show dehumanization at play. From the very start of the genocide in Gaza, Palestinians were identified as 'human animals' by senior Israeli officials. As a result, violence has become not just permissible, but celebrated.
The accounts of soldiers laughing, filming, applauding, mocking, and boasting about sexual and other violence are legally significant. They suggest not only that abuse occurred, but that abuse was normalized. The Genocide Convention does not define genocide only as killing. It also includes causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction, and imposing measures intended to prevent births. Sexual violence can fall within these categories.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) needs to investigate sexual violence against Palestinians not only as a war crime. In light of the widespread and systematic nature of such violence, the ICC Office of the Prosecutor must look at these acts as potentially constituting crimes against humanity. In light of the context of Gaza's devastation, mass detention, forced displacement, starvation, dehumanization, and systematic torture, it must also investigate sexual violence as a potential genocidal act.
The systematic nature of alleged sexual violence requires that investigations not be confined to direct perpetrators. Investigative scope must extend across the full chain of responsibility, including individual guards, immediate supervisors, facility-level commanders, and ministerial-level officials. If the ICC fails to prosecute these criminal acts, the consequence is not only impunity but the erosion of the deterrent function of international criminal law itself.
Source: www.aljazeera.com