Palestinian Detainees Allege Sexual Violence and Abuse in Israeli Prisons

At least four participants from one flotilla incident reported anal penetration, strikes to the genitals and verbal sexual abuse. Others described being stripped, starved and deliberately flooded with water to induce hypothermia. One hundred seventy-nine detainees from that group were released to Greece while two remain in Shikma prison on hunger strike.

Israeli authorities have issued no public statement on the allegations.

One former detainee arrested during Israeli military operations in Gaza in March 2024 spent about 20 months in multiple Israeli detention centers before transfer to a prison in occupied East Jerusalem. He remained blindfolded and handcuffed for months with no outside contact.

He told Al Jazeera that soldiers one night stripped him and other detainees naked, unleashed dogs on them and carried out sexual assaults. Some soldiers also used sexual objects. A 17-year-old boy detained near an aid distribution point in Rafah while seeking food for his family described being handcuffed, stripped, confined in a small space and subjected to sexual touching by female soldiers who filmed the incident and forced him to repeat degrading words.

” The group said male detainees suffered degrading treatment and identified seven forms of sexual violence including rape and threats of rape. Maha Hussaini of the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said the cases formed part of a broader pattern. The organization has recorded dozens of similar testimonies.

Kifaya Khraim of the Ramallah-based Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling interviewed 75 women detained in facilities in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. All reported experiencing sexual violence including rape, sexual torture, humiliation or degradation.

“It’s systematic. It’s not isolated incidents. It’s not a lone wolf committing that,” Khraim said, noting that both Palestinian women and men were victims while both male and female Israeli guards and soldiers were accused of perpetrating the violence.

More than 9,600 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons last month, an 83 percent increase from about 5,250 before the war, according to prisoners’ advocacy groups. The current total includes 350 children and about 3,530 administrative detainees held without charge.

Many former detainees said that even after release their ordeal continued as they struggled with psychological effects from the memories of imprisonment. >"They first handcuffed our hands in front of us. When the rape began, they forced our hands behind our backs, stripped us naked, and threw us onto the floor.

Dogs were unleashed on us and viciously attacked us. One of them was extremely large.