GAZA, (The Palestine Foundation Pakistan)
“I was screaming and wishing for death every moment. They left me naked for hours after raping me more than once, laughing and taking pictures”, in words that sum up the utmost pain and humiliation, (N.A.) A 42-year-old Palestinian mother, details of what happened to her inside an Israeli detention camp.
Testimony documented by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in a new report revealing an organized and systematic Israeli practice of sexual torture against Palestinian detainees, men and women, in the context of an ongoing crime of genocide against the residents of the Gaza Strip.
The center asserted that testimonies collected by its lawyers and researchers from detainees recently released from Israeli prisons and camps reveal a consistent and deliberate pattern of sexual crimes and psychological and physical torture, including rape, nudity, forced filming, assault with tools and dogs, in addition to deliberate humiliation aimed at crushing human dignity and erasing individual identity.
The Center stressed that “what is stated in these testimonies does not represent isolated individual incidents, but rather falls within a policy of collective punishment practiced by the Israeli occupation authorities in light of the continuing crime of genocide against more than two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including thousands detained in prisons and camps closed to international oversight, including the International Committee of the Red Cross.”
“They raped me four times and photographed me naked”
N.A. said she was arrested in November 2024 while passing through a military checkpoint in the northern Gaza Strip, and was subsequently subjected to various forms of torture and sexual violence.
She said, “In the dawn hours, I heard the sound of soldiers screaming and saying: It is forbidden to pray in the morning.” I believe that it was the fourth day of arrest from Gaza. I was taken to a place I did not know because I was blindfolded and they asked me to take off my clothes, and I actually did that. Then I was placed on an iron table, my chest and head were placed on the table, my hands were tied at the end of the bed, my feet were pulled tightly and separated by force from each other, and I felt a penis penetrate my anus, and I felt the body of a man raping me.”
She added, “I was screaming, then I was hit on my back and head and I was blindfolded and I felt the man who was raping me ejaculating semen into my anus. And all the while I was screaming and getting beaten up, and I could hear the camera sound and I thought they were filming me.”
She continued in her testimony to the Human Rights Center, “The rape lasted about 10 minutes, after which I was left for an hour in the same position, with my hands tied at both ends of the bed with an iron handcuff, my face on the bed, my feet on the floor, and I was completely without clothes.”
An hour after the first incident, N.A., was subjected to complete rape where the penis was inserted into her vagina, “I was beaten on my head and back while screaming. I could hear the soldiers laughing, and the camera taking pictures. This rape lasted a very short period during which ejaculation did not occur.”
The same scene was repeated the next day, while on the third day she remained without clothes, under threats from soldiers to publish her photos. She continued saying, “I cannot describe how I felt. I wished for death every moment. After I was raped, I was then left alone in the same room, handcuffed in bed without clothes for long hours, until I got my period and then I was asked to wear clothes and moved to another room.”
“A trained dog raped me”
In another incident, A.A., a 35-year-old Palestinian father, who was arrested at Al-Shifa Hospital in March 2024, described what happened to him during his 19 months of detention, saying, “They completely stripped us naked, then released the dogs at us. One of them raped me under the supervision of soldiers who were laughing and spraying pepper gas on my face.”
He recounted what happened to him, saying, “I was transferred to a section I did not know inside the Sde Teiman detention camp, and during the first weeks of my presence there, the repressive measures were repeated. During one of them, I and a group of detainees were taken in a humiliating manner to a place far from the cameras, which was a corridor between the sections, where we were completely stripped naked. Then the soldiers brought dogs and they climbed on us, and the dogs urinated on me, and then a dog raped me.”
He added, “The dog raped me while knowing what he was doing. He inserted his penis into my anus, while I was under constant beatings and torture by soldiers who also pepper sprayed me. The dog practice with me lasted about 3 continuous minutes, while the suppression process generally lasted about 3 hours.”
He added in his testimony to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, “I was in a very bad psychological state, I felt very insulted, and lost my temper because I had never imagined in my entire life that I would be exposed to such an incident. Then, I was taken to a corner of the corridor and a doctor treated a severe wound on my head from the torture without anesthesia, and I also suffered bruises and a fracture in my rib cage.”
“They forced me to lick the stick after they raped me with it”
41-year-old T.Q., was arrested during his displacement in December 2023 from Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, and was subjected to sexual torture that continued for 22 months.
He said, “One of the soldiers violently inserted a wooden stick into the anus, and after about a minute he took it out, then inserted it again with greater force. I was screaming loudly, and after a minute he took it out and forced me to open my mouth and put the stick inside to lick it. I lost consciousness. I bled for hours, and was not allowed treatment until after the intervention of an officer who gave me a white overall that I wore.”
He added, “Then, blood was flowing from my anus, and I asked the officer to go to the bathroom (…) There, the bandage was removed from my eye, and indeed, during my scanning of the anus area, there was blood flowing. After blood stopped, I put on the white overall again. As soon as I left, they blind-folded me, and my hands were tied with plastic ties from behind.”
After that he said he was detained in a room where he was held with a number of detainees for approximately eight hours, “during which time the soldiers took turns beating and insulting us.”
“They raped me with a bottle in front of others”
M.A., in his testimony to the Human Rights Center, said that he was raped twice, the last time this year near an aid center in Gaza, where he and other detainees were repeatedly raped with bottles.
He said in the details of the incident, “The soldiers ordered me and 6 detainees to sit on our knees and raped us by placing a bottle in the anus, where they would enter and exit it. The incident happened to me 4 times, and the input and output were about 10 times, and I and those with me were screaming.”
He elaborated that in the four times this incident happened to him, he was alone twice, a third time with 6 detainees, and a fourth time with 12 detainees. “I saw what they were doing to people as they were doing to me, and I knew it was a bottle. There was also a dog behind us, as if the dog was the one raping us. They violated our dignity and destroyed our psyche and our hope in life.”
Torture as a tool of genocide
The Center’s report is based on more than 100 documented testimonies from released detainees, and confirms that the treatment they were subjected to goes beyond the limits of torture under international law, amounting to acts falling within the crime of genocide, based on two basic articles of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, which are causing serious physical or psychological harm to members of the group, and imposing living conditions aimed at the total or partial physical destruction of the group.
The human rights center warned that thousands of Palestinian detainees face the inevitable risk of death after the National Security Committee of the Israeli Knesset approved on November 3, 2025 a draft law allowing the death penalty to be applied to Palestinian prisoners.
It pointed out that many of the confessions extracted from detainees were made under torture and threats of rape, which means that carrying out possible executions may constitute a legal mass massacre.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights called on the United Nations and the states parties to the Conventions against Torture and the Prevention of Genocide to take immediate action to halt violations, pressure the Israeli occupation authorities to release all arbitrarily detained Palestinian prisoners, and reveal the fate of those forcibly disappeared.
It also stressed the need to enable the International Committee of the Red Cross to have unrestricted access to all detention centers, provide urgent psychological and medical protection and care to victims and survivors of torture, and ensure the confidentiality of their identities.
The Human Rights Center also affirmed its commitment to continuing to document these crimes and collecting evidence and testimonies to submit to the International Criminal Court and the relevant United Nations mechanisms, to ensure justice for the victims, hold those responsible accountable, and prevent impunity.
