UN Report Details Israel's 'De Facto State Policy' of Torturing Palestinian Prisoners

Reports of Israeli authorities torturing Palestinian prisoners have been publicized for years, with freed detainees describing frequent beatings, attacks by dogs, and rape and sexual abuse, and the United Nations Committee Against Torture now says Palestinians have been victimized by a "de facto state policy of organized and widespread torture."

Both Palestinian and Israeli rights groups gave reports to the committee on conditions in Israeli detention centers, detailing Israel's regular deprivation of food and water for detainees as well as the "severe beatings," electrocution, waterboarding. and sexual violence Israeli guards and other authorities perpetrate.

A state policy of torturing prisoners constitutes the crime of genocide under international law, the committee said.

Peter Vedel Kessing, a member of the committee and a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, told the BBC the panel was "deeply appalled" by the accounts they heard, and expressed concern about the lack of investigations and prosecutions following allegations of torture.

The de facto policy of torture in Israel's has "gravely intensified" since Israel began bombarding Gaza after a Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, the report found. Despite a ceasefire that was agreed to in October, those retaliatory attacks against the exclave are continuing and still constitute a genocide, Amnesty International said this week.

Friday's UN report, said progressive Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis, provided the latest proof that "Israel's insidious war crimes have not subsided just because Trump succeeded in convincing Western public opinion that the genocide in Gaza has paused."

The UN committee found that at least 75 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since the Gaza war began—an "abnormally high" death toll which "appears to have exclusively affected the Palestinian detainee population."

"To date, no state officials have been held responsible or accountable for such deaths," said the panel.

"Israel's insidious war crimes have not subsided just because Trump succeeded in convincing Western public opinion that the genocide in Gaza has paused."

The report comes nearly two weeks after the Israel-based rights group Physicians for Human Rights released an analysis showing that at least 98 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli custody since October 2023.

The UN committee noted that Israel's use of "administrative detention," in which roughly 3,474 Palestinians are currently being held without trial, has reached an "unprecedented" level in the last two years, with children among those who have been imprisoned without charges.

Child prisoners, some of whom are under the age of 12—despite 12 being the age of criminal responsibility in Israel—“have severe restrictions on family contact, may be held in solitary confinement, and do not have access to education, in violation of international standards," the report says.

The report was released the same day the UN Human Rights Office accused Israeli soldiers of carrying out a "summary execution" of two Palestinian men who were seen with their hands up—indicating surrender—in the West Bank.

The committee emphasized its "serious concern" that Israel has no "distinct offense criminalizing torture, and that its legislation allows public officials to be exempted from criminal culpability under the so-called 'necessity' defense when unlawful physical pressure is applied during interrogations."

The report was released days after Israel was one of just three countries—along with the US and Argentina—that voted against a UN General Assembly resolution against torture.