Report to the UN Committee Against Torture: Systemic Israeli Practices of Torture Against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
Submitted October 10, 2025; republished November 13, 2025
Introduction
This submission details Israel’s extensive use of torture and ill-treatment against Palestinians following October 7, 2023. This abuse – including, but not limited to, beatings to the point of broken bones and permanent injury; gang rape and rape by foreign objects; nonconsensual amputations; and extreme deprivation of food, water, sunlight, hygiene, and sleep – are systematic policies and practices of the State of Israel and its actors. Torture, the infliction of pain as a means of punishment or coercion, is embedded in every stage of a Palestinian’s arrest and detention by Israel. Israel’s systemic and pervasive torture practices target Palestinians of all ages, including members of particularly vulnerable groups – women, children, the elderly, pregnant people, and the disabled.
Alongside physical, psychological, and other forms of torture, this submission specifically highlights cases of sexual torture, including sexual torture of Palestinian children. Sexual torture practices employed by Israeli forces are indicative of widespread dehumanization and cruelty against Palestinians as individuals and as a group. To demonstrate the extreme character of Israel’s torture methods against Palestinians, this report describes a number of individual accounts of torture. The authors recognize that these case studies are neither exhaustive nor exceptional, but rather illustrate the depth of human suffering Israel has inflicted en masse on Palestinians. In a majority of the cases reviewed here, Palestinians detained by Israel were subjected to multiple forms of torture, including physical, sexual, and psychological abuse.
Acts of torture by Israeli forces against Palestinians have been thoroughly documented by journalists, Palestinian and Israeli civil society organizations, academic researchers, international human rights groups, and United Nations (UN) bodies and experts. Survivors have publicly testified – before UN mechanisms, traditional media, and online – to abuses they experienced and witnessed during their detention. Additionally, Israeli soldiers themselves have become primary sources of evidence, documenting and sharing their own participation in and use of torture on their social media accounts. These sources have been comprehensively archived in the Genocide.LIVE database, which holds over 15,000 pieces of evidence of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and 644 published prisoner abuse-related videos documenting torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians following October 7, 2023. Together, this evidence shows the dehumanization, violence, and other abuse by Israeli forces against Palestinians in detention of all kinds.
Finally, this submission demonstrates that torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians are widespread, systematic, and state-sanctioned. The cases delineated are not aberrations or the responsibility of rogue actors. Israeli military, occupation, police, and prison forces have perpetrated extreme forms of torture and ill-treatment – physical, psychological, sexual, and otherwise – in all sites of detention and against Palestinians of every demographic. This reality predates October 7, 2023, but abuse has intensified in the two years since through the use of government edicts and official policies expanding detention and the mistreatment of Palestinians. No leader in the Israeli government or military can claim ignorance of this state of affairs. In fact, many Israeli officials have openly acknowledged, condoned, or celebrated torture against Palestinians in detention. Despite Palestinian, Israeli, and international parties – including within the Israeli government – sounding the alarm about widespread torture, there has been no attempt to improve conditions, end torture, or hold perpetrators to account. Israel’s policy and practice of torture and ill-treatment, and its failure to stop and properly punish it, are clear violations of the Convention Against Torture (CAT).
Note that most of the sources for the following analysis predate the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners as part of the October 2025 ceasefire agreement, which introduced an enormous amount of new evidence of torture and ill-treatment in Israeli detention. This new testimony elevates the urgency of this issue and the need for intervention.