Israel drops charges against soldiers in Palestinian detainee abuse case
- Israel has dropped all charges against five soldiers accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee at a military detention facility, closing a divisive case that sparked international outrage.
Israel has dropped all charges against five soldiers accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee at a military detention facility, Israeli media outlets have reported, closing a case that became one of the most divisive in the country’s recent history.
The military announced the decision this week, more than a year after footage of the assault at Sde Teiman, a desert facility holding Palestinians detained during Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, was broadcast by Israeli television, triggering international outrage.
The incident, which occurred on July 5, 2024, resulted in the detainee being admitted to hospital. A doctor at the facility, Professor Yoel Donchin, told Israeli newspaper Haaretz he was so shocked by the man’s condition that he initially assumed it was the work of a rival armed group.
The military’s own indictment described soldiers stabbing the detainee with a sharp object near his rectum, causing cracked ribs, a punctured lung and an internal tear.
The US Department of State called the allegations “horrific” at the time and demanded a swift and full investigation. “There ought to be zero tolerance of any sexual abuse, rape, of any detainees, period,” then State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.
Major-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the military’s top lawyer who had filed the indictment and authorised the footage to be leaked to Channel 12, resigned last year and was subsequently arrested on charges including fraud, breach of trust and obstruction of justice.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, described the leak of the video, not the incident itself, as perhaps the worst “public relations attack” Israel had ever faced.
Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of the Israeli parliament representing the left-wing Hadash-Ta’al faction, previously told Al Jazeera, “They [the government] want to cover up the rape.”
“That’s why they’re dealing with the prosecutors and not the crime itself,” Touma-Suleiman said, adding, “This is how the judiciary works. These are your so-called checks and balances. Look at them, they’re criminals.”
The soldiers’ initial arrest in 2024 had prompted anger from members of Israel’s far-right government, some of whom physically stormed the Sde Teiman facility in protest.
The dropped charges are likely to heighten scrutiny of Israel’s accountability record, amid growing doubts over the independence of its legal system.
Israeli rights group B’Tselem has described the country’s detention system as a “network of torture camps”.
According to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, a human rights organisation, despite hundreds of reported alleged abuse cases since October 2023, Israeli authorities have brought indictments in only two incidents, with no prison service personnel charged.
A report by Israeli rights group Yesh Din found that 93.6 percent of investigations into ideologically motivated offences by Israelis against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2005 ended without indictment, a record it describes not as oversight, but as deliberate policy.
A sweeping UN Human Rights Office report published in January found that of more than 1,500 Palestinians killed between 2017 and September 2025, Israeli authorities opened 112 investigations and secured just one conviction.
Israel maintains that its forces act within Israeli military and international law and that it investigates alleged abuses thoroughly.
