Closing Sde Teiman Rape Probe Shields Occupation From Accountability
Israel’s military judiciary has closed its investigation into the rape of a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman detention facility, a decision the Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies called an attempt to whitewash the crimes of occupation soldiers.
The soldiers who committed the assault filmed it and posted the footage on social media, said Riad al-Ashqar, director of the Palestine Center and a researcher. Closing the case does not merely bury one crime. It legalizes it and openly encourages more.
Al-Ashqar said he places no trust in the occupation’s courts to deliver justice for Palestinian prisoners. But an open investigation at the notorious Sde Teiman camp could have served, even symbolically, to condemn systematic sexual violence carried out on orders from the highest security and legislative authorities. That exposure before the international community would have opened a path toward accountability.
Instead, the closure reveals collusion between the occupation’s security and judicial systems. It is a green light to repeat crimes that rank among the gravest violations committed against Palestinian prisoners.
The Palestine Center said the decision fits a broader pattern of burying evidence of rape and fatal torture against prisoners. These crimes have escalated sharply since October 7, 2023, and form one front in a wider genocide against the people of Gaza, carried out inside and outside prison walls.
The assaults are not the work of rogue soldiers. They carry official backing from ministers in the most extreme government in the occupation’s history. Itamar Ben Gvir personally oversees the abuse through repeated prison visits, ensuring detention conditions are tightened and prisoners are broken.
Eighty-eight prisoners have been killed in occupation prisons over roughly two and a half years through fatal torture, deliberate medical neglect, and starvation. Prisoners are also raped and held in conditions that breed fatal disease.
The Palestine Center called on the international community and its human rights bodies to condemn these crimes and refer the cases to the International Criminal Court. Those who carried out the abuses and those who ordered them must face accountability, the Center said, because these acts amount to war crimes.
