Israeli military drops charges against soldiers accused of raping Palestinian

The Israeli army has said it is dropping charges against five soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian detainee.

In August 2024, Israel’s Channel 12 published leaked CCTV footage purportedly showing a group of soldiers at the notorious Sde Teiman prison gang-raping a Palestinian detainee while forming a human barrier around him.

The military announced the move as attention is focused on the war with Iran.

"The State of Israel must hunt down its enemies, not its own heroic fighters," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement praising the decision.

Excerpts of the footage used in the investigation showed soldiers surrounding the detainee as he was pinned against a wall. In another clip, he was seen lying on the floor.

According to media reports, the Palestinian man was then taken to a field hospital at Sde Teiman with “a ruptured bowel, a severe injury to his anus, lung damage and broken ribs”.

The original indictment said that "for 15 minutes, the accused kicked the detainee, stomped on him, stood on his body, hit him and pushed him all over his body, including with clubs, dragged him along the ground, and used a taser gun on him, including on his head".

At least nine Israeli soldiers, all reservists from Force 100, a unit tasked with guarding the prisoners in Sde Teiman, were questioned over the assault in late July 2024, sparking widespread anger across Israel.

Only five were indicted for "severe abuse" of the detainee, but not for rape. The indictment against them said that one of the soldiers stabbed the detainee with a sharp object, causing a tear near his rectum.

According to Channel 12, the suspects in the case were found to be lying on a polygraph test.

Two suspects were asked two identical questions: "Did you insert an object into the Palestinian's anus during a search?" and "Are you hiding the identity of the person who inserted an object into the Palestinian's anus?"

The suspects answered in the negative to both questions, with the examiner finding them both to be lying.

The Israeli military said the decision to drop the charges follows “significant developments” in the case since the indictment was filed.

Among the reasons for cancelling the charges, the army cited “complexity regarding the existing evidence” and the “exceptional circumstances” of the case which they said could impact “the fundamental and basic right to a fair trial”.

In November 2025, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the country’s former top military lawyer, admitted t o leaking the surveillance footage to Israel’s Channel 12 and resigned following a criminal investigation.

Torture, rape and murder have all been reported as rife at Sde Teiman, with investigations by Middle East Eye , CNN and the New York Times reporting widespread examples of abuse at the centre.

But the abuse extends beyond Sde Teiman, with multiple reports documenting the systematic use of sexual violence against Palestinian detainees across the Israeli prison system.

A United Nations inquiry accused Israel of using sexualised torture and rape as "a method of war... to destabilize, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people".

In December, two Palestinian detainees detained in separate Israeli prisons told Middle East Eye about their experiences of violent sexual assault.

One described how he was kicked, stamped on, insulted and raped with an object while blindfolded, as Israeli guard watched and laughed.

Another described how soldiers used a dog to rape him.