Palestinian Detainees Sexual Violence — Survivors of Israeli detention are coming forward with harrowing accounts of sexual violence, including the use of dogs as instruments of assault, as human rights organisations document what they describe as a systematic pattern of abuse against Palestinian prisoners stretching back decades and intensifying since October 2023.
Mohammed Zaki al-Bakri, a survivor from Khan Younis, spent 20 months in Israeli custody, passing through five separate prisons. He alleges that during his detention, he was stripped, handcuffed, blindfolded, and physically restrained by soldiers while being raped by a large dog. He further alleges that six other detainees suffered the same assault, bringing the total number of victims in that incident to seven.
A second former detainee, identified by the pseudonym Job to protect his safety, describes an even more extensive ordeal. Moved through eight Israeli detention facilities, Job alleges he was gang-raped by soldiers and filmed during the assault, with a female soldier participating using a strap-on device. He describes dog assaults at Sde Teiman — an Israeli military detention facility in the Naqab/Negev desert — as occurring in a ritualized, deliberate manner.
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The allegations are not confined to Gaza detainees. In July 2023, Israeli forces allegedly forced entry into the Ajlouni family home in Hebron in the occupied West Bank, threatening residents with large dogs and ordering women to undress. Adnan Hassan, arrested at just 17 years old in Jenin, was held for five months. Separately, in the Jordan Valley, settlers attacked the Abu Kabash family in Khirbet Hamsa al-Fawqain. Sohaib Abu Kabash alleges that settlers tied his genitals with a plastic zip tie and dragged him approximately 100 metres. The family also lost around 400 sheep — their primary livelihood — during the attack.
The institutional backdrop to these accounts is one of near-total opacity. The International Committee of the Red Cross has been denied access to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli facilities since October 7, 2023. Israeli lawyer Ben Marmarelli did not see his Palestinian clients until April 2024 — more than six months after their arrest. When he did, he found them receiving roughly 800 calories per day, less than 40 percent of the 2,100-calorie daily minimum the United Nations considers necessary for survival.
The scale of Palestinian detention is staggering by any measure. Palestinian official sources estimate that more than 750,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel since 1967, a figure the UN has placed as high as 800,000 for the period ending in 2006. As of April 2026, the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association reported 9,600 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli custody. Among them: 3,532 held under administrative detention — imprisoned without charge or trial — alongside 342 children and 84 women.
Accountability efforts have so far yielded little. Five Israeli soldiers were charged with sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman, but in March 2026, Israeli authorities dropped all charges against them. The Israel Prison Service and national police both fall under the Ministry of National Security, headed by far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a fact critics say structurally undermines any prospect of independent oversight.
Palestinian Detainees Sexual Violence: Regional Implications
The international community is beginning to respond, however cautiously. In August 2025, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres placed Israel on notice for possible inclusion in the UN’s annual list of parties credibly suspected of committing patterns of conflict-related sexual violence — a significant diplomatic signal, though one without immediate enforcement mechanisms.
Human rights organisations documenting these abuses face their own dangers. Defense for Children International (DCI) Palestine was designated a terrorist organisation by Israeli authorities after it reported an alleged case of child rape to the United States State Department — a move widely condemned by international legal observers as an attempt to silence accountability mechanisms.
The testimonies emerging from survivors, combined with the documented collapse of legal protections and the obstruction of independent monitoring, present a picture that human rights advocates describe as not merely isolated misconduct but a structural failure of accountability. With international legal scrutiny intensifying and survivor voices growing louder, the question of whether any meaningful reckoning will follow remains deeply uncertain.
