RAMALLAH, (PIC)
Violations within Israeli prisons were not new in the context of the extended conflict, but what has been revealed since October 7, 2023, indicates a qualitative shift in the nature of these violations, among which sexual violence has emerged as part of a recurring, widespread pattern that carries the characteristics of organization and planning.
This shift appears not only in the volume of incidents but in their structure, as the use of the body as a space for punishment intersects with a closed detention environment that allows for the intensification and reproduction of violations away from any effective oversight, which opens a fundamental question about whether it is a matter of individual lack of control or a policy forming within a broader system.
From incidents to pattern
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor issued today, Sunday, a report titled “Another genocide behind the walls” that provides raw material for understanding this shift, as it documents recurring patterns of sexual violence including direct rape, assault using tools, and forced stripping accompanied by verbal and physical humiliation, alongside the presence of multiple security elements during the assault or its documentation with audio and video.
The repetition of these patterns across separate testimonies and in different detention places does not leave them within the framework of individual incidents, but rather pushes towards reading them as a pattern produced within an institutional environment where violence becomes a repeatable practice and not a passing exception.
Inside the investigation room
In one of the testimonies collected by the documentation team, a forty-three-year-old former detainee recounts the details of being subjected to repeated sexual assaults during investigation, the event was not a separate moment but a series of extended incidents that included beating, filming, and mockery in the presence of more than one security element.
Wajdi, who spent one full year inside detention, says that he was subjected to direct and repeated rape by soldiers and a dog during his investigation.
He added, “During the investigation, they tied me naked to an iron bed, and one of the soldiers asked me how many Israeli women I raped inside Israel? I denied that I had entered Israel. After that, a soldier raped me, I felt severe pain in the anus, and I was screaming, and whenever I screamed I was subjected to beating. This continued for several minutes, and the soldiers were filming and mocking me, and the soldier left me after he lowered his semen inside me.”
He continued, “I was in a humiliating situation, I wished for death, and I had bleeding. Then at a later time they untied my restraints and brought a dog, which also raped me. During the same day I was subjected to rape at least twice after being tied to the bed, and one of the soldiers placed his penis inside my mouth, then urinated on me, and the rape was repeated after two days by three soldiers, and I was in a very bad health and psychological situation.”
What this testimony reveals does not stop at the limits of the act but extends to the context in which it took place, where the assault appears as part of an investigation environment that allows it and reuses it as a means of pressure, which reinforces the hypothesis that what is happening is not a departure from the rules but a practice taking place within them.
Silence as part of the scene
One of the most complex aspects of this file is the limited nature of testimonies compared to the scale of assumed violations, for the documentation of sexual violence faces complex obstacles in which social stigma overlaps with fear of retaliation and with the deep psychological impact left by this type of crime.
In a conservative society, the victim turns into a bearer of an additional social burden, which pushes many to silence and makes what is documented merely a narrow part of a broader, invisible reality, in this sense, silence is not an absence of the narrative but a direct result of an environment that pressures towards hiding it.
The psychological engineering of violence
The impact of these violations does not stop at the limits of the body but extends to what can be described as psychological engineering aimed at reshaping the victim’s awareness of himself and his society, as concepts of dignity and privacy are employed as pressure tools by planting fear that disclosure will constitute a second violation.
In this way, society turns from a potential space for support into an additional source of threat, and the victim finds himself trapped inside a closed circle of silence where the impact of torture continues even after the end of the incident.
Targeting the body and its function
Testimonies show that the assaults focus remarkably on the genitals, which gives the violence a dimension that goes beyond momentary harm towards causing long-term damage to the body and its function, where cases of severe bleeding, internal tears, and permanent loss of reproductive capacity or the need for harsh surgical interventions were documented.
This pattern of targeting indicates that the goal is not limited to humiliation but extends to inflicting structural harm on the victim’s life, affecting his physical, psychological, and social future.
Women in the circle of violation
For women and girls, sexual violence takes more complex dimensions as the assault intersects with constant threats and a social environment that makes disclosure more costly, as violations include forced stripping, harassment, and threat of rape reaching to cases of actual assault.
Despite the seriousness of these incidents, women’s testimonies remain less present in documentation, which reflects the size of the barriers that prevent these narratives from reaching the public sphere.
Beyond torture
The psychological impact of these experiences is no less cruel than the physical harm, as medical literature indicates that sexual violence represents one of the most prominent causes of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, where survivors live under the weight of constant flash-backs of the event, severe depression, chronic insomnia, and psychological dissociation from the body.
This impact extends to daily life where victims face difficulty in returning to work or study and live in a state of chronic fear that pushes them towards isolation and limits their ability to restore their normal lives.
A closed path for accountability
In parallel with that, the absence of accountability emerges as a central element in understanding the continuation of these violations, as data indicates that the percentage of indictments in cases of violations against Palestinians remains very small, which reflects a structural defect in investigation and accounting mechanisms.
This reality is not limited to negligence but suggests the existence of a system capable of containing cases and narrowing the scope of responsibility, providing practical protection for perpetrators and enshrining impunity.
Between law and reality
In light of international law, these practices can be classified within crimes of torture and war crimes, and may rise to crimes against humanity if their systematic and widespread character is proven, and in certain contexts they may fall within acts related to the crime of genocide when violence is coupled with the intent to inflict serious physical or mental harm on a specific group.
What these testimonies and reports reveal does not relate only to the nature of the violations but to the environment that allows their occurrence and continuation, where violence intersects with silence, deterrence is absent, and accountability remains postponed.
In this vacuum, documentation becomes a first step, but it is not enough unless it turns into a legal path capable of breaking this circle and redefining the limits of accountability within one of the most closed spaces.
