Israeli military drops charges against soldiers accused of sexually assaulting Palestinian detainee

Israeli soldiers gather at the gate to the Sde Teiman military base, where inside, soldiers are being questioned for detainee abuse, Monday, July 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military on Thursday said it was dropping charges against five soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee in an alleged assault partially caught on camera.

The decision closed a case that has bitterly divided the country since the soldiers were arrested in 2024 at the notorious Sde Teiman military prison, prompting anger from members of the far-right government and hard-line ultranationalists who violently overran the prison in protest. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Thursday’s announcement, while human rights groups accused the military of whitewashing one of the gravest instances of abuse in the country’s network of wartime prisons.

Sde Teiman was set up after Oct. 7, 2023, to hold Palestinians rounded up in Gaza during Israel’s war against the Hamas militant group. The secretive facility quickly gained notoriety as employees and Palestinians freed from detention described scenes of abuse and torture. Those allegations gained steam after Israeli news broadcast a leaked video that appeared to show soldiers sexually assaulting a Palestinian prisoner.

The soldiers were accused of dragging the Palestinian on the floor, tasering him, and sexually assaulting him by stabbing him in the rectum, causing multiple injuries, according to the indictment. He was taken to an Israeli hospital with fractured ribs and blunt trauma to the abdomen and the chest and underwent surgery for a perforated rectum before being returned to the prison.

The military said the charges were being dropped because the video did not show abuse violent enough to merit a criminal conviction and had been improperly leaked to the media. The decision added that the victim had since been released back to Gaza, creating an “absence of certainty” he would be able to testify in a trial.

“Israel’s military advocate general just gave his soldiers license to rape -- so long as the victim is Palestinian,” said Sari Bashi, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. She said the decision was “the latest in a long line of actions that whitewash abuses against detainees whose frequency and severity have worsened since Oct. 7, 2023.”

Netanyahu criticized the investigation, saying that “the state of Israel must pursue its enemies, not its heroic fighters.”

The case cost the military’s top legal official at the time of the soldiers’ arrests her job. In November 2025, Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi admitted that she approved the leak of the video showing the alleged abuse. Facing an uproar in Netanyahu’s government, she abruptly resigned and then disappeared, only to be found phoneless on a Tel Aviv beach after a frantic search by authorities.

The phone, believed to hold possible evidence against her, was later recovered in the sea.

Israel has long been accused of failing to hold its soldiers accountable for crimes committed against Palestinians. The allegations have intensified during the war in Gaza. Israel says its forces act within military and international law and says it thoroughly investigates any alleged abuses.

Julia Frankel, The Associated Press