UN Expert Says Torture Now ‘State Doctrine’ in Israel
A UN expert report says torture has become institutionalized in Israel’s policies toward Palestinians since October 2023.
UN report documents detention abuses and widespread harm affecting Palestinians Photo: WFP/Maxime Le Lijour
March 28, 2026 Hour: 1:22 am
🔗 Comparte este artículo
Report links torture, detention abuses and broader policies to ongoing genocide against Palestinians
A United Nations expert has warned that Israel’s systematic use of torture against Palestinians has become institutionalized, describing it as a defining component of an ongoing genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory.
RELATED: Over 1,100 Killed, 1 Million Displaced in Lebanon Amid Israeli Offensive
“Since the onset of the genocide, the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty,” said Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, in a report presented to the UN Human Rights Council.
“What once operated in the shadows is now practiced openly: a regime of organised humiliation, pain and degradation, sanctioned at the highest political levels.”
The report states that policies advanced by senior Israeli officials, including Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, have contributed to the institutionalization of torture, collective punishment and detention conditions described as dehumanizing.
“Those responsible for these heinous violations of human rights, from which no derogation is possible even in times of war, must face investigation and justice, including before the International Criminal Court,” Albanese said.
According to the report, more than 18,500 Palestinians have been detained across the occupied Palestinian territory since October 2023, including at least 1,500 children. Thousands remain in detention without charge or trial, while others have been forcibly disappeared. Nearly 100 detainees have died in custody.
The report documents forms of abuse including rape with objects, starvation, physical assault, burning, and attacks involving dogs.
In 2025, the UN Committee against Torture described the situation as “a de facto State policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment … that has gravely intensified since 7 October 2023.”
“A system that has long been used to dominate, degrade and break Palestinians has evolved and hardened into state doctrine,” Albanese said. “It is defended by politicians, rationalised by legal institutions, sanitised by media narrative and tolerated by governments that continue to arm and shield Israel.”
The findings also indicate that the use of torture extends beyond detention facilities. The report cites bombardment, forced displacement, starvation, destruction of homes, hospitals and infrastructure, surveillance, and violence by soldiers and settler groups as elements of what it defines as a “torturous environment” across Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“In Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Palestinians are subjected to a continuum of suffering,” Albanese said. “There is no refuge. No sanctuary. No safe place to exist.”
The report concludes that the systematic use of torture, combined with broader patterns of destruction, forms an integral part of the ongoing genocide by inflicting severe physical and psychological harm on Palestinians as a group.
“Torture does to the individual what genocide does to a people,” Albanese said. “It destroys the conditions of life and human dignity. It reduces human beings to objects of abuse.”
Albanese called on Israel to immediately cease all acts of torture and ill-treatment, grant access to international investigators and humanitarian organizations, and ensure accountability for those responsible, alongside the dismantling of the occupation.
“Member states must meet their legal obligations to prevent and punish genocide, torture and other serious violations of international law,” she said, including through investigations and arrest warrants for individuals named in the report.
“International law is unequivocal: torture is absolutely prohibited, without exception,” Albanese said.
“Its increasing use as part of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people makes this violation all the more grave and indefensible. If the international community continues to tolerate such acts when inflicted on Palestinians, then the law itself will be stripped of meaning.”
Author: MK
Source: UN News
