https://www.un.org/unispal/document/torture-and-genocide-report-francesc...
23 March 2026
Human Rights Council
Sixty-first session
23 February–2 April 2026
Torture and genocide
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese
Summary:
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 examines the systematic use by Israel of torture against Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territory since 7 October 2023, encompassing custodial and non-custodial practices that meet the threshold for genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. She documents how torture has become integral to the domination of and punishment inflicted on men, women and children, both through custodial abuse and through a relentless campaign of forced displacement, mass killings, deprivation and the destruction of all means of life to inflict long-term collective pain and suffering. A continuous, territorially pervasive regime of psychological terror is being imposed, designed to break bodies, deprive a people of their dignity and force them from their land. This is not incidental violence. It is the architecture of settler-colonialism, built on a foundation of dehumanization and maintained by a policy of cruelty and collective torture.
I. Introduction
1. In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 examines the use of torture – the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, physical or mental, for purposes including intimidation and coercion or for any reason based on discrimination – by Israel against Palestinians as a group, and finds that torture is a structural feature of the ongoing genocide and broader settler-colonial apartheid.
2. As her mission was obstructed by Israel, the Special Rapporteur gathered relevant information through written submissions, 1 including over 300 testimonies collected by numerous organizations; remote consultations with legal experts and torture survivors; and a review of primary and public sources, including accounts by Israeli whistle-blowers.
3. Torture has always been a central feature of the dispossession of Palestinians by Israel. Yet, since October 2023, Israel has employed torture on a scale that suggests collective vengeance and destructive intent. The targeting of Palestinians “as an entire nation out there that is responsible”, in the words of the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog,2 is apparent in the brutality of the detention system of Israel and in the broader carceral regime imposed on all Palestinians. Characterized as necessary for the “security” of Israel, these practices operate as an ideological project of societal destruction, normalizing cruelty and with the political objective of debilitating the Palestinian “nation”.
4. The escalation of torture in Israeli detention centres is a coordinated plan. The country’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the Israel Prison Service, has promoted his “prison revolution”, which institutionalized a policy of degradation. On 14 November 2023, the Minister ordered that Palestinian detainees labelled “terrorists” be kept handcuffed in dark cells with iron beds and pit toilets and subjected to the Israeli national anthem blaring continuously. He has also called for the death penalty for Palestinian detainees – a cynical solution to the overcrowding created by the mass arrests carried out by Israel.
5. Torture is not confined to cells and interrogation rooms. Through the cumulative impact of mass displacement, siege, denial of aid and food, unrestrained military and settler violence and pervasive surveillance and terror, the occupied Palestinian territory has become a space of collective punishment, where the destruction of the conditions of life turns genocidal violence into a tool of collective torture with long-term mental and physical consequences for the occupied population. Enabled by the global security industry and third States’ inaction, this regime dehumanizes Palestinians, subjects them to multiple humiliations and types of violence and instils collective fear.
6. Across the occupied Palestinian territory, Israeli authorities have engineered a “torturous environment”, designed to break resistance, dignity and sumud (steadfastness). As openly articulated by the minister responsible for finance, Bezalel Smotrich, and other officials whose statements are analysed in the present report and who have supported the ongoing genocide and collective torture, the ultimate and avowed objective is the forcible removal of Palestinians to enable annexation and settler conquest.
7. In the context of the envisaged “new Nakba” plan, the combination of custodial and non-custodial torture practices documented in the present report shows the intimate relationship between torture and settler-colonial genocide. When torture is systematically used on a population “as such”, it is both a means of domination and evidence of genocidal intent under article II (b) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
8. If justice is ever to be served, it must be recognized that in the context of a genocide, torture, whether custodial or non-custodial, is inherently intentional and purposive; its sustained use across time and space against the same population is probative of policies aimed at the physical and psychological destruction of that group.
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VI. Conclusions
82. Since October 2023, the systematic torture of Palestinians has become an integral component of the settler-colonial genocide perpetrated by Israel, functioning as an instrument of annihilatory violence directed at the Palestinians as a people. When torture is perpetrated across an entire territory, against a population as such and sustained through policies that destroy the conditions of life, the genocidal intent is apparent.
83. The present report merely scratches the surface. It situates torture within a broader framework of both custodial and non-custodial policies and practices, in which the infliction of collective long-term harm reflects a concerted effort to control and erase a people by: destroying basic conditions of life; breaking social bonds and collective resistance; and ultimately forcing Palestinians from their land to replace them with settlers.
84. In custody, Palestinian captives have been subjected to exceptionally ruthless physical and psychological abuse, on a scale and with an intensity without precedent in the history of Palestine/Israel. Brutal beatings, sexual violence, rape, lethal mistreatment, starvation and the systematic deprivation of the most basic human conditions have inflicted profound and lasting scars on the bodies and minds of tens of thousands of Palestinians and their loved ones. These practices demonstrate that the detention system of Israel has descended into a regime of systemic and widespread humiliation, coercion, and terror, aimed at stripping Palestinians not only of their liberty but of their dignity, identity and even the most basic sense of humanity. Far from isolated excesses, such conduct has been institutionalized within detention structures, politically endorsed by Israeli authorities and publicly justified, or even celebrated, by segments of society.
85. Beyond detention, Palestinians are subjected to conditions that cumulatively inflict severe collective physical and psychological suffering: mass killings, mass displacement, mass destruction of homes and infrastructure, mass starvation, mass deprivation, including of essential medical care, and the constant exposure to violence and humiliation without repair. In this torturous environment, the intentional destruction of the conditions necessary for life makes daily existence an ordeal of exhaustion, trauma and precarity.
86. By targeting the totality of the people, across the totality of the occupied land, through a totality of conduct, genocide has become the ultimate form of torture: continuous, generational and collective. Taken together, these policies consolidate a comprehensive system of destruction calculated to inflict permanent suffering on Palestinians, annihilate everyday life, and create an environment of sustained anguish, as confirmed by testimonies describing the irreversible erosion of trust, selfhood and belonging caused by torture and its enduring impact on families. These practices are designed to inflict harm and obliterate once and for all the Palestinian right to self-determination, eroding the possibility of political, cultural and territorial continuity. There can be no doubt that this constitutes both the infliction of serious bodily and mental harm under article II (b) of the Genocide Convention and intentional, collective torture.
87. While the dehumanization of the Palestinians predates the appointments of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and Israel Katz in the Government, these politicians now preside over, and give political direction to, the policies behind the present report’s findings. Any credible pursuit of justice must confront torture not as an isolated crime, but as a foundational pillar of a genocidal project aimed at the complete erasure – physical and psychological destruction, displacement and replacement – of the Palestinian people.
