NEW YORK: Israel’s systematic use of torture against Palestinians has evolved into a central component of what a UN expert described as an ongoing genocide in the occupied Palestinian territories, according to a new report presented on Monday.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, said the Israeli prison system has undergone a dramatic and alarming transformation since October 2023.
“Since the onset of the genocide, the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty,” Albanese said in her report to the UN Human Rights Council.
“What once operated in the shadows is now practiced openly: a regime of organized humiliation, pain and degradation, sanctioned at the highest political levels,” she added.
According to Albanese, policies imposed by senior Israeli officials, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have institutionalized torture, collective punishment and dehumanizing detention conditions.
She stressed that those responsible for violations which are prohibited under international law under all circumstances, including during war, must be held accountable, including through proceedings at the International Criminal Court.
The report states that since October 2023 more than 18,500 Palestinians have been detained across the occupied territory, including at least 1,500 children. Thousands remain in detention without charge or trial, while many have reportedly been forcibly disappeared.
Nearly 100 detainees have died in custody.
Albanese detailed what she described as severe abuses, including rape with bottles, metal rods and knives, starvation, the breaking of bones and teeth, burning, and attacks involving dogs, as well as detainees being spat on and urinated upon.
In 2025, the UN Committee against Torture denounced what it called “a de facto state policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment that has gravely intensified since Oct. 7, 2023.”
Albanese said: “A system that has long been used to dominate, degrade and break Palestinians has evolved and hardened into state doctrine.
“It is defended by politicians, rationalized by legal institutions, sanitized by media narrative and tolerated by governments that continue to arm and shield Israel.”
The report also concludes that torture extends beyond detention facilities. Albanese said Israel has created what she described as a “torturous environment” across the occupied Palestinian territory through bombardment, forced displacement, starvation, destruction of civilian infrastructure, surveillance, and violence by both soldiers and settler groups.
She said: “In Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Palestinians are subjected to a continuum of suffering. There is no refuge. No sanctuary. No safe place to exist.”
The report states that the systematic use of torture, combined with broader destruction, constitutes 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 urged Israel to immediately cease all acts of torture and ill-treatment, allow access to international investigators and humanitarian organizations, and ensure accountability for those responsible, alongside what she described as the urgent need to dismantle the occupation.
She also called on UN member states to fulfill their legal obligations to prevent and punish genocide and torture, including by pursuing investigations and issuing arrest warrants for those responsible, naming officials such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and Israel Katz.
“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.”
