Israel’s military said it has dropped charges against five soldiers accused of beating and sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman, a wartime prison created after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. The decision, made public Thursday, ended a case that had become a major political flashpoint in Israel, in part because the allegations were tied to an assault that was partially captured on camera and later leaked to the media.
The alleged assault was at the center of an indictment filed after the soldiers were arrested in 2024 at Sde Teiman, where Palestinians detained from Gaza during Israel’s war against Hamas were held. The case intensified public scrutiny of detention conditions as Israeli rights groups petitioned Israel’s top court for Sde Teiman to be shuttered, and as employees and Palestinians released from detention described abuse and torture.
Israel’s military said it dismissed the charges because its top legal officers concluded the video did not show abuse violent enough to meet the threshold for a criminal conviction. The military also said the video had been improperly leaked to the media, and it cited the case’s evidentiary challenges after the Palestinian victim had since been released back to Gaza, creating an “absence of certainty” that he could testify at trial.
The charges that were dismissed alleged an assault that included dragging the Palestinian prisoner along the floor, stepping on him, tasering him and sexually assaulting him by stabbing him in the rectum. The Palestinian was taken to an Israeli hospital with fractured ribs and a perforated rectum that required surgery before he was returned to the prison.
Israel’s statement came as much of the country’s attention was focused on the war with Iran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the announcement, and he said in response to the dismissal that “the state of Israel must pursue its enemies, not its heroic fighters.” Netanyahu’s comments reflected anger among far-right figures and hard-line ultranationalists in his coalition, who had earlier protested the arrests and the prison itself.
Human rights advocates said the dismissal ignored what they described as one of the most serious instances of abuse in Israel’s network of wartime prisons. Sari Bashi, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, said after the case was dismissed: “Israel’s military advocate general just gave his soldiers license to rape — so long as the victim is Palestinian,” adding that 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.”
The allegations at Sde Teiman gained momentum in August 2024, when Israeli news broadcast a leaked video of the alleged assault. In the footage as described by the case reporting, masked soldiers wrested a detainee from the ground where he and other Palestinians were lying face down and handcuffed inside a fenced-in pen, then took the detainee to another area they cordoned off using shields.
In November 2025, the military’s top legal officer, Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, admitted she had approved the release of the video, saying she wanted to show “how serious the abuse was” and to persuade the military it had a duty to investigate. After criticism from Netanyahu’s government, she resigned abruptly, later disappeared and was found on a Tel Aviv beach; authorities said her phone was believed to hold possible evidence, and it was later recovered in the sea.
AP previously investigated allegations of inhumane treatment and abuse at Sde Teiman prior to the surveillance video leak, which the military later cited as both central to the prosecution and problematic in how it reached the public. Israel has long faced accusations that it does not hold soldiers accountable for alleged crimes against Palestinians, with such allegations intensifying during the war in Gaza. Israel has said its forces operate within military and international law and that it thoroughly investigates alleged abuses.