Israel’s military said it is dropping charges against five soldiers accused of beating and sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee, in a case tied to allegations of mistreatment at a wartime detention facility and to a leaked surveillance video that has fueled political and public outrage.
The decision came as much of the country’s attention was focused on the war with Iran, according to the Associated Press account published Thursday. The military said the case has been closed by dismissing the indictment against the soldiers.
Israel’s military’s top legal officers said the charges were being dropped because the video of the alleged assault did not show abuse violent enough to justify a criminal conviction. They also said the footage had been improperly leaked to the media, and that the victim had since been released back to Gaza, creating what they described as an “absence of certainty” about whether he would be able to testify in court.
The indictment that was dismissed described an assault at the Sde Teiman military prison. It said the abuse included dragging a Palestinian prisoner along the floor, stepping on him, tasering him, and sexually assaulting him by stabbing him in the rectum. The AP reported that the Palestinian detainee was taken to an Israeli hospital with fractured ribs and a perforated rectum requiring surgery, before being returned to the prison.
Allegations of abuse at the facility gained momentum in August 2024, after Israeli news broadcast a leaked video of the alleged assault. In the video, the AP said, masked soldiers wrested a detainee from the ground where he and other Palestinians were lying face down and handcuffed in a fenced-in pen, and then took the detainee to an area cordoned off using shields.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the dismissal, with the AP reporting that he said, “the state of Israel must pursue its enemies, not its heroic fighters.” Human rights groups criticized the move, arguing it effectively absolves soldiers accused of some of the most severe mistreatment allegations 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 that, “Israel’s military advocate general just gave his soldiers license to rape — so long as the victim is Palestinian.” She added 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 case has also been linked in reporting to controversy over how the leaked video was released. In November 2025, the AP said, Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi admitted she had approved the release, saying she wanted to show how serious the abuse was and to convince people that the military had a duty to investigate. The AP reported that she resigned after an uproar from Netanyahu’s government, later disappeared, and was found on a Tel Aviv beach without her phone; her phone was later recovered from the sea.
Sde Teiman was set up after Oct. 7, 2023, the AP reported, to hold Palestinians rounded up in Gaza during Israel’s war against the Hamas militant group. The facility quickly gained notoriety, with employees and Palestinians released from detention describing scenes of abuse and torture, and Israeli rights groups petitioning the country’s top court to shutter it.
Israel has long faced accusations that it fails to hold its soldiers accountable for crimes committed against Palestinians, allegations that have intensified during the war in Gaza, the AP said. Israel has responded by saying its forces act within military and international law and that it thoroughly investigates alleged abuses.