Ramallah, 12 March 2026 – The Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC) condemns in the strongest possible terms the decision by Israeli Military Advocate General Itai Ofir to cancel the indictment against five Israeli occupation soldiers accused of abusing and raping a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman detention facility. This decision is not a failure of justice. It is a deliberate act of impunity. It is a political and legal cover-up that confirms, yet again, that the Israeli occupation’s judicial and military institutions do not exist to hold perpetrators accountable for crimes committed against Palestinians, but rather to protect them, reward them, and ensure their crimes go unpunished.

The cancellation of the indictment lays bare the reality Palestinians have long known and Palestinian human rights organizations have long documented: the Israeli system is not built on accountability, but on the management, concealment, and normalization of Palestinian suffering.[1] Even by the occupation’s own account, this was not a case in which the accused were exonerated or the acts disproven. On the contrary, the evidence was described as presenting a “serious and troubling picture” regarding the actions of the soldiers. Yet despite the gravity of the allegations, the case was dropped under the pretext of procedural and evidentiary difficulties. This is not justice. It is the weaponization of procedure to bury truth and shield perpetrators.

The message sent by this decision is unmistakable: Israeli occupation soldiers may torture, sexually abuse, and humiliate Palestinians, and the system will ultimately intervene to protect them from consequences. What happened in Sde Teiman is not an exception. It is part of a longstanding and systematic pattern in which grave violations against Palestinian detainees are denied, minimized, delayed, procedurally obstructed, and ultimately closed without accountability. Palestinian organizations have argued for years that these outcomes are not isolated distortions of an otherwise functioning legal order, but expressions of a regime deliberately structured to immunize Israeli perpetrators from accountability while denying Palestinians remedy, protection, and equal worth before the law.[2]

This decision must therefore be understood not only as an instance of impunity, but as part of the Occupying State’s broader apartheid regime and its institutionalized system of racial domination and grave discrimination against the Palestinian people. The denial of accountability when the victims are Palestinian, the routine shielding of Israeli occupation soldiers and officials, and the systematic refusal to provide Palestinians with effective legal protection are not accidental features of the system; they are among its defining characteristics. As Palestinian and international human rights organizations have repeatedly shown, Israeli rule is organized to preserve domination by one group over another, including through discriminatory legal structures, coercive practices, and the normalization of violence against Palestinians.

The occupation has long promoted the false narrative that its internal legal system is capable of self-correction and accountability. The Sde Teiman case destroys that claim once again. If even one of the most high-profile and serious abuse cases cannot proceed despite the existence of deeply troubling evidence, then the purpose of these mechanisms is obvious: to deflect international scrutiny while preserving total impunity on the ground. The Israeli military prosecution does not stand above the system of abuse. It is part of it.

The role of Itai Ofir in this decision must therefore be addressed directly. Ofir cannot hide behind the language of legal discretion or procedural caution. By canceling the indictment in a case involving serious allegations of torture and sexual abuse against a Palestinian detainee, he has actively participated in shielding perpetrators and obstructing justice. His conduct reflects not neutrality, but complicity. PHROC therefore demands that Itai Ofir himself be investigated and held accountable for his role in dismantling this case and reinforcing a system that denies Palestinian victims any possibility of redress.

This decision was not made in a political vacuum. It comes amid an openly hostile political climate in which Israeli occupation leaders have repeatedly incited against even the most limited attempts to investigate crimes committed against Palestinians. Particularly revealing was the statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is subject to an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, declaring that the State of Israel “must hunt down its enemies, not its own heroic fighters.” This statement is not only disgraceful; it is an open endorsement of impunity. It glorifies those accused of abusing a Palestinian detainee, delegitimizes any attempt at accountability, and makes clear that the political leadership views the protection of soldiers from prosecution as a national priority. In doing so, Netanyahu once again affirmed that Palestinian victims are denied even the most basic recognition of their humanity, dignity, and rights.

The cancellation of the Sde Teiman indictment must be understood as part of a broader structure of settler-colonial violence, apartheid, and racial domination. Palestinian detainees are not abused in isolation from the larger system. They are targeted within a regime that has, for decades, relied on mass incarceration, torture, coercion, dehumanization, and legal exceptionalism as tools of control over the Palestinian people. The recurring refusal to hold perpetrators accountable is one of the clearest expressions of that regime. It signals to soldiers, commanders, interrogators, prison personnel, prosecutors, and political leaders alike that crimes against Palestinians will be tolerated, rationalized, and erased.

PHROC therefore demands the immediate reopening of the case and the reinstatement of criminal proceedings against the soldiers accused in the Sde Teiman abuse case. We further demand the investigation and accountability of all officials involved in obstructing justice and shielding the perpetrators, including Military Advocate General Itai Ofir, the Israeli Minister of Defense, and the Chief of Staff, who decided to close the case on the basis of the Military Advocate General’s recommendation. Their roles make clear that this was not merely a prosecutorial decision, but a coordinated act through which the political, military, and judicial institutions of the occupation became direct partners in the crime and in its cover-up. Accountability must therefore not stop at the direct perpetrators; it must extend to every official and institution that enabled, endorsed, legitimized, or protected these crimes, and that worked to ensure Palestinian victims are denied justice and redress.

PHROC also calls on the International Criminal Court to treat this decision as further evidence of Israel’s unwillingness and inability to genuinely investigate and prosecute grave crimes committed against Palestinians, and to pursue accountability for the perpetrators, their superiors, and all those responsible for enabling and covering up these crimes. PHROC further calls on all High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfill their legal obligation not only to respect but also to ensure respect for the Convention in all circumstances, including by taking concrete measures to end impunity for crimes committed against Palestinian detainees and the Palestinian people as a whole. States parties must stop deferring to Israel’s fraudulent internal mechanisms and must instead act in accordance with their international legal obligations.

The crimes committed against Palestinian detainees must be assessed within the broader context of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, in which detention-related abuses form part of a wider pattern of destruction, dehumanization, and collective targeting. In this context, torture, sexual violence, deliberate humiliation, starvation, medical neglect, and other forms of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment cannot be viewed as isolated or incidental violations, but as integral components of a broader genocidal process. Torture operates here not only as a grave breach of international law and a serious violation of peremptory norms, but also as a method of inflicting severe physical and mental harm on members of the protected group, contributing to the conditions of destruction imposed upon Palestinians as a group. The treatment of Palestinian detainees must therefore be recognized as part of the genocidal context and as conduct that both reflects and advances the broader campaign of annihilation, domination, and destruction being perpetrated against the Palestinian people.

There can be no justice while perpetrators are shielded, prosecutors act as accomplices, and political leaders celebrate impunity. The cancellation of this indictment is not simply a legal decision; it is a declaration that Palestinian life, dignity, and bodily integrity remain outside the protection of the law under Israeli occupation. PHROC rejects this declaration entirely and reaffirms that Palestinian detainees are entitled to justice, protection, and full accountability for every crime committed against them.

End the impunity. Reopen the case. Prosecute the perpetrators. Hold Itai Ofir and all those complicit in this cover-up accountable. The ICC must act. Third states must act. High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention must meet their obligations and ensure accountability for crimes committed against Palestinians.