UNLEASHED
For over a year, Israel has been waging an unrestrained war against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and within the State of Israel. The violence that has always characterized the Israeli apartheid regime’s treatment of Palestinians is now appearing in its most direct and exposed form. This report focuses on one facet of this violence: recurring instances of severe abuse of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in the center of Hebron throughout the summer of 2024.
B’Tselem gathered 25 testimonies from Palestinians who were abused by Israeli soldiers in central Hebron between May and August 2024. The testimonies describe acts of violence, humiliation, and abuse directed by soldiers at men, women, teenagers and children. Victims gave harrowing accounts of physical and psychological abuse, including beatings, whipping, having cigarettes put out on their bodies, blows to their genitals, injection of an unidentified substance, prolonged binding and blindfolding, threats, insults and more.
Soldiers selected the victims arbitrarily as they went about their daily lives: On their way to work or back home, drinking coffee in their yards, or while running errands. In most cases, they were taken by soldiers to military facilities, where most of the abuse occurred. None of the victims were suspected of any offense or prosecuted. They were released immediately after being assaulted, and many required medical treatment after the fact. Only two victims were arrested, and both were released within days without being charged.
The escalation in both the severity and scope of violence is a direct result of the intensified dehumanization of Palestinians in the eyes of Israelis. The Palestinian collective is portrayed as an indistinguishable mass, and every individual is perceived as an enemy, on whom inflicting harm not only permitted but welcome.
The scale of the violence revealed in these testimonies—carried out openly and, in some cases, filmed by the soldiers themselves—demonstrates that this is not merely the result of personal vendettas or isolated incidents. Instead, it reflects a particularly brutal manifestation of a systematic, long-standing policy of oppression, expulsion and dispossession that lies at the root of the Israeli apartheid regime.
