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Israeli army closes dozens of cases involving killing of Palestinians inside torture camps

The Cradle | February 13, 2026

The Israeli military has closed dozens of war-crimes investigations into its soldiers arising from the first two years of its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the Jerusalem Post reported on 8 February.

Publication of the details of the case closures was delayed by fears that doing so would ease the way for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to pursue war crimes charges against the soldiers.

Many of the closed cases relate to the deaths of as many as 98 Palestinian detainees from Gaza held in military detention facilities.

Torture and rape are common in Israeli detention centers, including Sde Teiman, where a 2024 leaked video showed the gang rape of a Palestinian detainee.

The arrest of the soldiers who carried out the rape was widely condemned by Israeli politicians and media commentators, who argued that rape was justified.

According to the Jerusalem Post, cases involving the deaths of detainees in custody constitute a “significant number” of about 100 criminal probes that the military’s legal division has opened into soldiers’ conduct.

However, the 100 cases where a probe has been opened make up just a “small proportion” of the roughly 3,000 cases of alleged war crimes for which a preliminary review took place.

Additional indictments may be filed in the Sdei Teiman cases, the Jerusalem Post added.

That Israel has closed many cases with no prosecutions undermines its argument that the ICC has no jurisdiction to prosecute its soldiers and politicians for war crimes.

Israel claims that it has a “robust, independent, and functioning” legal system capable of investigating any alleged wrongdoing. Therefore, according to the Complementary Principle, the ICC has no jurisdiction over its actions, Israel argues.

The Complementary Principle asserts that the ICC should complement national criminal systems, not replace them.

In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant on war crimes charges, including using starvation as a weapon of war.

Israel and the US responded by issuing threats and imposing unilateral economic sanctions on the court’s judges.

Israel is also facing charges at a separate international court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), that it is in breach of the Genocide Convention.

In March 2024, the ICJ issued a preliminary ruling requiring that Israel must take provisional measures to stop the possibility of perpetrating a genocide, including halting the military assault it was carrying out on the city of Rafah, allowing humanitarian aid to enter unhindered, and permitting a fact-finding team to enter the strip.

In December 2023, South Africa filed a case at the ICJ alleging Israel is carrying out a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel’s response to the South Africa case, due on March 12, is still being prepared by its legal team. It will reportedly include a 1,000-page legal brief, along with 4,000 or more pages of exhibits.

The South African case covers Israel’s actions in Gaza between 2023 and 2024. Pretoria has not yet submitted a detailed attack on the Israeli military’s conduct in 2025. It is expected to do so this spring or summer.

Israel will likely be required to respond by the spring of 2027.

“There are concerns among Israeli lawyers about the genocide charges, not only due to exaggerated public statements made by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, but also resulting from statements made near the start of the war by more authoritative defense figures,” the Jerusalem Post reports.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Gallant, Smotrich, Ben Gvir, and many other Israeli politicians have made multiple public statements urging the army to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

According to the UN, genocide means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group:

Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

February 14, 2026 - Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , ,

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