On 28 November 2025, the Committee Against Torture (the “Committee”) closed its 83rd session, and outlined its Concluding Observations on four countries, including Israel. Ahead of the review, on 20 October 2025, Al-Haq, Al-Mezan and Addameer submitted two joint alternative reports to inform the Committee’s findings.
The first report highlights Israel’s use of torture as a state policy against arbitrarily detained Palestinian men, women and children. The submitting organisations denounced the significant increase in Israel’s arbitrary arrest and mass detention of Palestinians since October 2023, with 14,657 Palestinians currently held in Israeli detention centres based on secret evidence and without due process. Nearly two years after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, by September 2025, at least 75 Palestinians died in Israeli detention as a result of the inhumane conditions, ill treatment and torture they were subjected to by Israeli authorities. This latter figure testifies to an undeniable escalation in Israel’s widespread and systematic use of torture and inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment against Palestinian detainees in blatant violation of Article 2 of the Convention against Torture (CAT). The testimonies gathered by the organisations and included in the report lend further support to the findings of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel which reported the routine use of extreme sexual and gender-based violence such as rape, beatings on the genitals of detainees and forced nudity, as well as starvation, dehydration, confinement in cages, physical and verbal assault, and electrocutions, among other forms of severe violence.
The second report draws much-needed attention to Israeli policies inflicting serious and lasting psychological suffering outside the context of detention, namely Palestinian home demolitions, mass forcible transfers, the use of Palestinians as human shields and the use of military dogs to attack and terrorise Palestinians. These policies, and the serious mental harm they are intended to inflict, amount to both psychological torture and the genocidal act of causing serious mental harm in light of Israel’s intent to destroy the Palestinian people. In support of its analysis, the report incorporated jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to demonstrate how Israel’s practice of mass forcible transfer of Palestinians in Gaza represents a key component of Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people based on the severity of the mental harm wilfully inflicted. The report further highlighted how these practices serve Israel’s scheme of racial domination and oppression of Palestinians, constituting the crime against humanity of apartheid.
Based on Israel’s widespread and systematic use of physical and psychological torture against Palestinians throughout unlawfully occupied Palestine – including the entire population of the Gaza Strip which has been repeatedly forcibly transferred in a manner intended to inflict lasting trauma, as well as the wider impact of policies designed to cause severe psychological distress, such as being forcefully separated from family members or witnessing one’s home be destroyed with no recourse to action – the report outlines Israel’s commission of collective torture. Crucially, the submitting organisations contextualise Israel’s policies and practices in its settler-colonial, apartheid system and longstanding pursuit of Palestinian erasure. These policies reflect an aggravation of prior patterns of ill-treatment and torture against Palestinians that began even prior to Israel’s creation in 1948, in violation of peremptory norms of international law, namely the prohibition of apartheid and racial domination, the prohibition of the use of force and forced acquisition of territory and the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, as ruled by the International Court of Justice in its 2024 Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.
Accordingly, the organisations called on the Committee to urge the State of Israel to immediately cease all practices and policies that constitute or enable torture, ill-treatment, arbitrary detention, or enforced disappearance of Palestinians, and ensure full compliance with its obligations under the CAT. The organisations further recommended that the Committee demand that Israel dismantle its settler colonial apartheid regime on both sides of the Green Line and end its illegal presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as rapidly as possible, dismantle the military court system operating therein, and end its use of administrative detention against Palestinians.
On behalf of the three organisations, Al-Haq also delivered an oral intervention at the 83rd session of the Committee in Geneva during a formal briefing attended by UN Special Rapporteurs and other experts of the Committee on 10 November. During the briefing, Al-Haq presented both reports and addressed issues of interest to some members of the Committee, including Israel’s lack of transparency on the actual number of Palestinian detainees and the role of illegal settlers in Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime and unlawful occupation.
Finally, Al-Haq, Al-Mezan and Addameer engaged with Committee experts during an online meeting, warning of the unprecedented scale of unimpeded settler violence furthering Israel’s annexationist agenda, now bolstered by the Trump administration. Our organisations further highlighted that there cannot be genuine Israeli investigations into allegations of torture and ill-treatment against Palestinians on the basis of Israel’s justice system entirely lacking independence and impartiality, instead serving as a tool in its racial domination and oppression of Palestinians through its enforcement of discriminatory laws and policies adopted to entrench apartheid, subjugate the indigenous population and shield perpetrators from accountability. In particular, the organisations warned that Israel’s death penalty bill targeting Palestinian detainees is in breach of the Convention, and called on the Committee to intervene. The Committee was urged to demand that Israel grant unhindered access to UN investigators, special rapporteurs, and other international human rights mechanisms to all areas under its jurisdiction and effective control and immediately end its illegal presence in the occupied Palestinian territory and apartheid system on both sides of the Green Line.
In its Concluding Observations on Israel’s sixth periodic report, the Committee expressed concerns regarding a number of detention-related issues including the unprecedented widespread use of administrative detention since 7 October while Israeli settlers are exempted therefrom. Further the Committee raised concerns over Israel’s use of the “Unlawful Combatants Law” to proceed with the “large-scale detention” and enforced disappearance of groups of Palestinian civilians “without a concrete and individualized assessment on their status as alleged unlawful combatants being carried out”. The Committee was also concerned by the severe deterioration of detention conditions in Israeli custody as a result of a “deliberate State policy of collective punishment” and Israel's de facto “policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment during the reporting period that has gravely intensified since 7 October 20233”. The Committee took a particular interest in the high number of Palestinians who died in Israeli custody since 7 October 2023 as a result of the poor conditions of detention. Crucially, Israel’s state policy of collective punishment and torture was identified as forming “part of the actus reus of genocide” against the Palestinian people. The Committee recommended that Israel put an end to these practices, investigate, prosecute and punish all persons responsible for enforced disappearance and provide victims with appropriate redress and compensation.
Regarding torture arising outside custodial settings, the Committee was gravely concerned by a combination of Israel’s practices in the OPT that amounts to the ill-treatment of Palestinians and may amount to torture. This includes the “severe restrictions imposed by Israel on the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza”, resulting in “catastrophic food insecurity”, as well as the “indiscriminate targeting and destruction of civilians and civilian infrastructure in both the West Bank and Gaza resulting in forced displacement”. The Committee was further concerned that the recent unprecedented increase in acts of violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers, all the more since “settlers are at times accompanied by members of the Israeli military when attacks are carried out”. Consequently, the Committee called on Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, in compliance with international law and relevant United Nations resolutions, such as Security Council resolution 2334 (2016) and the findings of the International Court of Justice”.