In a statement, the UN representative said Palestinian men and women are reportedly being subject to “widespread sexual slurs and threats of rape and gang rape, repeated and humiliating strip searches and prolonged forced nudity, beatings and electrocution of genitals and anus, insertion of objects into detainees’ anuses, inappropriate touching of women by both male and female soldiers, and photographing or filming of naked or partially undressed detainees in humiliating positions”.

Special Representative Patten recalled the reported recent case of the Palestinian male detainee who was hospitalised in July with severe injuries including to his rectum, due to sexual violence allegedly perpetrated in the Sde Teiman military base.

“I am particularly concerned about recent attempts by some Israeli political actors, to interfere with ongoing justice processes and/or to justify the use of these methods. Sexual violence and sexualized torture in detention settings must never be normalised,” she added.

Israel keeps Palestinian inmates under deplorable conditions without proper hygienic standards, subjecting them to systematic torture, harassment, and repression.

Human rights organizations say Israel continues to violate all rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention and international laws.

According to the Palestine Detainees Studies Center, around 60 percent of the Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails suffer from chronic diseases, a number of whom died in detention or after being released due to the severity of their cases.

Palestinian detainees have continuously resorted to open-ended hunger strikes in an attempt to express outrage at their illegal detention.

Human rights experts say despite the Israeli regime’s denial of “systematic abuse” of defenseless Palestinian inmates, the sheer number of consistent accounts from former detainees, coupled with the testimony of Israeli personnel at the site, proves a disturbing pattern of mistreatment and torture at the Sde Teiman.

In total since October, dozens of Palestinian detainees had died either at the Sde Teiman prison site or after being transferred to nearby hospitals, the report revealed.

Israel’s ongoing war on the Gaza Strip has killed almost 41,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured nearly 95,000 others, according to local health authorities.

An ongoing blockade of the enclave has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine, leaving much of the region in ruins.

Israel faces accusations of genocide for its actions in Gaza at the International Court of Justice.

The report by Defence for Children International (DCIP), Targeting childhood: Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank, is based on eyewitness testimonies, medical reports and CCTV footage. It documents the killing of 141 Palestinian children between 7 October 2023 and 31 July 2024.

Researchers found that on average, Israeli forces have killed a child every two days during this period.

According to the report, most of the victims were shot in the head or torso with live ammunition. It added that 18 children were shot in the back, indicating that they were not facing their assailants.

In many cases, the children were targeted by snipers, who are regularly deployed during military incursions into Palestinian communities across the West Bank.

Researchers said that while some of the children were killed during clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian communities, snipers “routinely” target Palestinian children while they are “going about their daily lives”.

In one case, a four-year-old named Ruqaya Jahalin was shot in the torso while she was in a van with her mother at a checkpoint near Beit Iksa in the central West Bank.

In another, Mahmoud Amjad Ismail Hamadneh, 15, was shot in the head, torso and limbs by an Israeli sniper while riding his bike home from school in Jenin.

In all cases documented in the report, the DCIP emphasised that the children posed “no imminent threat” and that there was no evidence that Israeli forces issued warnings prior to firing.

It added that, under the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force, Firearms by Law Enforcement, live ammunition should only be used as a last resort.

“Israeli forces have made clear their contempt for Palestinian children’s lives in their deliberate and systematic disregard for international law and even their own policies permitting the use of live ammunition in circumstances not justified under international law,” the report noted.

According to DCIP, in addition to deliberately targeting children, in 60 percent of the cases, Israeli forces “systematically” blocked paramedics and ambulances from reaching the wounded children.

The NGO has documented more than 700 deaths of Palestinian children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 2000. It said that, of that figure, 20 percent were killed since 7 October.

“This notable increase, in part, can be attributed to Israeli authorities’ unwillingness to hold individual soldiers accountable for unlawful conduct and war crimes,” the report read.

It added that while no Israeli soldiers have been held accountable for these deaths, their deliberate targeting of children is a breach of international law and means they could be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the war crime of wilful killing.