Photo of Bound Palestinian Detainee Sparks War Crime Allegations Against Israel

An Israeli soldier's photograph showing a Palestinian man from Gaza stripped to his underwear, blindfolded and bound face-down to an iron rod has renewed scrutiny of Israel's treatment of Palestinian detainees, with rights groups saying the image corroborates longstanding allegations of abuse and could itself constitute a war crime.

The image, shared on a now-deleted personal social media account with the Hebrew-language caption "good morning", was brought to wider public attention by a Palestinian writer and activist who goes by Tamer.

"Both abusive treatment of detainees and the public sharing of humiliating or degrading images of them can constitute war crimes," said Oneg Ben Dror from the prisoner and detainees department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI).

The photograph "confirms what thousands of testimonies from Palestinian detainees have exposed, and what we and other organisations have been reporting for nearly three years now," she added. "Israeli detention facilities are torture camps for Palestinians."

Israel's military confirmed the image was authentic.

"The incident does not align with IDF values and regulations," a military spokesperson said, adding that an inquiry was under way.

Sari Bashi, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, said the detainee's treatment also violated international law.

"There is no security justification for holding a detainee in his underwear," she said. "Forced nudity followed by capturing and sharing sexualised images on social media is a form of sexual violence and also a war crime."

Bashi said the photograph had deepened the anguish of Palestinian families searching for relatives detained by Israeli forces, after at least two mothers publicly identified the bound man as their son.

"This is not the first time Israeli soldiers have published humiliating photos of Palestinian detainees while depriving families of information or access to them. It has become a grotesque and unlawful way for families to get information about their loved ones."

One of the women, Rana Abu Nasser, said she believed the man in the photograph was her son Osama, who was detained along with his one-year-old son in March near the shifting "yellow line" marking the boundary of Israeli military control in Gaza.

"I know the details of his body," she told Reuters. "He has swelling in his foot and scars on his leg – the same swelling on his left leg I saw in the picture."

Another woman, Joudeh al-Ghoul, said she immediately recognised her son Amin, who has been missing since his arrest in November 2023 while trying to travel from southern Gaza to the north.

"It's him, his hair and chin. He is my son. A mother's heart can recognise her son. I hugged the mobile phone and started crying," she said. "He is my son, my soul, my life."

The Israeli military declined to say whether the detainee had been identified, whether he had received medical treatment or whether his family in Gaza had been informed.

For the first seven months of the war, Israel's military declined to provide basic information on the status of people detained in Gaza, effectively implementing a policy of forced disappearance.

Since May 2024, Israeli authorities have provided an email address for enquiries about Palestinians detained from Gaza, but rights group HaMoked said the measure offered only limited improvements. The group said Israeli authorities had denied holding hundreds of missing Palestinians whose detention had been confirmed through witness testimony.

(reporting by The Guardian)