Human Rights in Palestine

“Human rights in Palestine” covers a range of issues affecting Palestinians and others in territories governed or controlled by different actors. The sources in this article distinguish the Palestinian Authority in parts of the West Bank, Hamas as the de facto authority in Gaza, Israeli authorities and security forces, and Palestinian terrorist organizations; allegations about one actor should not be generalized to an entire population. The subject includes both rights violations attributed to governing authorities and terrorist organizations and the effects of conflict, security measures, and humanitarian conditions.[1]

The U.S. Department of State’s 2023 report covers the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and separately describes Israel within the 1949 Armistice Agreement lines and the Golan Heights. It calls East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza territories occupied in 1967, and notes that Israel later extended its domestic law, jurisdiction, and administration to East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The report explicitly says its terminology does not take a position on final-status questions, including the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the borders of a future Palestinian state.[1]

Authority is divided within the West Bank. The State Department reported that the PA had administrative and security responsibility in Area A, administrative responsibility and shared security responsibility in Area B, while Israel retained administrative and security control in Area C. It described Hamas as exercising de facto control in Gaza and Israel as extending its law and authority to East Jerusalem.[1]

The reporting gathered here spans different periods and mandates. It includes a 1998 Washington Institute status report and reporting on 2011 conditions,[2][3] a UN Special Rapporteur’s 2015 report on the 2014 Gaza hostilities,[4] and State Department country reports for 2023 and 2024.[1][5] Their figures are tied to their stated periods and sources, not directly comparable as a single time series or a description of present conditions. The UN report says it was not exhaustive, and the State Department reports are not a comprehensive survey of every human-rights question affecting Palestinians.[4][1]

Human-rights reporting on Palestinians has addressed conduct by Israeli authorities, the PA, Hamas, and terrorist organizations, as well as the effects of conflict and restrictions on daily life. An older Washington Institute status report from 1998, drawing on the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, described the PA as having full jurisdiction over 58 percent of Gaza and 3 percent of the West Bank at that time. It recorded concerns about restrictions on expression by both the PA and Israel, arrests without due legal procedure, state security courts, lack of judicial independence, limits on assembly, and corruption. Those jurisdiction figures and observations describe the historical setting of that report, not present-day conditions.[2]

A 2011 Amnesty International country chapter, as summarized by Ynet, described the Gaza blockade imposed from 2007 as contributing to a continuing humanitarian crisis. The account said that more than 70 percent of Gaza’s 1.6 million residents depended on humanitarian aid and that restrictions on imports and exports harmed the economy and access to goods. Amnesty characterized the blockade as collective punishment and said children and sick people were particularly affected; these are the organization’s assessments as relayed in the summary.[3]

The same 2011 summary said Amnesty described more than 500 Israeli checkpoints and military roadblocks in the West Bank as disrupting access to work, schools, and hospitals. It reported that approximately 200,000 Palestinians in 70 villages had to use detours two to five times longer than direct routes to nearby towns. The account also relayed Amnesty’s claims that Israeli authorities demolished more than 620 Palestinian structures in the West Bank that year, leaving nearly 1,100 people displaced; demolition of animal shelters and water cisterns affected more than 4,200 others. Amnesty’s chapter further reported that Israeli forces killed 55 Palestinian civilians in the territories in 2011, including 11 children, and that at least 307 Palestinians were held under renewable administrative detention orders without charge or trial.[3]

The 2014 Gaza hostilities became the subject of a 2015 report by UN Special Rapporteur Makarim Wibisono. The report focused on human-rights concerns and the conflict’s effects, particularly on children, and addressed rights to housing, health, water, education, work, and life. It said it was based primarily on interviews and briefings with victims, civil-society representatives, human-rights defenders, and Palestinian officials, including meetings in Amman and Cairo after the Special Rapporteur said Israel had not provided full and free access to the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The report cautioned that it was not an exhaustive account.[4]

Citing OHCHR information, the Special Rapporteur’s report recorded 2,256 Palestinian fatalities during the July 7–August 26, 2014 hostilities, including 1,563 civilians and 538 children; it also reported that 66 Israeli soldiers and five Israeli civilians were killed. The report stated that an average of 10 children died each day over 50 days of hostilities. These are figures and characterizations from that report about that conflict, not current totals.[4]

The 2015 report described postwar conditions in Gaza as shaped by the combined effects of the blockade, restricted access, conflict damage, and limits on imports and exports. Citing UNRWA, it said 80 percent of Gaza’s population was chronically dependent on aid and that restrictions impeded meaningful economic development. Three months after the ceasefire, damage to water and sanitation facilities reportedly left 20–30 percent of households—about 450,000 people—without municipal water.[4]

The report also discussed Palestinian children detained under Israeli military law. It cited a Palestinian NGO’s information that around 8,000 Palestinian children under 18 had reportedly been detained and prosecuted in Israeli military courts since 2000, and that 201 children were held in Israeli prisons as of October 2014. It summarized 105 sworn testimonies collected by an NGO from children detained between November 2012 and July 2014: 99 children said their hands had been tied, 85 said they had been blindfolded, and 63 reported physical abuse. These are testimony-based findings presented by the report, not a claim about every child’s experience.[4]

In 2018, Human Rights Watch published an investigation into arbitrary detention and alleged torture of critics by the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. A Times of Israel account said the 149-page investigation relied on interviews with 147 witnesses and described arrests of suspected dissidents and political opponents. It discussed shabeh, a practice in which detainees are held in painful positions for extended periods, potentially causing distress and trauma while leaving little or no visible trace. The account reported that both Hamas and the PA denied the accusations.[6]

An account of the investigation described techniques including forcing detainees into squats, stretching their arms above or behind them, and making them stand or sit for hours in child-sized chairs. Human Rights Watch said Palestinian forces in both territories also used threats, taunts, solitary confinement, and beatings to elicit confessions or punish or intimidate activists; the report cited more than 20 cases of activists arrested over critical articles, social-media posts, or affiliations. The account included journalist Taghreed Abu Teer’s testimony that Hamas authorities held and interrogated her for 11 days over her activities with Fatah. She said she spent days in a dark cell, was forced to stand for long periods, and was advised to “be quiet” and focus on her family, which she described as a veiled threat.[6]

A separate article summarizing the investigation reported Human Rights Watch’s conclusion that “torture is governmental policy for both the PA and Hamas.” That phrase is the organization’s characterization, not an independently established finding in the source set.[7]

The State Department’s 2023 and 2024 reporting identifies separate sets of concerns involving the PA, Hamas, Israeli security forces, Palestinian terrorist organizations, and civilians. Its 2023 executive summary lists allegations including unlawful killings, arbitrary detention, mistreatment in detention, restrictions on expression and assembly, and violence against civilians; it also notes concerns about accountability. The 2024 report likewise identifies reported killings, detention, mistreatment, and restrictions on expression and media freedom involving the PA, Hamas, and Israeli security forces.[8][5]

The reports describe limits on accountability in areas under Palestinian governance. In 2023, the State Department said the PA had taken some steps to address alleged abuses but that human-rights groups criticized its response. For Gaza, it said there were no legal or independent institutions capable of holding Hamas accountable for acts of terror. The 2024 report again said the PA took some steps to identify and punish officials accused of abuses, while human-rights groups criticized the sufficiency of those steps; it also described Hamas and associated organizations, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as continuing to act with impunity.[8][5]

A 1998 status report recorded concerns about the PA’s security courts, due process, judicial independence, expression, assembly, and corruption. As an illustration of popular dissatisfaction at that time, it said that of at least 5,000 registered voters asked to renew registration for a special Palestinian Legislative Council election, only 65 appeared. The figure was presented as an example in that historical report and should not be read as a measure of current political participation.[2]

Later reporting continued to raise concerns about arbitrary detention and treatment of critics by Palestinian authorities. A 2022 Ynet account described allegations in a UN Watch submission to the UN Committee against Torture that PA and Hamas security forces systematically tortured or mistreated detainees, including human-rights activists, political opponents, women, LGBTQ people, and people accused of collaboration with Israel. It reported that the submission cited the 2021 death in PA custody of critic Nizar Banat, after which Palestinian police arrested and beat protesters, journalists, civil-society activists, and lawyers. These claims are attributed to the advocacy organization’s submission, rather than independently established by the article.[9]

The same account said UN Watch cited Hamas security forces’ beating of protesters in March 2019 and the arrest of more than 1,000 people, including journalists and human-rights activists, with many detainees allegedly tortured. It also described the arrest by PA security forces of dozens of activists and students in May 2021 who were considered critical of the Authority, and the submission’s claim that some were tortured in a prison in Jericho.[9]

The Hamas-led terrorist attack of October 7, 2023, carried out by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian terrorist organizations, and the ensuing Gaza war sharply altered the circumstances covered by the 2023 State Department report. It said the attack killed an estimated 1,200 people, injured more than 5,400, and resulted in 253 hostages being abducted. The report also recorded allegations of sexual assault, rape, and other sexual violence during the attack and in captivity, and described the hostages as held in Gaza.[8]

By the end of 2023, the State Department reported, Israel’s military operation in Gaza had killed more than 21,000 Palestinians and injured more than 56,000, citing United Nations figures that relied on information from Gaza’s Hamas-led Ministry of Health. It said the operation had displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s population, caused a severe humanitarian crisis, and left an estimated 50–70 percent of buildings destroyed or damaged. These figures and descriptions are the report’s account for that period, not current totals.[8]

For 2024, the State Department reported that the United Nations calculated that 90 percent of Gaza’s population had at some point been displaced under an Israeli military evacuation order by year’s end. Its report described conflict-related abuses by multiple parties and said Israeli aerial bombardment and shelling continued. It recounted reporting that a July 13 strike on al-Mawasi killed at least 90 people and injured 300; the IDF said Hamas leaders and other terrorists were killed in what it described as a targeted operation. The report also said Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operated among civilian populations and used civilian areas to stage attacks, store weapons, and hold hostages, and that Hamas carried out indiscriminate rocket attacks at Tel Aviv and nearby cities.[5]

The State Department’s 2024 report said many hostages abducted on October 7, 2023, remained unaccounted for at the end of 2024. It also recorded returned hostages’ testimony describing sexual abuse, deprivation of food, water, and medical treatment, and other physical and psychological abuse. These are testimony-based accounts reported by the State Department.[10]

The report documented harm and allegations across the West Bank as well. Citing the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), it said that in 2023, 509 Palestinians, including at least 121 children, were killed by Israeli security forces and settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It described 2023 as the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since OCHA began recording casualties in 2005. It also said settler attacks against Palestinians and their property reached their highest daily average since UN recording began and that violence and harassment had displaced 1,442 Palestinians in the West Bank by December 15. The same report separately documented Palestinian violence against Israelis.[8]

The State Department’s broader report on the period before October 7, 2023, cited OCHA figures for January 1 through October 6: 237 Palestinians were killed by Israelis—199 in the West Bank, 34 in Gaza, and four inside the Green Line. It said the killings were almost exclusively by the Israel Defense Forces during counterterrorism operations and reported that Israeli security forces and settlers injured 9,378 Palestinians. For that same period, it recorded 30 Israelis killed and 213 injured in attacks by Palestinian terrorist organizations. These numbers cover a specific period and use the report’s stated categories.[1]

For 2024, the State Department said incidents of Israeli violence against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank reached their highest daily average since UN recording began in 2005. It recounted an August 15 attack on Jit near Nablus: press reports and Palestinian officials cited by the report said attackers killed 23-year-old Rasheed Seda, critically wounded another Palestinian civilian, and set fire to homes, cars, and other property. Israeli officials condemned the attack, apprehended four people, and had an investigation pending at year’s end.[5]

The same report recorded Palestinian violence against Israelis, including the killing of 14-year-old Israeli shepherd Benjamin Achimeir in April, which Israeli authorities called a terrorist attack. It also described the killing of Turkish American activist Ayşenur Eygi during a demonstration in Beita on September 6. The IDF said it was “highly likely” she had been hit indirectly and unintentionally by fire not aimed at her; its investigation remained ongoing at year’s end.[5]

A 2025 Washington Institute analysis reported that 977 Palestinians had been killed by the IDF or Jewish settlers in the West Bank as of late May 2025, while 66 Israelis had been killed in terrorist attacks. It said extremist settlers carried out 440 attacks between January and June 2025, compared with 317 in the same period in 2024. The article did not provide a methodology for the death or attack totals, so they should be understood as figures reported by that analysis rather than as independently verified totals in this bundle.[11]

The analysis attributed to B’Tselem reports that settlement activity and settler violence had displaced dozens of Palestinian farming and herding communities in Area C since October 2023. It characterized the displacement as a cumulative effect of settlement expansion and settler actions.[11]

Movement restrictions and access are persistent subjects in the reporting. The 2023 State Department report said Israeli authorities imposed significant restrictions on Palestinian movement in East Jerusalem and between Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, citing security concerns and attempted attacks. It described the West Bank barrier as impeding access to extended family, places of worship, work, farmland, schools, hospitals, commerce, journalism, and humanitarian activity. In Jerusalem, checkpoint delays could last hours and affect access to six Palestinian hospitals offering specialized care. The Israeli government said restrictions were used when necessary for security, public safety, or public order and when no viable alternative existed.[1]

Property demolitions and displacement appear in both West Bank and East Jerusalem reporting. The State Department said Israeli authorities confiscated land and demolished Palestinian structures in the West Bank, including for lack of Israeli-issued permits. OCHA figures cited in the report said that by December 30, 2023, Israeli authorities had demolished 1,171 Palestinian structures in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, displacing 2,261 residents; 891 structures were reported demolished for lack of building permits. The report cited Peace Now figures on new outposts and settlement housing units and described Palestinian and international organizations’ concerns that demolitions, evictions, and permit obstacles contributed to displacement and a coercive environment.[8]

For East Jerusalem, the report cited the municipality’s count of 140 Palestinian homes demolished in 2023, 60 percent more than in 2022, along with 84 other Palestinian-owned structures demolished. It separately cited OCHA reporting that 229 Palestinian-owned structures were demolished, confiscated, sealed, or subject to eviction, displacing 633 Palestinians and directly affecting 5,952 people. These are figures with different institutional attributions and categories, rather than interchangeable counts.[1]

Legal and political descriptions of demolition policy differ. Human-rights organizations and the UN described some punitive demolitions as collective punishment and as violating the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israel’s Supreme Court, by contrast, had ruled in several cases that punitive demolitions were deterrent measures and lawful. Israeli authorities cited security and planning rules in explaining demolitions; the report records these differing accounts and legal characterizations.[1]

The 2024 report also covered economic and social conditions in areas under PA jurisdiction. It said the minimum wage in the West Bank and Gaza was below the official estimate of the poverty income level and that wage-and-hour violations were common in service industries such as cleaning and maintenance. Palestinian NGOs said occupational-safety standards were insufficient in major industries.[10]

The report cited Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics data from 2020 indicating that 4.3 percent of girls under 18 in the West Bank and 19.3 percent in Gaza were married. It also described different legal minimum marriage ages and exceptions in the two areas. The statistics refer to 2020, rather than a current measurement.[10]

The State Department’s reports describe different legal processes for Palestinians and Israeli citizens arrested by the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank. Palestinians were tried in Israeli military courts, while Israeli citizens arrested there were subject to Israeli law and civilian courts in Israel. The 2023 report said military law permitted indefinite administrative detention without charge or trial in security-related cases, subject to review procedures. The 2024 report described administrative detention orders as allowing detention of Palestinians suspected of unlawful activities for up to six months without charge or trial, with extensions possible.[8][5]

The 2023 report gives two different year-end counts of Palestinians held in administrative detention. One passage cites Israel Prison Service data of 3,242, including 41 people from East Jerusalem. Another says the Prison Service told HaMoked it held 3,291 Palestinians under indefinite administrative detention, excluding detainees from Gaza. The report does not reconcile the figures, which have distinct attributions and coverage.[1]

The report also cited Military Court Watch’s report of a 96 percent conviction rate in Israeli military courts. It recorded NGO criticism of the military-court arrangement and of moving Palestinian prisoners to facilities inside Israel, which the organizations said raised concerns under the Fourth Geneva Convention and made family visits more difficult. Those concerns are reported as criticism by NGOs, not as a legal determination made by the State Department.[1]

Administrative detention and access to counsel also featured in reporting on detention after October 7. The 2023 report said Israel arrested hundreds of Palestinians it suspected were Hamas terrorists or otherwise supported terrorists under the Unlawful Combatants Law. Emergency amendments extended the maximum detention period from 96 hours to 30 days and the time before a detainee had to appear before a judge from 14 to 45 days. Rights groups raised concerns that hundreds, possibly thousands, of detainees from Gaza had no Hamas affiliation and that some were held incommunicado; the number still held without charge at year’s end was unknown.[1]

The 2024 report said hundreds of people were arrested under the Unlawful Combatants Law during military operations in Gaza beginning in October 2023. Amendments extended the authorities’ ability to hold detainees without charge or trial and, in the report’s account, without access to counsel. It also said many Palestinian detainees taken into Israeli custody during raids in Gaza were transferred to Israeli detention facilities.[5][10]

Rights organizations and detainee advocates reported allegations of physical and sexual violence, threats, inadequate food and water, exposure to extreme temperatures, and prolonged isolation affecting Palestinian detainees held by Israel after October 7. The 2023 report described accounts of beatings, stress positions, sleep deprivation, sexual harassment, and threats against detainees’ families. Organizations raised concerns about systemic torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; the report presented these as allegations based on NGO accounts, detainee testimony, and local press, rather than findings established in every individual case.[1]

The report said organizations highlighted 19 reports of severe abuse after October 7, including six deaths of Palestinians in Israeli custody, and raised concerns that abuse or medical neglect may have contributed to some deaths. Israeli authorities did not permit International Committee of the Red Cross prison visits after October 7. Separately, in 2024 the PA and NGOs reported that at least 43 Palestinians died in Israeli custody during that year; the State Department also noted reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings, enforced disappearance, degrading treatment by government officials, and arbitrary arrest or detention.[1][5]

A UN mission report concerning a January–February 2024 visit to Israel and the West Bank said Palestinian counterparts raised concerns about cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in detention, including invasive body searches, threats of rape, and prolonged forced nudity. The report said the mission met PA officials, civil-society representatives, and four recently released detainees. It expressly said the West Bank visit was to hear Palestinian counterparts’ views and concerns, not to gather and verify information, and that the mission did not visit Gaza.[12]

Detention by Palestinian authorities is also covered in the sources. The 2023 State Department report said the PA and Hamas detained people over social-media posts, while Hamas restricted journalists through arrests and harassment. The 2024 report said Hamas reportedly detained people in Gaza without access to legal counsel, judicial review, or bail. The 2018 Human Rights Watch investigation and the 2022 account of UN Watch’s submission describe allegations of arbitrary detention and mistreatment by both the PA and Hamas, including of journalists, critics, activists, and political opponents; both the PA and Hamas denied the 2018 accusations.[8][6]

Restrictions on expression, journalism, and assembly are reported across Palestinian-administered areas and areas where Israel exercises authority. In 2023, the State Department said the PA and Hamas detained people over social-media posts. Journalists in Gaza faced arrests, harassment, and restrictions under Hamas, and the report also described Israeli civil and military law as affecting Palestinian journalists. It said PA law required permission for gatherings of 50 or more people, while an Israeli military order required a permit for Palestinian political gatherings of 10 or more in the West Bank; it reported no known instances of Israeli authorities granting such permits during the year.[8]

In 2024, the State Department described the PA as enforcing legislation that restricted press freedom, monitoring social media, and arresting or detaining people over posts. Activists reported arrests of political opponents, government critics, and peaceful protesters. In Gaza, Hamas reportedly suppressed independent reporting through arrests, harassment, assaults, restrictions on press access, and pressure on reporters to remove footage, leading some journalists and activists to self-censor.[10]

The same report documented measures affecting Palestinian media under Israeli authority, including closures of radio stations and the September 2024 closure of al-Jazeera’s Ramallah office. Israeli authorities cited the outlet’s alleged pro-Hamas slant and Qatari support for Hamas. The report also described restrictions affecting media freedom as a concern involving the PA, Hamas, and Israeli security forces, while distinguishing the reported actions of each.[10]

A separate account of the State Department’s Israel report said the Union of Journalists in Israel received reports of five journalist detentions and 13 physical attacks by security forces against journalists during 2024. NGOs and journalists also reported restrictions on coverage and expression, especially concerning criticism of the war or expressions of sympathy for Palestinians in Gaza. These observations concern media conditions in Israel and are distinct from the report’s findings about Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza.[13]

Human-rights reporting about the region includes disputed legal characterizations and differing accounts of responsibility. The State Department’s 2023 report explicitly reserves final-status questions, including Jerusalem’s boundaries and the borders of any future Palestinian state. Its reports and the other sources also differ in mandate, period, terminology, and underlying data; casualty figures and detention totals should therefore be read with their stated attribution and scope.[1]

Settlement policy has been the subject of international inquiries and Israeli objections. In 2012, the UN Human Rights Council voted 36–1, with 10 abstentions, to establish an inquiry into how Israeli settlement policies in the West Bank might infringe on Palestinian rights; the United States was the only state voting against the resolution. Its representative objected to what the United States called a one-sided mechanism and said final-status questions should be resolved through negotiations, while also stating that the United States did not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Council hypocritical, and an Israeli official said Israel would not cooperate.[14]

A 2013 account said a UN Human Rights Council commission concluded that Israeli settlement policy violated Palestinian rights and conflicted with a Geneva Convention. The commission characterized settlements as serving Israeli Jews and creating a system of separation. Israel had refused to cooperate with the inquiry and rejected its report as biased and harmful to efforts to resolve the conflict.[15]

Human Rights Watch’s 2021 report accused Israeli authorities of the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel. As summarized by Maariv, it cited movement restrictions, land confiscation for settlements, administrative detention, settlement construction, unilateral annexation, and settler attacks, and argued that Israeli authorities systematically privileged Jewish Israelis in many areas of life. Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected the allegations as false and said Human Rights Watch had an anti-Israel agenda and sought to promote boycotts. The apartheid and persecution labels are Human Rights Watch’s legal assessment, not an uncontested finding in the sources here.[16]

The source set also includes a report of a UN Human Rights Council commission’s October 2026 findings accusing Israel of ongoing genocidal acts in Gaza and crimes against humanity and war crimes in the West Bank. Israel rejected the findings, called for the commission’s dissolution, and characterized its work as a campaign to demonize Israel. The Times of Israel account noted that the commission does not speak for the UN itself and that the Associated Press could not independently corroborate multiple graphic accounts of sexual assault included in its report. The same account said the commission faulted the PA for targeting dissent and reported that journalists and human-rights defenders had been killed or injured.[17]

Some claims in the sources are allegations, witness accounts, or advocacy organizations’ legal conclusions rather than findings independently established in this bundle. For example, the 2018 allegations against the PA and Hamas were denied by both authorities, and the 2022 torture claims were reported from a UN Watch submission. The State Department’s own reports likewise often attribute accounts to NGOs, media, officials, or witnesses, and note when investigations were pending. Those distinctions are particularly important where the sources give competing accounts or report unresolved investigations.[6][9]