The report by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, presented to Security Council members on May 28, 2026, was not just another conflict with the international organization for Israel. For the first time, Israeli security forces were included in the annual list of entities that, according to the UN, are involved in sexual violence in conflict zones.
Already on May 29, 2026, the details of the document became one of the notable topics in the Israeli news agenda. The reason is clear: in the same list with Hamas, ISIS, the armies of Sudan, Somalia, and Russia, the IDF, the Israel Prison Service — SHABAS, and the special border police unit YAMAM are now named.
For Israeli society, this is a painful and explosive issue. Israel has been seeking international recognition of Hamas’s sexual crimes on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent violence against hostages for almost three years. Now the UN is forming a picture in which accusations are already directed at Israeli structures.
What exactly does the UN report of May 28, 2026, claim
The report states that Israeli security forces are responsible for sexual crimes against Palestinian prisoners and detainees. The authors of the document separately claim that a ‘culture of impunity’ has taken root within the system, and the guilty are allegedly not held fully accountable.
According to UN data for 2025, the organization’s human rights structures verified 31 cases of sexual violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
These cases are unevenly distributed over time. According to the UN, 13 incidents relate to 2025. Another 18 cases were recorded in the period 2023–2024, that is, after the start of the war that began after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Among the victims named in the report are 14 men, 7 women, 9 boys, and 1 girl. It is also claimed that Palestinian journalists and human rights activists became victims.
What violations does the document describe
The UN describes not one type of violence, but a whole chain of actions: sexual threats, forced nudity, unjustified invasive searches, infliction of injuries, gang rapes, and rapes with foreign objects.
The document also mentions cases of shooting at genital organs.
For Israel, this is an especially heavy part of the report. Such formulations instantly go beyond internal investigation and become material for international political, legal, and media pressure.
Where, according to the UN, did the crimes occur
The list of places where, according to the UN, crimes could have occurred includes the Sde Teiman military base, the Etzion territorial brigade detention center, and the Gush Etzion police station.
The report also mentions SHABAS prisons: Megiddo, Ofer, Ramla, HaSharon, Shita, Nafha, and Damon.
It separately mentions checkpoints and security operations in the West Bank. This is an important detail: the accusations are not limited to closed prison facilities. The UN essentially claims that the problem could manifest in various points of the detention, inspection, and holding system for Palestinians.
Why did Sde Teiman become the central symbol of accusations
One of the main episodes in the report was the Sde Teiman camp. Even before the publication of the current document, heavy accusations of mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners after the start of the war arose around it.
The authors of the report refer to an investigation in which, they claim, there were video recordings, medical evidence, and data on severe rectal injuries. However, the prosecution, as stated in the material, did not include articles on sexual violence or rape in the indictment.
The key date here is March 2026.
It was then that the criminal prosecution of the military personnel for this episode was completely terminated. For the UN Independent Investigative Commission, this became one of the main arguments in favor of the thesis of a ‘culture of impunity’.
For Israel, the situation looks different. In Jerusalem, it is traditionally emphasized that the army and state structures operate in conditions of war against a terrorist organization, and legal decisions should be made based on evidence, not international pressure.
But this is where the main conflict of interpretations begins. The UN speaks of a systemic problem. Israel speaks of an attempt to create a false symmetry between the state army and terrorists.
How does the B’Tselem report from January 2026 fit into this picture
In January 2026, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem published an update to its large July 2024 study ‘Welcome to Hell’. This report was dedicated to the situation of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and military detention centers from October 2023 to early January 2026.
The main conclusion of the human rights activists was extremely harsh: they claimed that Israeli civilian and military penitentiary institutions were turned into a ‘network of torture camps’.
The report spoke of prisoner deaths, harsh interrogations, medical negligence, deprivation of water, poor nutrition, a scabies epidemic, tight plastic handcuffs, and cases of severe injuries that, according to human rights activists, sometimes led to amputations.
In the middle of this story, it is important to see not only the diplomatic scandal but also the internal Israeli context. NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency considers such topics precisely through this complex framework: Hamas’s crimes on October 7, 2023, cannot be erased, but accusations against Israeli state structures cannot be reduced to slogans and mutual accusations.
Israel’s reaction: a dispute not only about facts but also about the moral framework
Official Jerusalem reacted sharply. The Israeli Foreign Ministry stated that the actions of the UN Secretary-General are a ‘cynical attempt’ to create a false and artificial symmetry between the actions of a legitimate state army and the real, documented sexual atrocities of Hamas terrorists.
This is Israel’s central argument.
From the Israeli side’s point of view, including the IDF, SHABAS, and YAMAM in the same list with Hamas and ISIS destroys the moral boundary between a state fighting after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and a terrorist movement that on October 7, 2023, killed, raped, kidnapped, and mocked civilians.
The UN, in turn, builds the document on a different logic. It is not about comparing ideologies, goals, or the nature of the parties, but about the category of crimes — sexual violence in armed conflict conditions.
That is why the dispute around the report is so sharp. Israel sees it as a political attack and an attempt to equate the victim with the terrorist. The UN claims to record specific violations, regardless of who commits them.
January 2025: why Pramila Patten’s visit failed
The report also mentions another important date — January 2025. Then the repeat visit of the UN Secretary-General’s special representative Pramila Patten failed.
This is not an accidental figure in this story. Previously, Patten participated in preparing a key report where facts of sexual violence by Hamas on October 7, 2023, were recognized. She then planned to continue the investigation, including the treatment of Palestinian prisoners.
However, according to the data presented, Israeli authorities did not grant her access to Palestinian detention facilities.
For Israel, such a refusal could be part of a policy of distrust towards UN structures, which have long been accused of bias in Jerusalem. For the UN, this became an obstacle to the investigation and another argument in favor of the conclusion about the system’s closed nature.
What does freezing contacts with Guterres mean
After the first leaks on Israeli resources ynet and The Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem’s reaction followed quickly. Israel’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Danny Danon, along with the Foreign Ministry, announced a complete freeze of contacts with António Guterres.
The Israeli side made it clear that official contacts with the Secretary-General’s structures will be suspended until the end of his term and the appointment of a new UN head.
This is no longer just an informational scandal. It is a diplomatic rupture within already strained relations between Israel and the UN.
A separate layer of the problem is the data on the number of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. According to the information provided in the material, despite the release of 1,968 Palestinians as part of the October deal with Hamas, over 9,000 people remain in Israeli prisons. About 4,000 of them are held under administrative detention without charges.
These figures increase international interest in the topic of prisons and detention centers.
The more closed the system, the more suspicions arise among human rights structures. The harsher the UN reports sound, the sharper Israel responds, reminding of Hamas, October 7, hostages, and the long-standing bias of international organizations.
The final conclusion here is unpleasant for all parties. Israel finds itself in a situation where it simultaneously has to defend its army, argue with the UN, respond to accusations about prisons, and not allow the world to forget Hamas’s sexual crimes on October 7, 2023.
The report of May 28, 2026, is important for this reason. It became not just another document of an international organization, but part of a large war for the moral framework: who has the right to speak on behalf of the law, where the line between self-defense and abuse of power lies, and why even in a war against terrorists, the state system cannot afford to lose accountability.