Today, Tuesday, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, "B'Tselem", issued a report revealing the repeated cases of severe abuse practiced by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians in the center of the city of Hebron, in the southern occupied West Bank.

The report, titled “Unbridled: Soldiers’ Abuse of Palestinian Residents in Downtown Hebron,” is based on more than 20 testimonies given to the center by Palestinians about the attacks they were subjected to between May and August 2024.

The center said: “The victims spoke of how they were stopped by soldiers completely randomly while they were walking in the streets of Hebron, going about their daily lives; how they were beaten and subjected to a series of severe abuses, sometimes in the street, and sometimes at military checkpoints to which the soldiers took them.”

In this regard, the center's general director, Yuli Novak, said: "People leave their homes and go about their daily lives, and they are met by soldiers who arrest them and beat them until they faint," according to the report.

She added: "The testimonies recorded by B'Tselem field researchers reveal a terrifying situation, in terms of the standards of conduct of Israeli soldiers, and their use of extreme violence."

Novak continued: "After more than a year of the fierce war waged by Israel against the Palestinian people, the abuse of Palestinian passersby has become a desirable and even required behavior."

She added: "What is happening is not individual cases observed here or there, nor is there a deviation from instructions, but rather a phenomenon that expresses a systematic approach, and is the result of the process of dehumanizing the Palestinians led by the Israeli government."

B'Tselem pointed out that the testimonies "include descriptions of the violence, humiliation and abuse inflicted by the soldiers against men, women, youths and children."

The center quoted one of the victims as saying, “A series of severe physical and psychological abuses included beating, flogging, putting out cigarettes on the victims’ bodies, beating the genitals, injecting unknown substances, tying up limbs and blindfolding for long hours, threatening and insulting, and more.”

He added: "The soldiers choose their victims completely randomly while they are going about their daily lives, on their way to work or on their way back home, while drinking coffee in the yard, or on their way to the grocery store."

The center continued: "In most cases, the soldiers took their victims to military points, where they carried out the greatest amount of abuse against them," noting that "the victims were not suspected of committing any violation and were not tried, but were released immediately after the assault on them ended."

He explained that "many of the victims were in a condition that required medical treatment after being attacked by soldiers."

The center added: "Of all the victims of torture, only two were arrested, and even these two were released within a few days without any measures being taken against them."

"The escalation of violence to an extreme degree in its severity and scope is a direct result of the acceleration of the dehumanization of Palestinians among Israelis, including the view of Palestinians as a single, undifferentiated mass, all of whose members are enemies who are not only permissible to harm, but are desired and required," B'Tselem said.

The human rights center said: “The extent of the violence revealed by witness testimonies, which the soldiers practiced openly and sometimes documented with sound and image, indicates that the matter does not only reflect an individual desire for revenge, which is burning in the heart of this or that soldier, and not only a local failure.”

He continued, "This is a particularly violent product of a long-standing, systematic policy of repression, displacement and plunder that forms the core of the Israeli apartheid regime."