Israeli soldiers have been sexually assaulting Palestinian women for decades. Now they’re speaking out
Women’s Centre for Legal Aid & Counselling staff in the Jerusalem office.
Dania Akkad reports in Middle East Eye on 3 December 2024:
Palestinian women have been sexually assaulted by Israeli soldiers throughout the past 75 years, but researchers say they are only beginning to speak out about their experiences as incidents have mounted since the 7 October attacks.
The cases are so similar, despite happening in different locations and involving different branches of the Israeli military and police, that those documenting them suspect a directive has been handed down.
“You hear these women being sexually assaulted and strip-searched and beaten on their genitals in the West Bank, in Jerusalem and in Gaza, being treated by different bodies of the Israeli system but also being sexually assaulted in the same way,” Kefaya Khraim told Middle East Eye.
It wasn’t always the case that Khraim and her colleague, Amal Abusrour, who both work at the Ramallah-based Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling and spoke at length with MEE during a recent visit to London, would hear so many stories.
For decades, many Palestinian women have kept sexual violence they’ve experienced at the hands of Israeli soldiers to themselves, not even sharing it with their closest friends or family. This was partly out of shame or fear of being disgraced. Sometimes it was out of a lack of recognition that what had happened was sexual assault.
But also, Khraim said, it is because Palestinian women have “really low expectations from Israeli soldiers”.
Khraim said one woman whose home was invaded by Israeli soldiers who forced her to strip naked told her, “‘Oh, the female soldier was so nice to me. She let me undress with the door closed’.” “So this is the kind of expectation. They expect so much humiliation and so much violence so when it’s something like this, they don’t talk about it.”
But the sheer number of women who have experienced sexual violence since the 7 October attacks has created a tipping point.
In a report released in June, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory offered details of the types of assaults it found had been committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian women since the Hamas-led attacks, including forced public nudity and stripping, sexualised torture and abuse, and sexual humiliation and harassment.