Sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians driving displacement, warn UN experts

UN experts today, April 30, 2026, expressed grave concern that sexual violence has become a tool of Israeli occupation, committing genocide, perpetuating the system of oppression by intimidating the Palestinian population and driving their forcible transfer.

“Israeli sexual violence has become embedded in Palestinians’ daily lives under occupation,” the experts said. “It is intersecting, structural and systematic, and operates as a tool of control, subjugation and dispossession.”

Drawing on findings from multiple independent investigations, the experts highlighted that sexual violence is used across a wide range of contexts, including in detention, at checkpoints, during house raids and in interactions with both Israeli occupation forces and settlers.

The experts are dismayed at the inaction of the international community that permits total impunity. “Political convenience, strategic, military and economic interests are placed above Palestinian lives. Such indifference to justice not only fuels the next cycle of violence, but strikes the very basis of international law,” the experts said.

Israel Palestine Map/War Crimes by Israel

The experts recalled their assessment of February 2024 and the March 2025 report of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory that found that sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinian women, men, girls and boys are employed “to terrorise them and perpetuate a system of oppression.” These violations, which are escalating, are intended not only to harm individuals, but to crush the Palestinian population as a whole: such acts constitute both a driver and a consequence of forced displacement, as they contribute to the coercive environment that compels individuals and communities to flee, while also exposing them to heightened risks of further abuse.

Israeli forces have systematically destroyed sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities across Gaza, resulting in deaths and illnesses among women and girls from pregnancy- and childbirth-related complications, as well as “irreversible long-term effects on the mental health and reproductive and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a group,” noted the Commission.

“Sexualised violence is deployed as a method of domination — to instil fear, punish, and fracture communities by exploiting stigma and shame to isolate survivors and erode social cohesion. By making everyday life unsafe and unpredictable, it pressures Palestinians to leave their homes and land, directly enabling ethnic cleansing, forcible transfer and displacement. Such practices are integral to the settler occupation, functioning as mechanisms through which it is sustained and deepened,” the experts said.

In the West Bank, both children and adults are subjected to violations targeting their bodies and intimacy, including sexual harassment, invasive searches – including anal and vaginal searches – and threats of sexual assault, often in or near their homes. Palestinians are also subject to sexualised forms of torture and ill-treatment, including forced nudity, genital violence and threats directed towards them and their family members.

The experts highlighted a persistent climate of impunity extending across both State and illegal settlers. Despite repeated documentation of abuses by Israeli personnel, investigations remain rare and accountability absent. Sexual and gender-based violence by settlers, often carried out in the presence of Israeli forces, is likewise rarely prevented, investigated or prosecuted.

“This dual failure reinforces a system in which violence against Palestinians is tolerated, if not enabled,” they said. “Sexual and gender-based violence in this context may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity connected to the broader pattern of forcible transfer.”

The experts called on Israel to immediately end all practices of sexual and gender-based violence and hold all perpetrators accountable. They urged the international community to take concrete steps to prevent and respond to these violations, in line with their obligations under international law, as recalled by theInternational Court of Justice advisory opinion on the Occupied Palestinian Territory July 2024.

“Sexual violence cannot be treated as incidental harm,” the experts said. “It is a central component of the system of settler colonial oppression imposed on Palestinians.”

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Ray Hanania is an award-winning columnist, author & former Chicago City Hall reporter (1977-1992). A veteran who served during the Vietnam War and the recipient of four SPJ Peter Lisagor Awards for column writing, Hanania writes weekly opinion columns on mainstream American & Chicagoland topics for the Southwest News-Herald, Des Plaines Valley News, the Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers, and Suburban Chicagoland.

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