Sexual violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank has increased in frequency and intensity, and changed in nature, a new report has found.
Though settler attacks are not a new phenomenon in the occupied Palestinian territory, the perpetrators have become more emboldened and crossed lines that were once thought to be off limits.
A report by the West Bank Protection Consortium highlighted at least 16 cases of “conflict-related sexual violence attributed to Israeli settlers and soldiers” since October 2023, the month a deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel triggered a devastating Israeli military assault on Gaza.
The consortium's director, Allegra Pacheco, said this was not an “emerging pattern” but one that had already been established in recent years. However, the nature of the attacks has changed since October 2023, she told The National.
“Beforehand, Israeli settlers for the most part were engaging in revenge attacks on the outskirts of communities and community land,” Ms Pacheco said. “Since the war, they're emboldened and attacking communities in homes, domestic spaces and communities, and carrying out many forms of violence, but, in parallel, they're using sexualised violence as well.”
The report describes instances of sexual humiliation, threats of rape and urination on the victims. In one case, two 15-year-old cattle herders were attacked, beaten, blindfolded and stripped – a modus operandi observed in Gaza. In another case, a Palestinian man was sexually assaulted in front of his family. Women and girls have also been beaten and threatened with death.
Milena Ansari of Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) has been speaking to Palestinian victims of sexual assault by Israeli settlers for years.
She said what was once off limits has now become the norm. “Settlers now enter the tents and homes of Palestinians where they know women are not wearing their headscarves,” said Ms Ansari, who previously worked with Human Rights Watch.
Palestinians have been subjected to settler attacks for years. But the recent intensifying nature of the assaults has led to displacement.
The report says “sexualised intimidation, forced nudity, domestic-space incursions, humiliating searches, and threats against women and children by Israeli forces and settlers [are] indicators of a coercive environment that contributes to, or results in, forcible transfer”.
Mohammad Hassan Matar, better known as Abu Hassan, works with the Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission. He was in Wadi Al Siq, near Ramallah, to visit families who were being harassed by Israeli settlers when he was attacked.
The weapon-wielding settlers blindfolded, bound and stripped him and two other men down to their underwear in a sheep pen, where they then threatened, mocked and beat them. The humiliation and abuse continued for 12 hours.
Abu Hassan has been unusually outspoken about his experience, with his case reaching the UN, where he gave evidence last year. Besides describing bruising to his thighs, buttocks and torso from the beatings, which left him in pain for days, he gave a harrowing account of an attempt to rape him with a stick.
Being a big man, he was not easy to subdue.
“He started jumping on my back, trying to stick it into my buttocks. He started pressing and I began to resist with all the strength God gave me. Then I turned my back to the side and knocked him off,” Abu Hassan told The National.
His attacker “became hysterical”, he said. “He started hitting my buttocks with the stick for more than 15 minutes. Then he came back and jumped on my back again and tried hitting me with the stick again. I immediately turned him off my back again, and he came back even more hysterically, hitting me until he broke the stick. Then he brought another one and climbed on my back a third time. He came back and tried to stick the stick into my buttocks again. I threw him off my back and collapsed, screaming and crying.”
Abu Hassan said he screamed at his attackers to shoot him in the head and put him out of his misery.
Today, he says he has “dealt with” the wounds from that attack – both physical and emotional – but still suffers from back pain.
His story aligns with those of many other Palestinians attacked by settlers, including threats to kill him.
“You will die here, and we will kill the others if they don't escape to Jordan. We will force your wife into prostitution to feed your children,” he quoted one of the men as saying.
Eventually, he was freed and taken to hospital where he remained for three days. Pictures and medical reports seen by The National corroborate much of Abu Hassan's story.
His ordeal took place just days after the attacks of October 7, 2023. Such attacks have occurred many times since and show no signs of slowing down.
The main driver of this trend is impunity, experts say. Israeli security forces present during attacks have been widely documented in video and witness accounts as either failing to intervene or actively protecting the perpetrators.
A study last year by Israeli rights group Yesh Din found 93.6 per cent of investigations into “ideologically motivated offences by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank”, or settler violence, ended without an indictment.
A similar pattern was seen in allegations of sexual violence against Palestinians in Israeli military detention. In 2024, when five Israeli soldiers were accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman Prison, there was debate in Israel about whether the men deserved to be prosecuted. On Israel's Channel 12, discussions centred around whether the victim deserved to be raped. Protesters chanted in solidarity with the suspects.
Eventually, the Israeli military's top lawyer dropped the charges against the suspects and its chief legal officer resigned for having approved the leak of footage showing the alleged abuse.
“There is a culture of accepting sexualised assault against Palestinians, and the fear is that it's only going to increase more and more. If we don't speak about these 16 cases, it'll be 1,600 – and then it will be out of our hands,” Ms Ansari said.
