Israel’s rape laws broadly meet international standards. For Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, a fragmented legal system puts justice out of reach.

Allegations of sexual violence in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) keep making international headlines: a UN mission’s finding of reasonable grounds to believe rape occurred during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks; Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times column detailing accounts of sexual abuse, including alleged gang rape, of Palestinian detainees; a Gaza flotilla activist’s rape allegation; and the UN’s decision to add Israeli forces to its blacklist for sexual violence in conflict after a string of human rights reports documented patterns of rape against Palestinians in Israeli prisons and the West Bank.

But individual headlines can obscure bigger questions: Why is nothing apparently being done to respond to all these allegations of sexual violence? What happens when a survivor seeks justice? And what legal and institutional structures determine whether that justice is available to them?

Headlines that do not connect human rights violations with the legal structures that make them possible should be further interrogated. Equality Now’s January 2026 report, Sexual violence and legal accountability in Israel and the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, examines both the Israeli domestic legal system, which Israel also applies in East Jerusalem, and the military legal regime that governs Palestinians in areas of the occupied West Bank under Israel’s near-exclusive control. It traces documented sexual violence, and the overarching threat of sexual violence, against Palestinian women, girls, men, and boys and examines findings by international bodies that sexual violence has been used systematically within the context of the occupation.

The starting point for the analysis is that rape and sexual violence are never acceptable, regardless of who the victim is or who the perpetrator is.

Israeli victims of the alleged sexual violence committed during the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and their families, are entitled to recognition, investigation, and accountability for those crimes. The same standard must apply to allegations of rape and sexual torture committed against Palestinians.

History of Sexual Violence

Public attention to sexual violence against Palestinians has concentrated on abuses committed since October 2023, with many sources, including Equality Now’s report, describing an escalation in sexual violence against Palestinian detainees with women and men both reporting rape, threats of rape, and genital torture in Israeli custody. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the OPT concluded that Israeli forces have used rape, threats of rape, and sexual torture against Palestinian detainees as a matter of policy, intended to degrade and punish Palestinians. A follow-up report by the Commission of Inquiry also highlights the increased use of sexual violence and threat of sexual violence by Israeli settlers to instill fear and humiliate Palestinians.

Treating sexual violence as a phenomenon of this immediate conflict, rather than a feature of occupation, suggests the abuse will end once the current conflict ends. The report’s evidence suggests otherwise. While the recent conflict has been accompanied by a severe escalation in reported sexual violence, the perpetration of and impunity for such violence pre-date October 2023. Human rights organizations have for decades documented sexual harassment, sexual humiliation, and rape by Israeli security forces during checkpoints, night raids, and prison visits with women reporting unnecessary strip searches, forced public nudity, and genital abuse.

Lack of Accountability

Equality Now’s report analyzed the legal systems and structure within both Israel and the OPT applicable to sexual violence. Israel has robust rape laws inside its own territory that broadly align with international standards, with lack of consent at the center of the offense. Important victim-centered reforms have also been introduced, including expanded legal aid and greater specialist provision within the criminal justice system.

But significant implementation gaps remain. Only about 15 percent of the sexual violence reports received by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel ever reach police, and appeals against closed rape investigations in Israel are denied over 90 percent of the time. Notably, women in the military have publicly criticized the IDF’s culture of sexual violence, including rape and sexual harassment, against them, and there is a high level of attrition related to reports of sexual crimes committed by the Israeli police, with many cases being closed without any investigation at all. Further, Arab citizens of Israel are reluctant to report cases, reflecting deep, structural distrust toward Israel’s law enforcement system, which includes difficulties in accessing the system and in doing so safely.

The UN Commission of Inquiry has highlighted that political leaders’ statements, combined with ineffective military and civilian judicial systems, signal to Israeli security forces that they can commit sexual violence against Palestinian detainees with impunity. That Israeli security personnel often photograph the sexual violence and disseminate the images and videos online  indicates that the use of sexual violence comes without accountability.

These findings sit within a much wider body of international scrutiny of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the OPT, including allegations of crimes against humanity and a provisional measures order by the International Court of Justice finding that Palestinians in Gaza have a plausible right to protection from acts of genocide. Sexual and reproductive violence can be relevant to assessments of atrocity crimes, including genocide, depending on the evidence, context, and intent involved.

Why the Traditional Human Rights Response Falls Short

Equality Now’s reports typically include a tailored set of recommendations based on international law and norms: reform rape laws to center consent; ensure transparent and impartial investigations to enhance criminal accountability; and train police, prosecutors, and judges in trauma-informed approaches. These recommendations have been made to governments across Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the League of Arab States, along with a version of them for Israel’s domestic system in this report too.

Those reforms are essential. But in the OPT, they cannot on their own overcome the wider legal and administrative structures that fragment jurisdiction, restrict Palestinians’ access to justice, and contribute to impunity. Recommending that Israel better train its security officers or provide effective complaint mechanisms in the military prison system, while necessary, would not address a deeper problem: a legal and administrative structure that Israel itself constructed which, in practice, shields Israeli citizens and state actors from accountability for violations against Palestinians.

If we ignore the occupation and the way it is implemented, we also risk treating the occupation as a neutral backdrop before which impunity for sexual violence could end, when the report’s evidence shows that the context itself can create serious barriers to justice: legal fragmentation, failures to investigate crimes against Palestinians, and the pervasive threat of sexual violence all contribute to render prevention and accountability unrealistic while the occupation continues.

The Recommendation We Didn’t Expect to Make

As a result, the recommendations for Israel in the OPT could not stop at legislative and specific practical reform, because legislative reform cannot by itself address structural conditions that international bodies have found enable sexual violence, discrimination, and impunity. The report aligns with what the International Court of Justice concluded in July 2024: the occupation itself is unlawful and its discriminatory structures must end.

This conclusion follows from the same principle that underpins Equality Now’s continued message—that laws alone cannot protect survivors where institutions and systems allow perpetrators to act with impunity. Preventing sexual violence against all women and girls requires both strong laws and the dismantling of the structural conditions that prevent those laws from protecting everyone equally.

Divya Srinivasan is a human rights lawyer and director of the Ending Gender-Based Violence program at Equality Now.

 

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