UN investigators have verified multiple rapes of Palestinian detainees by Israeli forces, but have still not verified a single claim of sexual violence against Israelis on or after 7 October 2023.
This article contains explicit descriptions of sexual violence.
UN investigators have verified multiple rapes of Palestinian detainees by Israeli forces, but have still not verified a single claim of sexual violence against Israelis on or after 7 October 2023.
In his latest annual report to the Security Council on sexual violence in armed conflict, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warns that the verified crimes against Palestinians should be seen as “indicative of incidents and patterns” more broadly.
For the first time, Guterres added Israel’s military and security forces to the UN list of entities credibly suspected of responsibility for patterns of rape or other forms of sexual violence.
The full extent of those crimes is difficult to document because Israel continues to deny UN investigators access to detention sites and to Gaza, while reporting is further obstructed by “explicit threats” from Israeli forces “coercing detainees not to report abuse,” according to the report.
Rapes and gang rapes
The UN verified sexual violence, including rape and sexual violence used as torture, by Israeli forces against 31 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank: 14 men, seven women, nine boys and one girl.
Thirteen of these cases occurred in 2025, and 18 in 2023 and 2024. The violations included rape, rape with objects, gang rape, attempted rape, forced nudity, threats of rape, unwanted touching of breasts and genitals, genital violence, targeted shooting of the genitals, and strip and cavity searches “without apparent security justification.”
Rape and gang rape, sometimes repeated, were verified against nine victims, most of them from Gaza.
The UN identified the perpetrators as Israeli military and security forces, including the Israeli army, the Israel Prison Service, its Keter special forces, and Yamam, the police “counterterrorism” unit.
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Inter-Parliamentary Union/Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
Inter-Parliamentary Union/Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)Excerpt from "UN verifies rapes of Palestinians, but still cites no Israeli victims” by Ali Abunimah. Read the article at electronicintifada.net.
posted by Satish Sharma at
02:23
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