Sexual violence and threats of abuse against Palestinian men and women are part of the Israeli occupation forces' toolkit for oppression. A new report by NGO Equality Now cited one woman detainee who said an Israeli soldier threatened to gang rape her, kill her, and burn her young children. He asked, "How do you want us to rape you? One by one or all together?" After the detainee reported these threats to her lawyer, she was subsequently denied access to legal counsel. This form of violence by Israeli forces is deeply entrenched at checkpoints, prison settings, and during night house raids, according to Equality Now's latest report titled Sexual violence and legal accountability in Israel and the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The scales of justice are now further weighing overwhelmingly in favour of Israel following the news of its death penalty law , passed on 30 March.
At the civil court level, it imposes the death penalty for the deliberate killing of a person with the intention of "negating the existence of the State of Israel." Equality Now underscored that sexual violence is not a new phenomenon with the Israeli forces. In 2020, 1,542 complaints were filed, 26 of which regarded rape. The Association of Rape Crisis Centres in Israel (ARCCI) filed legal action against several Israeli ministries and law enforcement agencies in 2025. The Israeli agencies failed to comply with information requests for comprehensive data on sexual abuse. The refusal undermines the ability to understand the full scope of sexual violence and the measures taken to fulfil its human rights obligations to prevent such violence, protect victims, and ensure access to justice for women and girls, Equality Now stated. Escalating the apartheid regime The new death penalty law orders execution by hanging, restricts access to legal counsel and visits from family members, limits external oversight, and grants immunity to those involved in carrying out executions, Human Rights Watch reported. Rape is also considered an act of terrorism. Equality Now highlighted in the report that following an amendment to the Counter Terrorism Act made in 2023, a man who rapes a woman for 'nationalistic reasons' could be charged with committing a terrorist act. However, with the death penalty law, this risks disproportionately enforcing capital punishment against Palestinian men accused of assaulting Israeli women.
Jacqui Hunt, a human rights lawyer at Equality Now , explained that the new death penalty law only applies to Palestinians. Therefore, a rape committed by a Palestinian against an Israeli could be designated a so-called terrorist or nationalistic act and lead to a death penalty ruling.
Henriette Willberg, head of the research and discourse department at Law For Palestine (L4P), told The New Arab that the one-sided death penalty "should be understood as the latest escalation of Israel’s colonial apartheid regime." Equality Now outlines in its recommendations that the application of the Counter Terrorism Act should be reviewed and monitored to ensure it does not result in discriminatory enforcement or create unjust hierarchies among rape victims and perpetrators based on race, religion, national identity, or ethnicity. Capital punishment as coercion The NGO lists threats of gang rape as "commonplace" by the Israeli forces during interrogations and detention. This, compounded with the Israeli military's lack of accountability , "fosters a climate of constant fear, leaving Palestinians acutely aware of their susceptibility to sexual violence," the report reads. In this context, the routine use of rape threats by Israeli forces functions as a tool of coercive control to enforce submission and reinforce domination, Equality Now finds. Researcher Willberg said that "capital punishment may intensify coercive dynamics within detention and interrogation settings, particularly for security detainees." This becomes particularly concerning given the approximately 96% conviction rate in Israeli military courts and the fact that convictions are frequently based on confessions obtained during interrogation, including under coercive conditions, Willberg stated. Targeted abuse Palestinian children are increasingly vulnerable to abuse in detention, and multiple cases have been brought forward by the Defence for Children International Palestine (DCIP) involving sexual violence against child detainees. In a recent video from Gaza by The New Arab , a Palestinian mother of a child under two years old, Jawad Abu Nasser, described her son's injuries and psychological distress following his release from Israeli detention after he was kidnapped in March and tortured. She laid out her child's blood-stained clothes and pointed to the holes visible on the knees where she said Israeli occupation forces pushed metal tools into his legs, leaving severe wounds. "My son was like a flower; there was nothing wrong with him, but now he suffers from many things, his mental state has deteriorated greatly since the incident," she said. Jawad struggles to eat and doesn't play how he used to; he is always scared, his mother told The New Arab . Equality Now noted that the Israeli authorities persistently refuse to investigate complaints against Israeli forces, and regularly prohibit lawyers from accompanying children during interrogations.
In fact, the report finds that human rights defenders who expose such abuses face retaliation. A key example of this occurred in 2021, after the US State Department inquired about DCIP's credible report of a Palestinian teenage boy raped by an interrogator in Jerusalem, Israeli officials are reported to have raided DCIP's offices and declared it a terrorist entity.
More recently, in mid-March, Israel dropped all charges against five soldiers accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee at a military detention facility. The military's own indictment described soldiers stabbing the detainee with a sharp object near his rectum, causing cracked ribs, a punctured lung, and an internal tear.
Hunt elaborated, saying: "The lack of accountability for rape globally doesn't encourage people to come forward." When people do come forward, they are frequently blamed for what happened to them, "there is very little justice," the human rights lawyer told The New Arab .
Silence is enforced through a logistical blockade . Equality Now found that survivors must often navigate dozens of military checkpoints just to reach a Palestinian police station.
Another issue is the lack of Arabic-speaking women investigators, forcing survivors to recount traumatic experiences through Israeli male officers, which can reinforce shame and fear.
In response to the issue of accountability and available data, the NGO recommends that a centralised database be established to publicly collect and publish data on rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as an increase in Arabic-speaking women investigators. Architecture of shame The death penalty law can worsen the already impossible situation. "Palestinian detainees are often primary witnesses to sexual violence and rape committed by Israeli authorities in prisons, interrogation rooms, and checkpoints," Willberg stated.
The system is already riddled with coercive control, and by introducing the death penalty, "the law opens the possibility that its application could have primary witnesses removed," Willberg explains.
Israeli authorities already "benefit from entrenched impunity, especially regarding allegations of sexual violence," Willberg stressed. The death penalty further expands punitive powers and erodes safeguarding procedures. The researcher gave the example that executions are required to happen within 90 days, and the use of solitary confinement could contribute to a broader environment of institutional impunity .
Among its findings, Equality Now identified that Palestinian women and girls also face threats of rape and gang rape from both settlers and soldiers.
Sexual violence can also occur in front of family members as an attempt to exert dominance and control over the entire community.
Hunt commented, saying: "rape is all about power and control in any context; it's not about lust. It's devastating to the victim, often affecting a woman's ability to go out and enjoy her life and participate in society." Olivia Hooper is a British journalist specialising in humanitarian and gender-based topics and is the co-director of Politics4Her