Sexual violence has long been recognised as a brutal and dehumanising instrument of domination, yet its manifestations under settler colonial regimes remain deeply under-explored and systematically silenced, particularly in the case of Palestine. In the context of Palestine, sexual violence is not incidental nor confined to moments of active conflict; it is structurally embedded in the Israeli settler colonial system, with its project deploying it as a mechanism of control, racialisation, and territorial expansion. This research critically examines how Israeli sexual violence against Palestinians functions within, is sustained by, and linked to the broader architecture of settler colonialism. The research contends that the violence inflicted upon Palestinians, women, men, people with non-normative genders and sexualities, and children, is deeply rooted in a settler colonial logic that targets Palestinians through racialised, classed, gendered, sexed, and age-based forms of domination and subjugation. This research critically interrogates the forms, functions, sites and invisibilities of Israeli sexual violence against Palestinians, arguing that international frameworks such as Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) fail to account for the structural and systematic nature of this abuse.
The authors of this report are two Palestinian academics, holders of PhDs in sociology, both of whom have a track record of peer reviewed articles and are recognised for their contributions to decolonial theory. Due to well-founded fears of potential retaliation by Israeli authorities, they have elected to withhold their names from publication. Their decision reflects the increasingly hostile environment faced by Palestinian scholars engaging in critical decolonial research. Despite these risks, the authors conducted a rigorous analysis grounded in extensive data sets drawn from their previous empirical and theoretical work, offering a rare and vital perspective that challenges dominant narratives and foregrounds Palestinian epistemologies.
