Israeli soldiers and settlers have been systematically using sexual assault, harassment, and gendered humiliation to drive Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank, according to a new report by the West Bank Protection Consortium, a group of international humanitarian organisations. The report, titled "Sexual violence and forcible transfer in the West Bank", documents 16 recorded cases of conflict-related sexual violence over the past three years — a figure researchers acknowledge represents significant under-reporting due to the stigma survivors face. It draws on 83 interviews with Palestinian communities across the territory, including people displaced from their homes, women, youth activists, and community leaders.

The documented abuses include forced nudity, invasive and painful body cavity searches, Israeli soldiers and settlers exposing their genitals — including to minors — threats of rape, urination on Palestinians, and the taking and distribution of humiliating photographs of bound and stripped individuals. Men, women, and children have all been targeted. In one case from October 2023, settlers and soldiers stripped and handcuffed Palestinians from the village of Wadi as-Seeq, urinated on them, attempted to rape one with a broom handle, and circulated naked photographs of them. Last month, settlers stripped a 29-year-old man from the northern Jordan Valley community of Khirbet Humsa, restrained his genitals with a zip tie, and beat him in front of his community and international observers.

The report finds that this violence is functioning as a deliberate mechanism of displacement. More than two-thirds of surveyed households identified rising sexual violence against women and children — including harassment targeting girls — as a decisive factor in their decision to leave. The consequences for communities that remain are also severe: girls have dropped out of school, women have stopped working, and at least six families arranged marriages for girls aged 15 to 17 in an effort to move them away from the threat of assault. The Ramallah-based Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling, which has independently documented similar patterns, estimates that the cases it knows about represent only a fraction of actual incidents.

Human rights experts point to a culture of impunity as a central driver. A recent decision by Israeli authorities to drop charges against soldiers filmed raping a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman detention facility was cited as a particularly stark signal. "Israeli officials are effectively green-lighting the use of sexual violence, when they decide not to prosecute the most high-profile case, which is extremely well documented," said Milena Ansari of Physicians for Human Rights – Israel. The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations.

The findings emerge amid broader international concern over conditions in the occupied Palestinian territories. A separate joint assessment by the European Union, the United Nations, and the World Bank has estimated that rebuilding the Gaza Strip — where human development is judged to have regressed by 77 years as a result of the conflict — will require more than $71 billion over the next decade. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, speaking in Brussels this week, called on Israel to halt settlement expansion and prosecute settler violence as prerequisites for any progress toward a two-state solution, while acknowledging that such a solution remains far from realisation.