BMJ Review Documents Pattern of Sexual Violence Against Palestinian Children in Israeli Detention and at Checkpoints

Palestinian schoolgirls in Hebron have avoided a specific military checkpoint after Israeli soldiers exposed their genitals to women and girls passing through, according to a UN investigation cited in a new opinion article published Tuesday in The BMJ, one of the world's leading medical journals.

The article, authored by five researchers including Dr. Rubin Minhas, compiles evidence from UN investigations, Save the Children, and humanitarian and human rights reporting to document what the authors describe as a pattern of conflict-related sexual violence against Palestinians under Israeli occupation. The term covers rape, sexual torture, sexualised humiliation and reproductive harm linked to the conflict.

"I think it just brought home to me how absolutely bizarre it is that having to go to school and pass through military checkpoints is the norm before we even get to the sexual violence," Minhas told The New Arab.

What the record shows

A 2025 Save the Children report, cited in the article, surveyed 165 Palestinian children who were between 12 and 17 years old at the time of their detention. More than half reported witnessing or experiencing sexual violence while in Israeli custody, including rape threats, forced stripping and genital assault. Twenty percent of the former detainees reported intentional self-harm after release, and 45 percent did not return to school. The authors note these broader psychological outcomes reflect the overall experience of detention rather than harm attributable solely to sexual violence.

A separate 2026 UN investigation, also cited in the article, documented forced public nudity, sexual humiliation, rape threats and genital violence against Palestinian children during arrest and detention, along with allegations of rape. Humanitarian and UN reporting cited in the piece describes one incident in which a Palestinian boy was stripped and urinated on.

The authors also draw on testimony and reporting describing abuse of Palestinian women and girls: forced undressing during raids and at checkpoints, sometimes in front of children, sexual touching during searches, rape threats, denial of sanitary pads during menstruation in detention, and threats to publish degrading footage online. The article cites reports that Israeli soldiers photographed and posted images of Palestinian women's underwear taken from homes in Gaza, with many images later removed and soldiers' social media accounts closed or made private.

In the occupied West Bank, the article cites humanitarian and human rights reporting describing Israeli settlers using sexual intimidation against Palestinian communities, including exposing themselves, threatening rape, attempting to touch women, and stalking women traveling to latrines in areas without sanitation infrastructure. A study of 39 displaced households in Area C cited in the article found that more than 70 percent identified threats of sexualised violence against women and children as a decisive factor in their decision to leave.

The authors' call

The BMJ article frames these findings as fragments of a larger, documented pattern rather than isolated incidents, and calls for independent investigation and accountability. Minhas told The New Arab the intent was to connect accounts "dispersed across accounts of detention, gendered abuse, humiliation, and displacement" into a single picture.

Occupation Watch is treating the underlying claims as attributed to the named UN investigations and the 2025 Save the Children report cited in the peer-reviewed article; none of the specific incidents described have been independently verified by this publication.