Israel obstructs UN investigation into 7 October sex crime accusations

Israel is obstructing a UN investigation into alleged sexual violence committed during the Hamas-led 7 October attacks, according to a report by Haaretz.

The Israeli media outlet said that officials opposed an investigation as it would also look into allegations of sex crimes against Palestinians by Israelis.

Pramila Patten, the UN under secretary-general for sexual violence in conflict, requested that Israeli detention centres be investigated as condition for an inquiry into purported sexual crimes on 7 October 2023.

The request, which was rejected by Israel, would have allowed the UN access into Israeli prisons to conduct investigations into the treatment of Palestinians held there.

Palestinian Authority officials had initially made the request to Patten.

Any discovery of violations could have meant Israel being placed on a UN blacklist for sexual crimes, representatives of the Israeli Women’s Lobby who are familiar with Patten’s team told Haaretz.

“The clear concern is that Israel will be the one to be added to the blacklist of entities and countries that engage in sexual violence in conflicts, while the terrorist organisation Hamas will actually remain off the list,” Mia Schocken, director of the international department of the Women’s Lobby, told Haaretz.

Inaccurate representation

A previous UN report by Patten examining allegations of sexual violence allegedly committed by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters was issued on 4 March last year.

Western media coverage of the report was criticised by Palestinian groups for inaccurately presenting its conclusions. 

“The report does not, in fact, reach many of the conclusions for which it is being lauded in western media, and several of its findings undermine the Israeli narrative,” the Feminist Solidarity Network for Palestine, a pro-Palestinian group, wrote in a review of the UN report.

They noted that Israel has refused to cooperate with another UN team investigating the allegations operating under the UN Human Rights Council, by instructing doctors and health workers who treated the 7 October attack victims not to speak with the UN team.  

The activists said that Israel has lauded Patten’s report as a “UN endorsement of its claim that Hamas committed systematic sexual violence on 7 October”, but note that in her report Patten refuted many claims put forward by the Israeli government. 

Patten at the time had also refuted an NBC article that alleged a woman had been found at Kibbutz Be’eri with “objects like knives inserted in the genitalia”, saying the UN mission team that reviewed the photos of the scene “did not find anything like that”.

Patten said that accounts by first responders of the Hamas-led 7 October attack contained “instances of unreliable, inaccurate forensic interpretation by untrained people”.

Rape and torture in detention centres

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, many Palestinians detained by Israeli forces have said they were sexually abused by troops at Sde Teiman, a facility in southern Israel’s Negev desert.

Torture, rape and murder have all been reported as rife at the facility, one of several prisons where Palestinians have been mistreated for decades.

However, no one had been arrested for the abuse until 29 July, when military police raided the facility, clashed with the soldiers and took them into custody. 

Late in June of last year, nine Israeli soldiers were arrested for the alleged rape of a Palestinian detained in Sde Teiman. Five of those detained were released to house arrest on Tuesday, pending a potential decision by the army to file indictments.

The incident created a backlash in Israel, with a far-right mob, which included an MP and minister, storming the detention centre and a military court in an attempt to pressure authorities to release the alleged rapists.

The Institute for National Security Studies later revealed in a poll that 65 percent of Israeli Jews thought that the five should be punished internally by the army and not face criminal charges.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir confirmed that conditions inside Israeli prisons “have indeed worsened” since the war on Gaza began, adding: “I am proud of that.”