Abuse of Women and Girls Under Hamas Rule—and What It Means for Reconstruction

Domestic Violence and Political Order: Women, Silence, and Power in Gaza

Recent reporting, brought to wider attention by the counterterrorism expert Noor Dahri and reinforced by accounts in Israel Hayom, describes women in Gaza beginning to speak about rape, sexual abuse, and extortion under Hamas rule. These testimonies include allegations of sexual coercion by men in positions of authority, exploitation tied to access to aid or money, and abuse carried out under conditions of dependency and fear.

What is striking is not only the content of these accounts, but the fact that they are being spoken at all. Under conditions where speech carries risk, the emergence of testimony itself signals pressure within the environment. These are not casual disclosures. They are the beginnings of something forcing its way into language. Some reports describe large numbers of women as vulnerable to sexual exploitation under current conditions. Taken together, these accounts point to something that cannot be dismissed: the conditions under which people are living.

This matters not only because of the violence itself, but because of what it reveals about how power is lived and understood—not abstractly,........

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