A Palestinian women's rights organisation has warned that 75 documented cases of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian women in Israeli custody amount to no more than one per cent of what is actually occurring on the ground.

The figure was compiled by the Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC), a Ramallah-based feminist organisation that has spent more than two years gathering testimony from survivors across the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. Reaching even that number required months of sustained trust-building inside communities where fear of military retaliation, social stigma, and threats from soldiers keep most survivors permanently silent.

The warning arrives alongside a wave of parallel reports from the United Nations, Israeli human rights groups and an international consortium funded by 13 European governments, all pointing to the same conclusion: sexualised violence against Palestinian women has become a systematic instrument of war.

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