Sexual violence and legal accountability in Israel and the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem

Equality Now recommends urgent, coordinated action to address both legal gaps and failures in implementation. Key priorities include:

• Strengthen consent-based rape laws by ensuring all non-consensual sexual penetration is treated consistently as rape, in line with international standards.
• Ensure proportionate and consistent sentencing, removing hierarchies of harm that undermine accountability for coercive and exploitative acts.
• Reduce secondary victimisation by fully implementing survivor-centred criminal procedures and limiting discretionary practices that enable bias and rape myths.
• Improve data transparency and oversight, including the publication of disaggregated data on reporting, prosecutions and convictions.
• Address systemic discrimination affecting Arab, migrant and other marginalised women through culturally accessible reporting mechanisms and equal protection under the law.
• Ensure accountability for Israeli security forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem for sexual violence, in line with international humanitarian and human rights law.
• Support survivor access to justice by strengthening legal aid, protection measures and independent monitoring mechanisms.
• Adopt a zero tolerance policy for all rape and sexual violence, particularly for that carried out by Israeli state actors, and to apply on an equal basis.