Testimonies emerging from Gaza have documented a pattern of sexual abuse and exploitation carried out by Hamas militants and affiliated organisations against women.

With the US-led Gaza Board of Peace having submitted a disarmament proposal to Hamas in early April and no agreement yet reached, the internal governance of Gaza remains unresolved. For the territory's civilian population, particularly its most vulnerable women, the ceasefire has not translated into protection.

Multiple accounts from victims and witnesses described food parcels, aid vouchers, and cash payments used as leverage against civilians with no alternative means of support. The accounts describe a system in which Hamas-linked charity workers and Qassam Brigades commanders have approached widows, divorced women, and displaced families in exchange for sexual favours. 

"We were contacted by the wife of a friend. She had asked a Qassam Brigades commander to help her, but he took advantage of her," one male Gazan testified on video to Jusoor News.

“His behaviour is disgraceful. We investigated the matter and found her in a tent in the Gharabli area, where a bunch of Qassam members were taking advantage of her. We informed the leadership, but we were told we had to keep silent about it.”

A second man in the same video described a female neighbour being approached by a representative of a Hamas charity organisation and offered a food parcel, an aid voucher, or ILS 100 ($33.29) in exchange for sex. 

A third individual, who identified himself as a Qassam Brigades member, said he had personally informed the movement's leadership that its members were exploiting the wives of fallen fighters in the same area and had been similarly ordered to remain quiet.

A Gazan woman who spoke to the Daily Mail on condition of anonymity described one charity as the primary perpetrator. "From its chairman all the way down to its doorman, it's being done by all their employees and members, as though it's an organisation set up for sexual harassment, psychological abuse, and harassing young women," she said, declining to name the group directly.

Noor (a pseudonym), a divorced mother of four who was displaced during the war, told the Daily Mail that she was targeted for sexual exploitation.

“'I didn’t receive any aid, so I went to a charitable organisation. A man there, who appeared religious and respectable, promised to help me,” Noor explained. “I was welcomed by a man who looked religious, like a sheikh. He said he would stand by me and help me. I told him I was separated from my husband. He said, "Oh, separated? A woman as beautiful as you?"'

He took Noor’s phone number, which she says she believed would lead to fatherly support, but instead, he suggested a late-night video call.

“From the beginning, the way he spoke to me felt like harassment. I am much younger than him. I trusted him because he was an older man; I saw him like a father. He is the age of my father, but he harassed me directly. I was afraid, of course. He was pursuing me,” Noor explained. When Noor threatened to expose him, the man claimed that she could not do so as he was representing the government.

Abdullah, a pseudonym used by a Jusoor News journalist who documented the accounts, described the phenomenon as widespread. 

"In every area, many women are exploited, especially widows and divorced women, because they have no support and no income," he told the outlet. "Their vulnerability is taken advantage of, and the situation is getting worse day by day."

Such testimonies align with a similar case documented by the Associated Press in 2025, involving a 38-year-old woman with six children who accepted an offer of food and employment from a man connected to aid distribution. 

She was taken to an empty apartment, where the man told her to remove her headscarf. A sexual encounter then took place.

"I had to play along because I was scared, I wanted out of this place," she told AP. Before leaving, she was given ILS 100. Two weeks later, food and medicine arrived. The promised job never did.

The scale of the problem is compounded by near-total underreporting. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, director of Realign for Palestine, said that many women stay silent out of fear of Hamas. "Many NGOs and organisations that are supposedly concerned with women's issues are unable to be of help, either for fear of Hamas or its enforced notion that Gazan women are perfectly fine under its control," he told the Daily Mail. "There is no central body documenting these cases."

Data from the United Nations Population Fund adds further dimension to the deteriorating situation. A UNFPA report found that at least 400 girls aged 14 to 16 were registered as married within four months in 2025, against a pre-war child marriage rate of 11% in 2022, itself a significant reduction from 26% in 2009.

UNFPA Country Representative Nestor Owomuhangi warned that official figures likely represent only a fraction of actual cases, given the collapse of registration systems. "We are witnessing the dismantling of a generation's future," he said in a public statement.

The sexual exploitation of Gazan women is not the only documented instance of Hamas targeting its own civilian population. 

The Palestinian Authority's newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reported in June 2025 that Hamas had deployed units, referred to internally as Al-Sahm, to kill civilians attempting to access food distribution centres not under Hamas control, on the pretext that they were collaborating with American aid operations. "Hamas and its Al-Sahm Unit hunts down those who seek nothing but a crust of bread," the paper wrote.

That same month, CNN reported that a bus carrying more than two dozen workers from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US-backed aid initiative, was attacked by Hamas, killing five and injuring others. Three further team members subsequently died. 

Al-Khazindar Company, a Palestinian group operating alongside GHF, confirmed that eight of its workers had been killed. "Hamas targeted them after several threats, and we never expected the situation to escalate to the point of assassinating these workers," company director Raafat Al-Khazindar told CNN.

The accounts sit alongside broader allegations of sexual violence in the conflict. Israeli hostage Arbel Yehoud testified that she was raped daily during her captivity following her abduction from her kibbutz on October 7, 2023.