The United Nations’ special representative on sexual violence in conflict has accepted Israel’s invitation to investigate allegations of sex crimes committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, a spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday.
The U.N. official, Pramila Patten, is expected to come to Israel within weeks and has been granted investigative authority by the foreign ministry, said the spokesman, Lior Haiat.
Ms. Patten “plans on briefing the media on the basis of the findings of her visit upon return to New York,” said Géraldine Boezio, a spokeswoman for her office.
On Wednesday, a Hamas spokesman, Dr. Basem Naim, said that “in principle,” Hamas welcomed “any neutral, fair, transparent and professional investigation” so long as the process involved “investigating both sides and building its judgment on genuine” evidence. The statement insisted that evidence of sexual assault should come from “biological samples” obtained through forensic examinations.
In cases of widespread sexual violence during a war, experts say it is not unusual to have limited forensic evidence. Adil Haque, a Rutgers law professor and war crimes expert, said: “Armed conflict is so chaotic. People are more focused on their safety than on building a criminal case down the road.”
Very often, he said, sex crime cases will be prosecuted years later on the basis of testimony from victims and witnesses. “The eyewitness might not even know the name of the victim,” he added. “But if they can testify as, ‘I saw a woman being raped by this armed group,’ that can be enough.”
Last month, The New York Times published an investigation that uncovered new details showing a pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
The Times verified video footage and used photographs, GPS data from mobile phones and interviews with more than 150 people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers and rape counselors, to establish that the attacks were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence.
In response to the Times investigation, Hamas said in a statement that the group’s leaders “categorically deny such allegations” and called them a part of Israel’s attempt to justify the killing of Palestinian civilians.
The group’s statement on Dec. 31 added that Hamas fighters’ “religion, values and culture” forbid such acts, and asserted that the short duration of the attack before the assailants withdrew to Gaza made the allegations implausible. It said it would welcome any international inquiries into the allegations.
Hamas has also denied committing atrocities against civilians in the Oct. 7 attack, but extensive witness testimony and documentary evidence, including videos posted on social media by Hamas fighters, indicate that Hamas gunmen in uniform killed civilians in their homes, in cars, on the streets and in other settings.
On Monday, two U.N. human rights experts said that the violence committed during the Hamas-led incursion, including sexual atrocities, amounted to war crimes, if not crimes against humanity. In its statement on Wednesday, Hamas said those experts did not “have access to the investigators’ evidence.”
