UN Calls for Probe into Israeli Soldiers’ Forced Stripping of Palestinian Women
Tasnim – The United Nations has called for an investigation into the forced stripping of five Palestinian women by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank’s al-Khalil.
Regime forces entered the Ajluni family’s house on the morning of July 10. Two female troops took the 53-year-old mother, her 17-year-old daughter, and the mother’s three daughters-in-law, all in their 20s, into the children’s room, where they were compelled to undress.
Armed with rifles and an attack dog, the occupation soldiers also threatened to unleash the dog if the Palestinian women did not comply with the order to strip nude, even as they conducted body searches of the clothed men.
Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, responded to a question about the assault, stating, “We would stand against any form of collective punishment. Obviously, this reported incident needs to be looked at and investigated thoroughly,” he added.
Additionally, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, expressed her outrage on X (formerly known as Twitter), saying that such incidents are “absolutely appalling” and asserting, “This relentless assault on people and rights must end.”
Amal Ajluni, one of the women subjected to the strip search, shared her traumatic experience with the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, stating, “I can’t forget what happened. The search and the humiliation I went through in front of the [female] soldiers, and the helplessness and shame I felt in front of my children. They are now afraid to sleep in their room at night and come to our bed. They don’t sleep well and wet the bed, and when they wake up, they are scared to go to the bathroom.”
The assault has also garnered strong condemnation from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which called on international bodies to exert pressure on Israel to cease its daily violations of human rights in Palestine.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh denounced the egregious violation against the Ajluni family, stating, “Violating the sanctity of our homes and harming our women is a provocative, disgraceful, and terrible act, which is practiced only by those who are stripped of morals and human values.”
Meanwhile, the human rights committee of the Palestinian parliament characterized the strip search as a demonstration of “the extent of the ugliness and fascism of the occupation before the world” and urged the formation of an international investigation committee.
The Hamas resistance movement vowed revenge, deeming the incident a “dangerous escalation that the Palestinian people and their resistance will not ignore.” They added, “The violations committed by the fascist occupation will fall in the face of our steadfastness until the last soldier and settler are uprooted from our occupied land.”
Tarik Salami, a spokesperson for the Islamic Jihad resistance movement, called on Palestinians in al-Khalil and other West Bank cities to “escalate their confrontations with the occupation” and “avenge” the assault.
