Palestinian Man Recounts Brutal Sexual Assault by Israeli Settlers

The man said his attackers stripped him naked, beat him and zip-tied his genitalia, an account corroborated by family members and a rights activist who were also beaten.

Israeli settlers beat a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank, stripped him naked, tied his arms and legs and then zip-tied his penis, he, his family members and another witness said on Wednesday.

“I thought I was going to die,” the man, Suhaib Abualkebash, a 29-year-old shepherd, told The New York Times. “I thought this was the end.”

Several family members and an American woman corroborated details of Mr. Abualkebash’s account, saying they witnessed the sexual assault on Friday by several men among a group of more than 20 settlers who marauded though a Bedouin encampment. The relatives and the American said they had been beaten, too, adding that the assailants had kicked and slapped children during the attack. Family members also shared copies of reports they had filed to the Israeli police.

Israeli settlers have been waging an escalating campaign of violence and land theft against Palestinians across much of the West Bank. It has intensified as Israeli attitudes toward Palestinians have hardened since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the war that ensued.

The attacks have increased while international attention has been focused on the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. Settlers have killed seven West Bank Palestinians so far this year, six of them since the war began on Feb. 28.

The Israeli police, who are responsible for looking into crimes committed by Israelis in the West Bank, opened an investigation into the attack in Khirbet Humsa but did not respond immediately to requests for comment. They say they act against any violence, but have largely failed to bring violent settlers to justice.

A police record showed that the episode was being investigated as a sexual assault, an attack on a helpless person and a crime motivated by racism, among other potential charges.

Mr. Abualkebash said the assault capped a night of terror for him, his wife, their three daughters, his brother Muhammad, Muhammad’s wife, their seven children, his father and his uncle. All were beaten, the adults said, except a sleeping 4-month-old baby.

The settlers also stole the family’s 400 sheep — its entire livelihood — along with wedding rings and other jewelry, cellphones, cash and identification papers, the family members said.

Ava Lang, a 24-year-old American human rights activist who witnessed the attack, said she had been beaten and robbed of her cellphone, rings, wallet and passport.

Mr. Abualkebash, his brother and their father and uncle were hospitalized for their injuries, as was Ms. Lang.

The attack took place in a patch of fertile land known as Khirbet Humsa, in the northern Jordan Valley. Once the home of hundreds of Bedouin, it has been reduced to a few small encampments in hollows between low-rising hills opposite the Israeli settlements of Beka’ot and Roi.

Generally speaking, Palestinians and human rights activists say, much settler violence in recent years has followed a pattern that can take months to play out. It begins with intimidation or restrictions — official or unofficial — on movement, then escalates with beatings or harsher violence targeting men.

Many Palestinians who have abandoned their villages recently have said that the last straw was threats or attacks against women and children.

In Khirbet Humsa, the escalation appears to have been more abrupt.

One afternoon a few weeks ago, according to the Abualkebash family, a settler herding cattle led his animals to within a few steps of the family’s tents. Family members interpreted this as a threat.

About a week later, after midnight, the shepherds saw a drone fly over their compound and then saw settlers approaching from the direction of Beka’ot, Mr. Abualkebash said.

“Our dogs followed them, and they shot one of our dogs,” he said.

The attack on Friday began sometime after 1 a.m. and lasted about an hour. Mr. Abualkebash said he was taking a turn on guard duty in a small tent near where a rocky dirt road enters the compound. His father and Ms. Lang, the activist, were sleeping beside him, he said.

“I heard voices, so I got up and saw more than 20 of them outside the tent,” he said of the settlers.

In an interview, Ms. Lang — who independently corroborated Mr. Abualkebash’s account — said she had been volunteering in solidarity with Palestinians for about a month and a half. The attack came on her first night in Khirbet Humsa.

Israeli and foreign activists often stay with Palestinians seen as at risk of settler attacks on the theory that their presence can offer a measure of deterrence.

Ms. Lang said that she was awakened by the screams of a Portuguese activist outside the tent, but that the attackers began beating them before any of them could react.

“They were asking our names, where we’re from, saying, ‘We’re going to kill you,’ and ‘This is our land; we’re Jewish,’” she said.

Masked and wielding clubs, Mr. Abualkebash said, the settlers beat and kicked him, his father and the two female activists. Once they had used zip ties to bind the others by their wrists and feet, he said, they also did the same to him.

One assailant used a hunting knife to cut Mr. Abualkebash’s pants and then his underwear, he said.

His left eye still black and bloodied, he described the attack at the exact site where it happened.

On Wednesday, five days after the attack, discarded zip ties were still strewed on the ground. Mr. Abualkebash picked up the briefs he had been wearing from the floor of the tent. They had been sliced cleanly.

As the beating went on, he said, one attacker cinched a zip tie tightly around his penis. He showed a reporter the mark that remained from the injury.

He said the assault had rendered him speechless, unable to believe what was happening to him. Israeli police officers, he added, appeared shocked when he described it.

The attackers then dragged Mr. Abualkebash to a large communal tent nearby where he found his wife, children and his brother’s family. The adults were all bound and cowering as they were intermittently beaten.

It turned out that the settlers had first destroyed two security cameras that the family had installed, hoping at least to have evidence in case of an attack, Muhammad Abualkebash, 40, said.

The settlers had then burst into the family members’ tents while they slept, dragging the women by their hair. They beat the women and slapped or kicked the children, the adults said.

Mr. Abualkebash’s wife, Niama Abualkebash, 28, said that when she grabbed a head covering, a settler tore it from her hands, shouted, “No,” and threw it to the ground.

“He hit me, kicked me in the mouth and said, ‘Die, die,’” she said.

Her 3-year-old daughter, Lamar, was pulled from the tent by her pajamas and thrown to the ground, she said. Her infant daughter. Manar, who was hidden behind blankets, was not harmed.

“Thank God she didn’t scream,” Ms. Abualkebash said, “because every child that was crying, they were beating.”

Ms. Abualkebash and her sister-in-law, Nihaya, 35, said that some of the settlers had amused themselves by passing gas in the faces of the Palestinians tied up on the ground.

The settlers left only after threatening the Abualkebash family in Arabic, the adults said.

“They said: ‘If you don’t leave, we will burn you. We’ll hit you. We’ll take your children, and we will rape your women,’” according to Muhammad Abualkebash. “‘Go to America, go to Jordan or anywhere else, but go.’”

The settlers eventually cut the zip ties — but not the one on Mr. Abualkebash’s genitalia. He said he needed his brother’s help to remove that.

Niama Abualkebash said she could not believe what had been done to her husband.

“This is slow death,” she said. “Doing this to a man is to kill him.”

As they left, the Abualkebash family said, some of the settlers mockingly sang a few bars of an old Palestinian folk song: “Come and support one another, people of Palestine — Palestine is gone and it didn’t bid you farewell.”

Natan Odenheimer contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

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