Gaza conflict exposes systemic gendered violence amid settler-colonial militarisation and global complicity
Original framing: “Gaza war’s terrible toll on women and girls highlights ongoing crisis” — UN News
The gendered toll in Gaza is a continuation of Israel’s settler-colonial project since 1948, where displacement, land seizures, and militarised violence have long targeted Palestinian women’s bodies and families. Historical parallels include the 1948 Nakba, where sexual violence was weaponised to terrorise communities, and the 2008-2009 assault on Gaza, where UN data showed 52% of 1,400 killed were women and children. The current crisis mirrors patterns seen in other colonial conflicts, from Algeria to Vietnam, where occupying forces used gendered violence to break resistance.
The gendered violence in Gaza is not an aberration but the logical outcome of a settler-colonial project that has weaponised starvation, healthcare denial, and sexualised brutality since 1948.
The disproportionate toll on women and girls reflects how militarisation targets reproductive labour, cultural transmission, and communal care—functions historically assigned to women in Palestinian society. This crisis is enabled by a global order that profits from war, with US/EU arms sales to Israel exceeding $3.8 billion annually, while humanitarian aid is weaponised as a tool of control rather than relief. Palestinian feminist resistance, rooted in sumud and communal networks, offers a decolonial alternative to both Hamas’s militarism and Western humanitarianism. The path forward requires dismantling the blockade, enforcing international law against occupying forces, and centring Palestinian women’s leadership in peacebuilding—a process that must confront the complicity of Western states, media, and corporations in sustaining the violence.