The Limits of “Sisterhood”: The Weakness of Gender Solidarity in the Palestinian Context

von SABRINA SEIKH

After decades of alleged systematic discrimination and violence against Palestinian women under Israeli occupation, it is to be hoped that amid the recent Amnesty International report on genocide in Palestine and the ICC arrest warrants, such acts will now receive increased attention as a weapon of war. This leaves Germany, and its feminists, in a bind: a feminist foreign policy professing to fight systemic gender oppression while remaining silent on the gendered atrocities against Palestinian women. As Gaza faces severe reproductive violence and maternal mortality, feminist movements’ inaction reveals a troubling paradox. Can feminism, in its global manifestation, afford the luxury of selective solidarity? This piece examines the legal and ethical urgency for feminist advocacy to reject complicity and reclaim its transformative power.

On November 21, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders Netanyahu and Gallant, creating a significant dilemma for countries like Germany. Until recently an ally , Germany now finds itself legally obligated to arrest him—an obligation that clashes with its feminist foreign policy as a deeper issue is exposed: the persistent inaction of Western feminists in addressing systemic reproductive violence against Palestinian women committed in the context of Israel’s actions in occupied territories. This article contends that Germany’s muted response to the ICC warrants reflects a broader pattern of feminist inaction.

As Feminist International Law increasingly recognizes reproductive violence as a weapon of war, the absence of discourse demands scrutiny. While sexual and gender-based violence encompasses a broad spectrum of gendered abuses, reproductive violence, as a narrower, included subset, targets violations of reproductive autonomy and health. This article explores the intersection of International Law and feminist advocacy, its critique directed at Western feminists who bear shared responsibility to address these injustices— not only as a legal imperative but as a test of feminist principles in action.

Law and Hypocrisy: Feminist Responsibility Under the Rome Statute

Under Article 89 of the Rome Statute, ICC member states, including Germany, are obligated to arrest and surrender individuals subject to ICC warrants. Germany’s tepid response to this obligation exposes a glaring contradiction with its feminist foreign policy and its professed dedication to combating systemic oppression.

Reproductive Violence as Warfare: Unacknowledged Gendered Atrocities on Palestinian Women

The situation in Gaza exemplifies the very acts of reproductive violence explicitly condemned under international legal frameworks. Not only do UN General Assembly Resolutions A/RES/76/232 and A/RES/77/229 (2022) denounce the Israeli occupation and its specific impacts on Palestinian women, while the 2004 ICJ Advisory Opinion on the Wall reaffirms the occupation’s illegality. UNRWA affirmed that as of November 2024, there are approximately 50.000 pregnant women in Gaza right now with 4.000 deliveries expected each month under dire conditions, including infection risks which are potentially meeting the Genocide Convention’s criteria. By October, about 2.15 million people faced “extremely critical famine”. Women, often deprioritizing their own sustenance, are disproportionately affected. Maternal mortality has surged, miscarriages have risen by 300%, and premature births have skyrocketed, by the collapse of healthcare infrastructure and critical shortages in medical supplies. Feminist advocacy must recognize that the reproductive violence faced by Palestinian women is not a tragic anomaly or “collateral damage”; but a systemic form of violence with a long history.

Feminist Solidarity’s Blind Spot 

For Palestinian women, the Israeli-imposed blockade compounds systemic violations, disproportionately infringing on their rights to dignity and life. Article 6 of the ICCPR, guaranteeing the right to life, has been persistently violated through the indiscriminate targeting of civilian areas for decades, not only since October 2023. Despite early scholarship on settler colonialism’s implication and emerging reflections on its meaning today, I argue it is in this regard that CEDAW remains an underutilized instrument for addressing systemic reproductive violence in armed conflict. Specifically its articles 2(e) and 5(a) obligating states to combat structural gender oppression should be further enforced.

Although UN Security Council Resolution 1325 mandates the protection of women in armed conflict, its lack of enforcement underscores the international community’s inertia. Harrowing testimonies include forced sterilizations, cesarean sections performed without anesthesia, as well as unnecessary hysterectomies on young women in an attempt to save their lives (para 97), evidencing the systematic use of reproductive violence as a weapon of war.

Gender and Genocide: South Africa’s Call to Action at the ICJ

South Africa’s recent application to the ICJ, specifically §§95 et seq., and §114,  underscores the still largely unaddressed gendered dimension of genocide under Article II(d) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention), framing reproductive violence as a deliberate strategy of oppression with the ICC’s 2023 Policy on Gender-Based Crimes recognizing reproductive violence. Yet, this particular issue has garnered little attention. The UN Special Committee’s report on arrest warrants, further intensifies the urgency, documenting deliberate killings and sexual violence disproportionately targeting women and children, including attacks on civilians seeking refuge in hospitals or shelters. UN expert Albanese emphasizes that the violence post October 7th is not an isolated chain of events, but part of a long-term systematic and State-driven forced displacement. This framework of oppression is inextricably linked to patterns of reproductive, where it is wielded not only as a tool of domination but as a mechanism to dismantle communities and erase identities. As such, these acts transcend individual harm, symbolizing a broader strategy to destabilize populations during armed conflict. In this regard, Mohan Pieris, chair of the committee, warned: “The world is watching, and history will remember what we choose to do—or fail to do—at this moment.”

But why should feminists care about the Palestinian cause?

The Costs of Selective Feminism in Germany

For Palestinian women, everyday survival is marked by hunger, the absence of clean water, and acute shortages of essential supplies, where menstruation becomes an ordeal, with women resorting to scraps of tents in place of sanitary pads. Pregnant women deliver without anesthesia, risking anemia, hemorrhage, or death and mothers are left to dig through rubble to bury lifeless bodies. Feminist discourse has often overlooked the structural forces sustaining oppression, focusing instead on superficial debates that prioritize critiques of Islamic fundamentalism or patriarchy while neglecting the structural reproductive violence failing to grasp Palestinian women’s linkage of gender equality with national liberation. Thereby, the movement’s credibility and meaningful analysis are being undermined, dismissing the reproductive violence faced by Palestinian women, with only few Western feminists offering recognition as exceptions.

In Germany, feminist solidarity often erases the voices of Palestinian women, reducing them to passive victims of patriarchy. This silence echoes the rhetoric of past U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the supposed liberation of women served to justify imperialist violence, neglecting the harm inflicted on the very women they claimed to protect. Similarly, some frame Israel’s actions as weaponizing feminist ideals to obscure and perpetuate systemic oppression in occupied territories. When gender-based violence against women is acknowledged, it disproportionately highlights Israeli victims, reflecting selective empathy. Though this recognition is an important step, it still fails to address the full scope of reproductive violence

Germany’s feminist foreign policy remains willfully detached from Palestinian women’s lived realities, particularly when Germany kept abstaining from UN ceasefire votes and as of today, continues to provide deliveries of weapons, further undermining its credibility. This silence is further amplified by the weight of Germany’s historical context: while vigilance against anti-Semitism is essential, invoking Holocaust-related trauma to justify blind solidarity with Israel enables ongoing structural violence against Palestinians.

Media narratives reinforce this bias, downplaying the conflict’s gendered dimensions.

A truly transformative feminist response must confront these contradictions head-on. Feminist movements in Germany and beyond must reject the fragmentation of grassroots movements perpetuated by external funding pressures. Instead they must center women’s lived realities and prioritize their voices.

Reclaiming Feminism’s Transformative Potential

True feminism must reject selectivity. The persistent silence of German and other Western feminists in the face of the systemic reproductive violence inflicted on Palestinian women underscores a fundamental failure in the practice of feminism. As discussed, this silence is not a mere oversight but a reflection of deeper structural weaknesses that undermine the universality of feminist advocacy. Inclusive feminism cannot ignore gendered dimensions of state-organized violence and forced displacement.

A meaningful response must extend beyond expressions of moral outrage. It requires actively engaging with legal and political mechanisms. Feminist movements in Germany and beyond must demand accountability through International Criminal Law while further pushing for the enforcement of human rights frameworks and tools like CEDAW. This kind of selective “sisterhood” that improves the lives of few while ignoring systematic oppression in places like Palestine betrays the transformative potential of the movement. Hence, if intersectional feminism is to remain credible, it must confront its own contradictions, and champion systemic change. Silence in the face of profound injustice is not neutrality – it is complicity.

Zitiervorschlag: Seikh, Sabrina, The Limits of “Sisterhood”: The Weakness of Gender Solidarity in the Palestinian Context, JuWissBlog Nr. 2/2025 v. 14.01.2025, https://www.juwiss.de/2-2025/

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Feminism, gender solidarity, International Criminal Law, Palestine, SGBV
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