The Hidden War on Palestinian Women: Checkpoint Diaries documents how Israeli checkpoints have become sites of gendered violence against Palestinian women, practices that intensified after Israel’s genocide in Gaza but long predate it.
The Balasan Initiative for Human Rights released the film on November 13, 2025. It brings together a series of anonymous testimonies from Palestinian women who describe harassment, intimidation, and physical abuse during what is routinely framed as “security inspections.” Through these accounts, checkpoints emerge not as neutral infrastructure, but as spaces of control where bodies, time, and movement are policed through humiliation and fear.
One testimony recounts a woman being forcibly removed from her vehicle, threatened at gunpoint, physically assaulted, and detained while soldiers attempted to access her phone, an experience that ended without explanation or apology once no evidence was found. Other testimonies follow similar patterns. All contributors remain anonymous for their safety.
By centering mainly women’s voices, the film exposes how restrictions on freedom of movement are lived at the most intimate level: crossing a checkpoint to reach work, school, medical care, or family becomes an unpredictable encounter shaped by surveillance and coercion. The film situates these experiences within a broader system where daily mobility is never guaranteed, and dignity is routinely compromised.
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