Mahmoud fled the West Bank seven years ago after his father caught him with another man and locked him inside the family home for a week. His relatives starved and beat him, he said, and vowed to kill him. He escaped through a hole in the roof while they slept and reached Israel with a stranger’s help. Now his temporary Israeli residency permit has lapsed, and he is fighting deportation back to the family that promised to end his life.
A new study commissioned by HIAS, formerly the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, describes the same pattern across eight interviews with gay Palestinians who fled the West Bank and four Israeli activists who have collectively helped hundreds more. Family violence and institutional persecution push them out of the West Bank. A permit system that stops well short of asylum, and a resettlement escape valve that Washington has all but sealed, keep them stuck once they arrive.
Municipal Flyers Told Neighbors Whom to Report
HIAS, an American Jewish humanitarian organization, has spent years supporting LGBTQ refugees across fifteen countries, from Kenya to Ecuador. Its Israel office produced this study, the group’s first dedicated look at Palestinian LGBTQ asylum seekers in seven years, built from first-hand testimony rather than secondhand reports.
Researcher Daniella Danial, who wrote the study, said many Israelis dismiss the danger as a lifestyle choice rather than a threat to life. “Israel strongly resists acknowledging that there is persecution in the Palestinian territories,” Danial told The Times of Israel. “Israel says, ‘They come here to live a liberal lifestyle,’ as if it’s like someone moving from Bnei Brak to Tel Aviv.”
Manar, a 25-year-old lesbian from a West Bank village whose name was changed for her protection, said her father began beating her routinely after finding intimate messages on her phone. He forced her into marriage with a man, and when she filed a police complaint before the wedding, officers arrested her father, only to release him once they learned the violence stemmed from her daughter’s sexual orientation, she said. The Palestinian Authority did not respond to a request for comment on her account or on the study’s wider claims.
Yaman, a 23-year-old gay man from Nablus, described being abducted by roughly 20 men who strung him up inside an abandoned building and beat him before phoning his family. Instead of help, he said, he got blame. Police opened a kidnapping investigation, he said, then dropped it because, in his account, no one cared about the gay guy who had been kidnapped.
Danial said she obtained flyers bearing official municipal stamps that named LGBTQ individuals and urged residents to locate, report and attack them. “Seeing the official municipal stamps and instructions telling people what to do to them was terrifying and shocking,” she said. Because the flyers contain victims’ identifying details, the study does not reproduce them.
What We Know
- Researchers interviewed eight LGBTQ Palestinians who fled the West Bank and four Israeli activists who have collectively assisted hundreds of asylum seekers.
- A 2019 Palestinian police statement banned organized activities by Al Qaws, a Palestinian LGBTQ advocacy group, before the announcement was later deleted from official platforms.
- Interviewees described a pattern of arbitrary detention and fabricated criminal charges by Palestinian Authority institutions, according to Danial.
What Remains Unconfirmed
- The Times of Israel could not independently verify the existence or contents of the municipal flyers Danial described.
- The Palestinian Authority did not respond to requests for comment on any of the persecution allegations in the study.
- Investigators never determined whether the 2022 killing of a gay West Bank asylum seeker was motivated by his sexuality, and no one has been arrested.
The flyers, Danial said, circulate between authorities in different parts of the West Bank, making internal relocation nearly impossible. That leaves flight to Israel as the only option many see.
A Legal Track Built to Avoid the Word Refugee
Israel signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, which bars states from returning people to places where they face persecution. Its Population Authority nonetheless maintains that Palestinians fall outside the treaty entirely, arguing they remain the responsibility of a separate UN agency created specifically for them. Eritrean and Sudanese nationals can at least file formal asylum claims through the Interior Ministry, even though approval is rare and the wait can stretch for years.
Israel has recognized barely any of them. Its asylum recognition rate ranks among the lowest of any wealthy nation, according to the UN refugee agency’s own rights mapping. Palestinians cannot even enter that broken system. Instead, an interministerial team built a separate route in 2014: a welfare residency permit, issued case by case through the Civil Administration, the Defense Ministry body that governs civilian affairs in the West Bank.
The same 2014 government committee that created that pathway found no organized persecution of Palestinian LGBTQ people, framing their flight instead as a pursuit of a more liberal way of life, according to reporting on the committee’s findings at the time. More than a decade later, Danial hears the identical argument from ordinary Israelis and officials alike.
Three tracks for protection now run side by side in Israel, with very different rights attached to each.
| Status Track | Who Qualifies | Typical Validity | Work and Benefits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welfare residency permit | West Bank Palestinians citing persecution over sexual orientation, domestic violence or collaboration accusations | One month to one year, renewable at the Civil Administration’s discretion | Legal work allowed only since 2022; no unemployment benefits, disability payments or health insurance |
| Conditional release visa | Mostly Eritrean and Sudanese nationals Israel will not deport | Renewed periodically through the Interior Ministry | Not a formal work visa, though employers go unprosecuted; no welfare or medical service access |
| Recognized refugee status | Formally approved asylum seekers of any nationality | Annual A5 visa | Full work rights, health insurance, welfare support and family reunification |
Amir, a 28-year-old man from a West Bank city, told the study that once the emergency savings he arrived with ran out, no employer would hire him without a bank account or ID card he could not obtain on a temporary permit. Danial said many Palestinians who flee, including from middle-class backgrounds, end up on the street, and some turn to prostitution or drugs to survive.
Why Approval Rates Dropped After October 7
Approval rates for welfare permits fell sharply once the war with Hamas began, according to the study and to attorney Adi Lustigman, who represents Palestinian LGBTQ asylum seekers. Roughly 90 percent of applicants citing persecution received permits before October 7, 2023. That figure has since dropped to around 60 percent, and the process itself has grown far more punishing.
Before the war, Lustigman said, applicants could get a short-term entry permit while waiting for a Civil Administration interview. That informal practice ended without any announcement after October 7, forcing people to live in Israel illegally for months until an aid group could arrange an interview on their behalf. Newly issued permits often run for just a month or two now, she said, and officials increasingly demand fresh proof that danger persists, even years into an approved case.
Lustigman said caseworkers now routinely ask permit holders to prove, again and again, that the threat has not passed. In practice, she said, that can mean:
- Calling a relative back home and recording the conversation to capture a fresh threat
- Screenshotting new threatening messages sent to the applicant or their family
- Sitting through repeated renewal interviews that require reliving the original trauma
- Producing new documentation even when a case was approved years earlier
“They’re constantly being forced to relive the trauma,” Lustigman said.
Mahmoud faced exactly that requirement in September, he said, when the Civil Administration demanded new evidence of recent threats before it would renew his permit, something it had never required in his earlier renewals. His application was denied.
Two People a Year Now Get Out
For most LGBTQ Palestinians who reach Israel, the country is a waypoint, not a destination. A program run through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has historically resettled Palestinian LGBTQ asylum seekers to third countries, offering a route out of the permit system entirely.
That door is closing. Officials say the effort has been curtailed since 2025 because of funding cuts tied to the Trump administration’s broader pullback from foreign assistance, part of a pattern that has hit refugee operations well beyond Israel. Washington suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program by executive order in January 2025, and humanitarian groups say global humanitarian funding collapsed by roughly a third between 2024 and 2025 as American support evaporated. The UN refugee agency itself has said it cut roughly 3,500 Geneva and field staff positions, warning that more than 11 million refugees worldwide risk losing access to aid.
- Two people a year can now be resettled from Israel to a third country, according to Danial, down from an average of fifteen before the cuts began.
- Roughly a third of global humanitarian funding disappeared between 2024 and 2025, largely tied to the American pullback.
- About 3,500 staff positions were cut at the UN refugee agency’s headquarters and regional offices worldwide.
Danial did the arithmetic out loud.
If there are 300 Palestinian LGBTQ people here, even by the most conservative estimate, it’ll take another 150 years for everyone to leave.
Danial, an Israeli citizen who identifies as Palestinian, said the old bargain Israel offered this population, a temporary stay that would eventually end in resettlement elsewhere, no longer holds. “In the past, Israel could say: ‘You can stay here temporarily until you’re resettled in a third country,’” she said. “Today, it’s a dead end.”
Judges Say Stay, Ministers Appeal
The legal landscape for LGBTQ Palestinians in Israel has shifted before, and unevenly. In February 2024, Judge Michal Agmon-Gonen of the Tel Aviv Court for Administrative Affairs ruled that Palestinians from the West Bank can request asylum based on sexual persecution, rejecting the Population Authority’s position that the Refugee Convention does not apply to them at all. Interior Minister Moshe Arbel, of the religious Shas party, said within days that he would appeal.
That same tension played out in Mahmoud’s own case this year. After his September permit denial, he appealed to the Administrative Affairs Court, which ruled in March that he should not be deported but stopped short of granting him legal status, meaning he can remain in Israel without the right to work. The court gave no explanation, and it has since appealed its own ruling. The Civil Administration did not respond to a request for comment.
Interviewees also described a harder edge from law enforcement since the war began. Issam, a gay man from the West Bank, said he was detained while taking out his trash because he lacked identification, then deported despite holding a valid permit, until a lawyer intervened to bring him back. On his way home afterward, he said, officers stopped and beat him, then took him to a checkpoint a second time, and only a second legal intervention stopped another deportation. Israel Police did not respond to a request for comment. Danial said several other permit holders were deported after officers told them permits “don’t matter” for Palestinians anymore.
Danial said the hostility bleeds into economic life too. “Suddenly, employers don’t want to pay their Palestinian workers,” she said. “People work 10-hour shifts washing dishes, and at the end of the month, they simply aren’t paid.” Separately, a tracking effort covering the period through West Bank violence statistics into January 2026 found Palestinians suffering a rising toll of injuries tied to the broader conflict.
The Suspicion That Never Faded
Part of what makes exposure so dangerous, several interviewees said, is a longstanding link in Palestinian society between homosexuality and suspected collaboration with Israel. Veterans of Unit 8200, Israel’s military intelligence branch, publicly acknowledged in 2014 that their work included gathering information on Palestinians’ sexual orientation to pressure some into becoming informants. HIAS has said its own research found ample testimony connecting collaboration accusations directly to LGBTQ persecution cases.
That suspicion followed at least one asylum seeker into Israel itself. A separate investigation published by The Intercept in May 2026 found a gay Palestinian man was pressured for intelligence after Israeli authorities granted him a welfare permit in 2024, then invalidated it months later without explanation. His case helps explain why some interviewees in the HIAS study said they trust almost no one, Israeli or Palestinian, with the fact of their sexuality.
Mahmoud Still Waits for an Answer
Mahmoud’s case remains open while the Civil Administration contests the March ruling that lets him stay in Israel. He cannot work legally. He cannot plan far past his next court date. He agreed to tell his story anyway, he said, because silence never protected him before.
“I’m in Israel because I have nowhere else to escape my family,” Mahmoud said. “I hope I never have to return to the West Bank, because if my family finds me, I’ll die.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Homosexuality Illegal in the West Bank?
No law in the West Bank criminalizes same-sex relations between consenting adults; the territory decriminalized such acts in 1951 under Jordanian rule. Gaza never followed suit, and Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2006, criminalizes homosexuality outright, exposing LGBTQ Gazans to the risk of incarceration or worse.
Why Won’t Israel Grant Palestinians Refugee Status?
Israel’s Population Authority argues Palestinians fall outside the 1951 Refugee Convention because a separate UN agency, not the UN refugee agency, already holds a mandate over Palestinian refugees. Courts have pushed back: a Tel Aviv Administrative Affairs Court ruling in February 2024 found the convention does apply to West Bank Palestinians facing individual persecution, though the government appealed that decision.
What Happened in the 2022 Beheading Case That Drew International Attention?
A 25-year-old West Bank man who had been living under asylum in Israel was found decapitated after returning to the territory under unclear circumstances in October 2022. Palestinian police opened an investigation but never determined the killing was motivated by homophobia, and no one has ever been arrested in the case.
Do Eritrean and Sudanese Asylum Seekers Get Better Treatment in Israel?
Marginally, though still far below international norms. Eritrean and Sudanese applicants can file formal asylum claims in Israel, even though the country recognizes only a fraction of the claims accepted elsewhere, and Eritreans and Sudanese are approved at far higher rates abroad, 82 percent and 68 percent respectively in other developed countries. Palestinians cannot file under that system at all and must rely on the separate welfare permit track instead.
Can Gay Palestinians From Gaza Reach Israel the Same Way as Those From the West Bank?
Not in practice. The welfare permit system runs through the Civil Administration’s presence in the West Bank, where Palestinians can reach Israeli territory through crossings and contacts unavailable to Gaza residents. Hamas’ rule and the sealed nature of the Gaza Strip since the war leave LGBTQ Gazans with far fewer routes out, even though Hamas’ criminal code makes their situation at least as dangerous.
