Israel carried out genocidal acts through the systematic destruction of fertility and reproductive healthcare facilities in Gaza , a new report released today by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel says.
The report documents a broad range of violations perpetrated against Palestinian women, men, girls and boys across the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 7 October 2023 that “constitutes a major element in the ill-treatment of Palestinians and are part of the unlawful occupation and persecution of Palestinians as a group”.
“The evidence collected by the Commission reveals a deplorable increase in sexual and gender-based violence,” said Navi Pillay, chair of the Commission. “There is no escape from the conclusion that Israel has employed sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians to terrorise them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination.”
The report found that sexual and gender-based violence – which has risen in frequency and severity – is being perpetrated across the Occupied Palestinian Territory “as a strategy of war for Israel to dominate and destroy the Palestinian people.”
Specific forms of sexual and gender-based violence – such as forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault – comprise part of the Israeli Security Forces’ standard operating procedures toward Palestinians.
Other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape and violence to the genitals, were committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership, the report said.
A climate of impunity also exists with regard to sexual and gender-based crimes committed by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, with the aim of instilling fear into the Palestinian community and expelling them, the report adds.
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The ineffectiveness of the military justice system to hold occupation soldiers to account for their violations sends “a clear message to members of the Israeli Security Forces that they can continue committing such acts without fear of accountability,” said Pillay.
Israeli occupation forces have systematically destroyed sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities across Gaza, the report found. They have simultaneously imposed a siege and prevented humanitarian assistance, including the provision of necessary medication and equipment to ensure safe pregnancies, deliveries and post-partum and neonatal care. These acts violate women’s and girls’ reproductive rights and autonomy, as well as their right to life, health, founding a family, human dignity, physical and mental integrity, freedom from torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and self-determination and the principle of non-discrimination.
Women and girls have died from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth due to the conditions imposed by the Israeli authorities which have denied access to reproductive health care – acts which amount to the crime against humanity of extermination.
The destruction of the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza amounts to an act of genocide, the report adds, by deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births.
“The targeting of reproductive healthcare facilities, including through direct attacks on maternity wards and Gaza’s main in-vitro fertility clinic, combined with the use of starvation as a method of war, has impacted all aspects of reproduction,” said Commissioner Pillay. “These violations have not only caused severe immediate physical and mental harm and suffering to women and girls, but irreversible long-term effects on the mental health and reproductive and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a group.”
The release of the report was accompanied by two days of public hearings held in Geneva on 11-12 March, during which the Commission heard from victims and witnesses of sexual and reproductive violence and medical personnel who assisted them, as well as representatives from civil society, academics, lawyers and medical experts.