A new United Nations report says Israel used sexual and gender-based violence as a war strategy in Gaza, and carried out “genocidal acts” against Palestinians through the systematic destruction of women’s health-care facilities.
In a report published Thursday, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, examined the widespread destruction of the territory, the use of heavy explosives in civilian areas and Israeli attacks on hospitals and health facilities.
The 49-page report found that all three factors led to “disproportionate violence against women and children.”
“The evidence collected by the Commission reveals a deplorable increase in sexual and gender-based violence,” said commission chair and former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay.
“There is no escape from the conclusion that Israel has employed sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians to terrorize them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the report’s findings are biased and antisemitic.
“Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organization … the United Nations once again chooses to attack the state of Israel with false accusations,” he said in a statement Thursday.
Palestinians’ reproductive capacity destroyed: report
Israeli authorities have “destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group,” the report said.
The destruction of reproductive capacity amounts to two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention: deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians; and imposing measures intended to prevent births.
Those actions, in addition to a surge in maternity deaths due to restricted access to medical supplies, amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination, the commission said.
An orphaned baby girl in Gaza, who clung to life after being pulled from her dying mother’s womb following an Israeli airstrike, has passed away.
“Israel’s use of starvation as a method of war, the denial of humanitarian assistance and the concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system, compounded by the lack of water and access to sanitation facilities, have caused severe reproductive harms to women and girls, impacting all aspects of reproduction, including pregnancy, childbirth, post-partum recovery and lactation,” it said.
The report also accused Israel’s security forces of using forced public stripping and sexual assault as part of their standard operating procedures to punish Palestinians following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel in October 2023.
The resulting war in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.
During a series of hearings held by the commission this week in Geneva, a Gaza nurse, identified only as Said for his protection, said that Israeli forces had kidnapped him and made him publicly strip down to his underwear. During his captivity, he was beaten in the genitals, he said.
“This is physical abuse, but it’s also psychological abuse. It’s designed to humiliate,” said Chris Sidoti, one of three members of a commission of inquiry into abuses committed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
IDF says policies ‘prohibit such misconduct’
The commission also accused Israeli security forces of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian detainees. Israel denies any systematic abuse of prisoners and says it takes action when there are violations.
Israel, which disengaged from the Human Rights Council in February, has rejected the accusations.
“The IDF [Israeli Defence Force] has concrete directives … and policies which unequivocally prohibit such misconduct,” the permanent mission to the UN in Geneva responded in a statement, adding that its review processes are in line with international standards.
Palestinian officials say people in Gaza could soon run out of clean drinking water. After Israel cut off the electricity supply to Gaza this weekend, a desalination plant in Deir al-Balah has been running at about 30 per cent capacity on backup generators.
A previous report published by the commission in June 2024 accused Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups of serious rights violations in the 2023 attacks, which killed 1,200 people and resulted in 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
In March last year, a team of United Nations experts said there were “reasonable grounds to believe” sexual violence, including rape, occurred at several locations during the militant group’s assault.
The commission’s findings can be used as evidence for the International Criminal Court or other bodies that seek to prosecute war crimes.
South Africa, which has brought a genocide case against Israel’s actions in Gaza at the International Court of Justice, has alleged the Israeli military operation in Gaza is “genocidal in character” and intended to bring about the destruction of Palestinian people in the besieged territory.
Israel is party to the Genocide Convention and was ordered in January 2024 by the International Court of Justice to take action to prevent acts of genocide during the war against Hamas.
It is not party to the Rome Statute, which gives the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to rule on individual criminal cases involving genocide and crimes against humanity.
