Israel committed “genocidal” crimes in Gaza by systematically destroying institutions for sexual and reproductive healthcare, according to the findings of a United Nations study released Thursday.
Israel “deliberately targeted and destroyed” the major fertility center in the Palestinian area, according to the UN Commission of Inquiry. At the same time, Israel imposed a blockade and prevented aid, including medication that would ensure safe pregnancies, births, and neonatal care.
“Israel categorically rejects the false charges,” a statement from the country’s mission in Geneva said.
“By the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare, Israeli authorities have damaged in part the reproductive capability of Palestinians in Gaza as a group,” the panel concluded in a statement.
It claimed that this amounted to “two types of genocidal activities” during Israel’s war in Gaza, which was initiated following the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by Hamas militants.
Acts committed with the goal to completely or partially eradicate a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group are considered crimes under the United Nations’ genocide treaty.
Israel was accused of “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life likely to bring about its physical death” and “imposing measures intended to prohibit births within the group” out of the five categories in the probe.
In a statement, commission chair Navi Pillay stated, “These violations have not only caused significant immediate physical and emotional pain and suffering to women and girls, but irrevocable long-term repercussions on the mental health and reproductive and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a group.”
In May 2021, the UN Human Rights Council created the three-member Independent International Commission of Inquiry to look into claims of violations of international law in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Former UN rights chief Pillay presided over the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and was a judge on the International Criminal Court.
A “predetermined and preconceived political objective… in a shameless attempt to blame the Israel Defence Forces” was the charge laid out by Israel against the inquiry.
IVF clinic destruction
According to the study, Gaza’s primary in-vitro reproductive center, the Al-Basma IVF Centre, as well as maternity facilities and wards have been methodically demolished.
According to the study, when Al-Basma was shelled in December 2023, about 4,000 embryos were destroyed at a clinic that saw between 2,000 and 3,000 patients each month.
The commission concluded that all of the reproductive materials kept for future Palestinian conceptions were purposefully assaulted and destroyed by the Israeli Security Forces.
No reliable proof that the structure was utilized for military reasons was discovered by the commission.
Devastation “was a measure meant to restrict births among Palestinians in Gaza, which is a genocidal act,” the report said.
The research also stated that the injury to pregnant, breastfeeding, and new mothers in Gaza was on a “unprecedented magnitude” and that it had an irreparable effect on Gazans’ ability to procreate.
The commission came to the conclusion that such underlying acts “amount to crimes against humanity” and that the Palestinians were being purposefully destroyed as a group.
The report was released following the commission’s Tuesday and Wednesday public sessions in Geneva, where witnesses and victims of sexual abuse were heard.
It came to the conclusion that Israel had committed “acts that constitute the crime against humanity of murder and the war crime of deliberate killing” by specifically targeting civilian women and girls.
Additionally, it stated that “acts that amount to the crime against humanity of extermination” had occurred when Israeli authorities’ restrictions on access to reproductive health care caused women and girls to die from pregnancy and childbirth-related issues.
The commission also noted that the Israeli Security Forces’ “standard operating procedures” against Palestinians include forced public nudity and stripping, sexual harassment, including threats of rape, and sexual assault.
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