Israel carried out “genocidal acts” against Palestinians by systematically destroying women’s healthcare facilities during the conflict in Gaza, and used sexual violence as a war strategy, United Nations experts said in a new report on Thursday.
“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention,” said the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
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.
The report accused Israel’s security forces of using forced public stripping and sexual assault as part of their standard operating procedures to punish Palestinians since October 2023.
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.
