By Olivia Le Poidevin
GENEVA (Reuters) – 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.
Israel’s permanent mission to the U.N. in Geneva described allegations in the report as unfounded, bias, and lacking credibility.
“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 U.N. 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 following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel in October 2023.
Israel 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.
A previous report published by the Commission in June 2024 accused Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups of serious rights violations in its October 7, 2023 attack, including torture and degrading treatment.
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.
South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel’s actions in Gaza at the International Court of Justice.
Hamas carried out a cross-border raid into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, triggering a devastating war in the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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