The release of the report, according to a press release, was accompanied by two days of public hearings held in Geneva.
Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians and carried out genocidal acts through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities, according to a new UN report.
The 49-page report titled “‘More than a human can bear’: Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since 7 October 2023” was issued on Thursday by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
“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.”
Report by @UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, & Israel, says Israel has used sexual, reproductive & other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians since Oct. 2023
➡️https://t.co/eW2hiUUdEw pic.twitter.com/VSeZzuEWeG— UN Human Rights Council (@UN_HRC) March 13, 2025
The release of the report, according to a press release, was accompanied by two days of public hearings held in Geneva from March 11 to 12, 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.
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 army’s “standard operating procedures” toward Palestinians.
Leadership’s Implicit Encouragement
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.
“The exculpatory statements and actions by Israeli leaders and the lack of effectiveness shown by the military justice system to prosecute cases and convict perpetrators send a clear message to members of the Israeli Security Forces that they can continue committing such acts without fear of accountability,” said Pillay.
The UN has released a report today detailing how Israel has systematically targeted sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities & uses sexual violence as a strategy of war.@nour_odeh reports. pic.twitter.com/T3uEcyn6U4
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) March 13, 2025
“In this context, accountability through the International Criminal Court and national courts, through their domestic law or exercising universal jurisdiction, is essential if the rule of law is to be upheld and victims awarded justice.”
The UN noted that a climate of impunity also exists with regard to sexual and gender-based crimes committed by illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank, “with the aim of instilling fear into the Palestinian community and expelling them,” the press statement noted.
Main IVF Clinic Destroyed
The Commission found that Israeli forces have systematically destroyed sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities across Gaza, including the Basma IVF Clinic which was the main fertility center in Gaza.
“#Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence against #Palestinians as part of an effort to undermine their right to self-determination,” shows report by the Commission of Inquiry on Occupied Palestinian Territory. https://t.co/h8h8C3AsRk pic.twitter.com/2dd8eVV5hG
— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) March 13, 2025
The army “destroyed all of the reproductive material that was stored for the future conception of Palestinians,” the report stated, adding that the Commission did not find any evidence that this IVF clinic was a legitimate military target at the time that it was attacked.
“The Commission concludes that the destruction of the Basma IVF clinic was a measure intended to prevent births among Palestinians in Gaza, which is a genocidal act under the Rome Statute and Genocide Convention. The Commission also concludes that this was done with the intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, in whole or in part, and that this is the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question,” it noted.
Maternal Health Facilities Attacked
The Commission also found that the Israeli army forces “intentionally and systematically attacked and destroyed” reproductive and maternal health facilities across Gaza, including maternity hospitals and maternity wings of hospitals.
“The intentional destruction of reproductive health care, infrastructure and facilities that provide essential services for the population of Gaza to survive and reproduce exhibits the intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza, in whole or in part,” the report stated.
Nothing to see here, just a 49-page UN report documenting Israel’s “genocidal acts” in Gaza and its systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. https://t.co/SpEM8opnjn pic.twitter.com/nY6qoXuMEx
— Zachary Foster (@_ZachFoster) March 13, 2025
According to the report, the Israeli army “controlled the entry, the content and the amounts of humanitarian assistance” allowed into Gaza and “deliberately stopped humanitarian assistance which included items essential for pregnant women, new mothers and newborns from reaching Gaza, both through direct attacks and through the imposition of a total siege.”
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When humanitarian assistance was allowed into Gaza, “it was sporadic and did not sufficiently meet the needs of the civilian population.”
As such, the report noted, the Israeli army “inflicted conditions of life on pregnant, post-partum and lactating women and their newborns and children in Gaza, resulting in the deprivation of essential care, food, water, medicine and shelter, that were indispensable to their survival.”
Attack on Women
The Commission therefore concluded that the Israeli army “caused serious bodily and mental harm to members of this group, and deliberately inflicted conditions of life that were calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza as a group, in whole or in part, which are categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.”
The report particularly noted that the act of forcing women to strip to their underwear and remove their veils in public and in front of the community “has a particular negative impact on women living in a society with strict religious and cultural dress codes.”
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“Forcing women to undress in public constitutes sexual violence against women and is a form of discrimination prohibited by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, to which Israel is a State Party, and a violation of human rights,” the report said, adding that these acts constitute grave human rights violations by the Israeli soldiers.
Palestinian women were also particularly targeted in relation to sexual harassment online and psychological violence, including gendered and sexualized insults and graffiti on sites attacked in Gaza.
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Israeli soldiers” filmed themselves ransacking homes, including drawers filled with lingerie, to mock and humiliate Palestinian women, referring to Arab women as ‘sluts’”.
The Commission concluded, based on the circumstances and context of these acts, that gender-based violence directed at Palestinian women “was intended to humiliate and degrade the Palestinian population as a whole.”
Attempt to Dishonor
It said such attacks represent an attempt to dishonor the society as a whole by subjugating women to sexual violence.
“This is an additional gendered dimension of these attacks and a symptom of the male-controlled collective,” the report said.
Video shows an Israeli soldier wearing women’s lingerie during a raid in the occupied West Bank. The scale of Israeli military assaults in the territory has increased as troops attack homes, and open fire on Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/uWaXad8lTS
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 29, 2025
The Commission also found an increasing proportion of female fatalities in Gaza, which have occurred “at an unprecedented scale” as a result of an Israeli strategy of deliberately targeting residential buildings and using heavy explosives in densely populated areas.
It also documented cases in which women and girls of all ages, including maternity patients, were targeted – acts that constitute the crime against humanity of murder and the war crime of wilful killing, the press statement said.
Israel Rejects Report
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the report, calling the UN Human Rights Council an “anti-Israel circus” and accusing it of having “long been revealed as an antisemitic, rotten and irrelevant organization that supports terrorism.”
Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and the war crimes that were perpetrated by the Hamas terrorist organization in the worst massacre carried out against the Jewish People since the Holocaust,
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) March 13, 2025
“Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and the war crimes that were perpetrated by the Hamas terrorist organization in the worst massacre carried out against the Jewish People since the Holocaust, the UN has again chosen to attack the State of Israel with false accusations, including baseless accusations of sexual violence,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.
“This is not a human rights council; it is a blood rights council,” the statement added.
Around 48,520 Palestinians have been killed and over 100,000 injured in Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza that began in October 2023, with a fragile ceasefire in place since January 19.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
