By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
Geneva – Israel’s systematic sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians is widespread and amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to United Nations experts. Anew report released by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, also concludes that Israel has been responsible for acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip since October 2023.
The long-standing impunity enjoyed by Israel, which has enabled it to continue its systematiccrimes against Palestinians, must end immediately due to the seriousness of the report’s contents.
In its report “‘More than a human can bear’: Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since October 2023” released today (13 March 2025), the International Commission of Inquiry concludesthat the frequency, severity, and prevalence of sexual and gender-based crimes against Palestinian men and women in the Occupied Palestinian Territory show that Israel is increasingly and systematically employing sexual and gender-based violence as a deliberate strategy to destabilize Palestinian society, assert control, persecute its people, and contribute to their destruction.
According to the report, thousands of women have died in Gaza since 7 October 2023 as a result of Israeli military operations that have disproportionately affected civilians, especially Palestinian women and girls, many of whom were directly targeted.
The Commission of Inquiry asserts that Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian women and girls have also resulted in severe gender-related harm, including death from pregnancy and childbirth complications, as well as serious physical and psychological harm. This is because of deliberate Israeli policies that have destroyed the Gaza Strip’s health system and preventedwomen and girls of reproductive age from accessing reproductive healthcare.
Israel specifically targeted facilities related to sexual and reproductive health, which had both immediate and long-term effects on women’s physical and mental well-being as well as their capacity to procreate. These effects will have a lasting impact on the fertility of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as a whole. All phases of reproduction—from pregnancy and childbirth to postpartum recuperation and breastfeeding—have been negatively impacted by Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war, blocking of humanitarian aid, and forced displacement of Palestinians in the Strip.
The Commission of Inquiry documented systematic patterns of gender-based and sexual violence against Palestinians, including crimessuch as rape, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, sexual torture, genital-targeted violence, and degrading treatment. As part of Israeli tactics meant to degrade and terrorize Palestinians, these infractions were photographed or recordedand shared online on social media platforms.
The report also noted that Palestinian men, women, and children have been subjected to sexual and gender-based violence across the occupied Palestinian territory, whether during arrest, in interrogation centers and prisons, or amid forced displacement in Gaza. These violations were systematically committed by Israeli security forces, as well as by Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
The Commission determined that the sexual and reproductive crimes committed by Israel in the Palestinian territories since October 7, 2023, constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity. It further concluded that some of these acts amount to genocide under the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention and The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The Commission confirmed that Israel has systematically targeted the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza through the deliberate destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities, including maternity hospitals and in-vitro fertilization centers, significantly undermining childbirth within the Palestinian community. Additionally, Israel imposed a comprehensive siege, preventing access to essential humanitarian aid, including food, water, and critical medications and equipment necessary for safe pregnancies, deliveries, and neonatal care. These actions have resulted in irreversible long-term effects on the mental health, physical well-being, and reproductive and fertility prospects of Palestinians in Gaza as a group.
Furthermore, Israel used starvation as a method of warfare and systematically denied exit permits for patients, particularly women suffering from serious illnesses such as gynecological cancer, exacerbating their suffering and putting their lives at grave risk. The Commission concluded that these combined policies amount to the deliberate imposition of living conditions intended to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians, in whole or in part—an act explicitly classified as genocide under Article 6 of the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.
The report of the UN committee is entirely in line with the documentation of human rights organisations, including Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, during the last 17 months in the Gaza Strip. Despite the fact that Israeli crimes against civilians in the Strip have unquestionably included elements of genocide, most members of the international community have shamefully done nothing to stop the crime or hold Israel and its allies responsible for it.
Euro-Med Monitor has previously documented Israel’s systematic use of sexual violence, including rape and other forms of sexual crimes. These violations are a clear part of a larger Israeli campaign of genocidal violence against the Palestinian people, and Israel should therefore be added to the list of organisations that engage in sexual violence during times of conflict.
In October 2024, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor published a report documenting the various elements of the crime of genocide, including the imposition of measures aimed at preventing childbirth within the Palestinian community. The report found that Israeli occupation forces have acted with prior and specific intent through deliberate measures to prevent births in Gaza as part of the crime of genocide. These measures include expanding the killing of individuals of reproductive age, forcibly displacing and separating Palestinian families, destroying embryo preservation laboratories, dismantling the healthcare system, and imposing harsh living conditions through starvation and the deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid.
The International Commission’s report ought to be a wake-up call for all pertinent states and organisations to take immediate action to fulfil their responsibilities under the Genocide Convention, rather than just sitting on paper. The continued inaction of these states and entities regarding Israeli crimes has directly or indirectly contributed to the ongoing crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip, and is thus legally and morally indefensible.
Many people of conscience have lost faith in the international system and the principles of justice and equality. This loss is justified, given the international community’s persistent disdain for the reports and recommendations of competent independent entities, as well as its preference for political interests and considerations over moral and legal obligations. This also creates the necessary conditions for tensions and conflicts to continue and escalate.
In line with their international commitments, states must enact economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions to force Israel to stop its crimes, in light of the overwhelming evidence that it has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. The financial assets of officials implicated in crimes against Palestinians must be frozen, trade privileges and bilateral agreements suspended, arms exports and purchases from Israel prohibited, and military cooperation with Israel suspended. States must also refrain from interfering with the International Criminal Court’s work in any manner and assist it in its continuing investigations into the situation in Palestine.
To be in compliance with international law, the international community must take immediate action to ensure the Palestinian people’s right to live in freedom and dignity, support their right to self-determination, and eradicate the underlying causes of their suffering and continuous oppression over the past 76 years, i.e. occupation and ethnic cleansing. They must also seek to lift Israel’s illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip, ensure accountability for Israeli perpetrators, guarantee the right of Palestinian victims to redress and compensation, end the illegal Israeli occupation and violent settler colonialism imposed on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and demolish the system of isolation and apartheid imposed by Israel and its allies against Palestinians.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe
14 March 2025
Source: countercurrents.org