UN experts accuse Israel of sexual violence and 'genocidal acts' in Gaza

UN experts have accused Israel of increasingly using sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians and carrying out "genocidal acts" through the systematic destruction of maternal and reproductive healthcare facilities.

A report commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council documents alleged violations, including rape, in Gaza and the occupied West Bank since Hamas's 7 October 2023 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war.

It also says the destruction of maternity wards in Gaza and embryos at a fertility clinic could indicate a strategy to prevent births among a particular group - one of the legal definitions of genocide.

Israel said it "categorically rejects the unfounded allegations".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded angrily, calling the Human Rights Council "an antisemitic, rotten, terrorist-supporting and irrelevant body".

Instead of focusing on war crimes committed by Hamas, he said, it was attacking Israel with "false accusations".

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The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021 to investigate all alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

The three-member commission said its new report was based on testimony from victims and witnesses of sexual and reproductive violence, some of whom spoke during two days of public hearings held in Geneva earlier this week, as well as verified photos and video footage, and information from civil society and women's rights organisations.

The commission's chair Navi Pillay, a South African former UN human rights chief, said the evidence collected "reveals a deplorable increase in sexual and gender-based violence" that she claimed was being employed by Israel against Palestinians "to terrorise them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination".

The report says 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 Security Forces' standard operating procedures toward Palestinians".

Other forms of such 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", it alleges.

The report does not provide examples of explicit orders from commanders or senior officials. But it does cite statements from Israeli ministers who defended soldiers who were accused of severely mistreating a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman military base last year.

Commission member Chris Sidoti, an Australian human rights lawyer, told the BBC: "Sexual violence is now so widespread that it can only be considered systematic. It's got beyond the level of random acts by rogue individuals."

Israel has rejected accusations of widespread ill-treatment and torture of Gaza detainees, and insisted it is fully committed to international legal standards.

The report says the commission also found that Israeli forces had systematically destroyed sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities across Gaza during the 17-month war there.

It concludes that women and girls have died from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth due to conditions imposed by the Israeli authorities which have denied access to reproductive health care, and says they amount to the crime against humanity of extermination.

The commission also alleges that Israeli authorities have "destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group" through the "systematic destruction" of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities, including maternity hospitals and maternity wards of hospitals and Gaza's main in-vitro fertility clinic, Al-Basma IVF Centre in Gaza City.

This amounts to "two categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention, including deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births", it concludes.

According to the report, the embryology laboratory at Al-Basma was hit in early December 2023, reportedly destroying around 4,000 embryos as well as 1,000 sperm samples and unfertilised eggs.

It says the commission determined through visual analysis of pictures that the damage was caused by a large calibre projectile, most probably an Israeli tank shell, and that it was intentionally attacked by Israeli forces. However, the Israeli military told ABC News at the time that it was not aware of a strike on the clinic. The BBC has contacted the IDF for comment.

"The deliberate destruction of a health facility is one serious issue for international humanitarian law and human rights law. But it does appear from our analysis of the attack on this clinic, that it was knowingly and intentionally directed towards the destruction of reproductive services," Mr Sidoti said. "The consequence of this is the prevention of births."

In a statement, Israel's mission to the UN in Geneva said the report was "a shameless attempt to incriminate the [Israel Defense Forces] and manufacture the illusion of 'systemic' use of [sexual and gender-based violence]".

It criticised what it called the commission's decision to use "information from second-hand single uncorroborated sources", which it said was inconsistent with established UN standards and methodologies.

The statement also stressed that the IDF had "concrete directives, procedures, orders, and policies, which unequivocally prohibit such misconduct", as well as mechanisms to investigate any incidents of alleged sexual violence.

Israel's prime minister also rejected the report's findings and called the Human Rights Council an "anti-Israel circus".

"Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and the war crimes that were perpetrated by the Hamas terrorist organisation 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 said.

The International Court of Justice is hearing a case bought by South Africa that accuses Israeli forces of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Israel has vehemently denied the allegation.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

More than 48,520 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Most of Gaza's 2.1 million population has also been displaced multiple times. Almost 70% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed; the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed; and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.