Geneva, Switzerland:
A study by the United Nations concluded on Thursday that Israel performed “genocidal” actions in Gaza through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive care institutions.
The UN investigation committee said that Israel had “deliberately attacked and destroyed” the most important fertility center of the Palestinian territory and at the same time imposed a siege and blocked help, including medication for guaranteeing safe pregnancies, deliveries and neonal care.
“Israel categorically rejects the unfounded allegations,” said his mission in Geneva in a statement.
The committee found that the Israeli authorities “partially destroyed the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group by the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive health care,” said it in a statement.
It said that this amounted to “two categories of genocidal actions” during the offensive of Israel in Gaza, launched after the attacks by Hamas militants on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The Genocide Convention of the United Nations defines that crime as acts committed with the intention of destroying a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
Of the five categories, the study said that the two that Israel implied “deliberately calculated the group conditions that are calculated to bring about his physical destruction” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”.
“These violations have not only caused serious immediate physical and mental damage and suffering to women and girls, but also irreversible long -term effects on mental health and reproductive and fertility perspectives of Palestinians as a group,” said the chairman of the Navi Pillay committee in a statement.
The Independent International International Commission of Enquiry was founded in May 2021 by the UN-Human Rights Council to investigate the alleged international law violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Pillay, a former Chief of the UN rights, served as a judge at the International Criminal Court and was chairman of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Israel accused the committee of promoting a “predetermined and biased political agenda … in a shameless attempt to accuse the Israeli defense groups”.
Destruction of IVF clinic
The report said that pregnancy hospitals and departments were systematically destroyed in Gaza, together with the Al-Basma IVF Center, the most important in vitro fertility clinic in the area.
It said that Al-Basma was shot at in December 2023, it is said that it was destroying around 4,000 embryos in a clinic that served 2,000 to 3,000 patients per month.
The committee found that the Israeli security forces deliberately attacked and destroyed the clinic, including all the reproductive material stored for the future view of Palestinians.
The committee found no credible evidence that the building was used for military purposes.
It concluded that the destruction was “a measure intended to prevent births in Palestinians in Gaza, which is a genocidal act”.
Moreover, the report said that the wider damage to pregnant, lactating and new mothers in Gaza were on an “unprecedented scale”, with an irreversible impact on the reproductive prospects of Gazans.
Such underlying acts “come down to crimes against humanity” and deliberately try to destroy the Palestinians as a group, the committee concluded.
‘Extermination’
The report came after the Commission had held public hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday in Geneva, hearing of victims and witnesses of sexual violence.
It concluded that Israel had focused directly on civilian women and girls, “actions that form the crime against the humanity of murder and the war crime of deliberate murder”.
Women and girls also died of complications with regard to pregnancy and delivery because of the conditions imposed by the Israeli authorities that influence access to reproductive health care, “acts on crime against humanity of extermination,” it added.
The committee added that forced public stripping and nakedness, sexual harassment including threats, as well as sexual violence, part of the “standard operational procedures” of the Israeli security forces are opposite Palestinians.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)
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