“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 UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
Those actions, in addition to causing a surge in maternity deaths due to restricted access to medical supplies, amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination, the commission added.
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 since the beginning of the war.
The report came after the commission conducted public hearings in Geneva on Tuesday and Wednesday, hearing from victims and witnesses of sexual violence.
It concluded that Israel had targeted civilian women and girls directly, “acts that constitute the crime against humanity of murder and the war crime of wilful killing”.
The commission added that forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault, comprise part of the Israeli forces’ “standard operating procedures” towards Palestinians.
