UN report on Israeli sexual abuses against Gazans must lead to prosecutions: Hamas

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, found that Israel’s systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities, coupled with restricted medical supplies, resulted in a surge in maternal deaths, and is therefore tantamount to the crime of extermination.

Hamas announced in a statement that the report was a “confirmation of the severity” of Israeli crimes, and showed “the unprecedented violations of international law and humanitarian norms against defenceless civilians”.

The report said that Israel’s direct targeting of women’s healthcare facilities has resulted in “irreversible long-term effects on the mental health and reproductive and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a group”.

This, the commission concluded, amounts to two categories of genocidal acts under the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.

They include deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians and imposing measures intended to prevent births.

The report also found a “deplorable increase in sexual and gender based violence” employed against Palestinian women, men, girls and boys across occupied Palestine since 7 October 2023 to “terrorise them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self determination”.

It detailed how some acts of sexual gender-based violence, including forced public stripping, form part of the Israeli security forces’ standard operating procedures, while others, including rape and violence to genitals, were committed “under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement” by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership.

Hamas stressed that international community had been in a “state of disregard and negligence” over Israeli violations against Palestinians, and needed to “take practical measures” to put an end to them.

“We call on the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, alongside all international and national judicial bodies around the world, to seriously follow up the findings of this report.”

It added that with the addition of previous UN reports documenting Israeli violations, international bodies must “prosecute the occupation’s leaders as war criminals”.

According to the report, a lack of pain relief medication particularly impacted women who had undergone Caesarean sections, who were forced to endure the procedure without it.

Medical personnel reported that the combined lack of space, medication and equipment was resulting in an increasing number of maternal deaths.

The commission found that the surge in female fatalities in the strip since October – over double the proportion of deaths in the 2008 conflict – is also driven by the increased use of heavy aerial bombardment and the targeting of residential buildings, which disproportionately impacts women.

It noted that the spike could also be due to the Israeli military’s strategy of targeting private homes with the stated aim of killing militants, resulting in entire families killed together.