UN experts say Israel “deliberately attacked and destroyed” major infertility centres on Palestinian territory.
Israel carried out “genocide” against Palestinians by systematically destroying women's health facilities during the war with Gaza and using sexual violence as a strategic strategy, UN experts said.
On Thursday, the Geneva-based Independent International Committee on Inquiry said in a new report that Israel “deliberately attacked and destroyed Gaza's major fertility centres while also preventing pregnancy, birth and newborn care from entering the enclave.
In its report, the committee said in a statement that Israeli authorities have “disrupted” the Palestinian fertility as a group of Palestinians as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive medicine.
It added that this corresponds to “two categories of genocide” during the Israeli attacks in Gaza, which began after the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023.
“Israel will deficiently reject any unfounded allegations,” its mission in Geneva said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned a UN investigation into “false accusations that include absurd claims.”
“The anti-Israel circus known as the UN Human Rights Council has long been exposed as anti-Semitism, corruption, fear and an unrelated body,” Netanyahu said in a statement issued Thursday.
“A war crime of intentional murder”
According to the report, the maternity hospital and ward were systematically destroyed in Gaza, along with the Al-Basma IVF Center, the territory's main vitro fertility clinic.
Al-Basma said it was intentionally bombarded in December 2023, destroying around 4,000 embryos at the clinic that served 2,000 to 3,000 patients a month.
The committee found no reliable evidence that the building was being used for military purposes.
The destruction was “a measure aimed at preventing the birth of Palestinians in Gaza, a massacre.”
Speaking to Al Jazeera, former UN Humane Society coordinator Martin Griffith said, “It's good that the UN is talking about genocide.
And although he said the evidence of genocide was “uncontroversial” and that the findings were “long postponed,” he avoided saying either the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or the International Criminal Court (ICC) would put those accountability on trial.
“Is it a legally enforced claim? I don't think so,” he said of the findings of the report.
The report comes after the committee held hearings in Geneva on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by hearing hearings from victims of sexual violence and witnesses.
Israel concluded that it directly targeted “the crimes against humanity of murder and the acts that constituted war crimes of intentional murder.”
The committee added that forced deprivation and sexual harassment, including nudity, rape threats, and sexual assault are part of the Israeli military's “standard operating procedures” against Palestinians.
