UN consultants say Israel ‘deliberately attacked and destroyed’ the Palestinian territory’s principal fertility centre.
Israel has carried out “genocidal acts” in opposition to Palestinians by systematically destroying girls’s healthcare services throughout its struggle on Gaza and utilizing sexual violence as a struggle technique, United Nations consultants have stated.
On Thursday, the Geneva-based Impartial Worldwide Fee of Inquiry stated in a brand new report that Israel “deliberately attacked and destroyed” Gaza’s principal fertility centre whereas concurrently blocking drugs for pregnancies, deliveries and neonatal care from coming into the enclave.
In its report, the fee discovered that Israeli authorities “have destroyed … the reproductive capability of Palestinians in Gaza as a gaggle by the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare”, it stated in a press release.
It added that this amounted to “two classes of genocidal acts” throughout Israel’s offensive in Gaza, launched after the assaults by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023.
For its half, “Israel categorically rejects the unfounded allegations”, its mission in Geneva stated in a press release.
Israel has additionally accused the fee, which was established in Could 2021, of advancing a “predetermined and biased political agenda … to incriminate the Israel Protection Forces”.
‘Conflict crime of wilful killing’
The report stated maternity hospitals and wards had been systematically destroyed in Gaza, together with the Al-Basma IVF Centre, the territory’s principal in-vitro fertility clinic.
It stated Al-Basma was deliberately shelled in December 2023, destroying about 4,000 embryos at a clinic that served 2,000-3,000 sufferers a month.
The fee discovered no credible proof that the constructing was used for army functions.
It stated the destruction “was a measure supposed to forestall births amongst Palestinians in Gaza, which is a genocidal act”.
The report got here after the fee performed public hearings in Geneva on Tuesday and Wednesday, listening to from victims and witnesses of sexual violence.
It concluded that Israel had focused civilian girls and women instantly, “acts that represent the crime in opposition to humanity of homicide and the struggle crime of wilful killing”.
The fee added that compelled public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment together with threats of rape, in addition to sexual assault, comprise a part of the Israeli forces’ “commonplace working procedures” in the direction of Palestinians.