Israel has committed “acts of genocide” against Palestinians by systematically destroying women’s health facilities in the Gaza Strip and using sexual violence as a military strategy, the UN has said on Thursday.
The UN Independent International Commission said:
“The Israeli authorities have partially destroyed the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza through measures aimed at preventing births. This is one of the categories of acts of genocide in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.”
The experts said these acts, in addition to the spike in maternal mortality due to limited access to medical supplies, amounted to a crime against humanity of extermination.
The UN report also accused the Israeli military of using forced public stripping and sexualised violence against women to punish Palestinians following Hamas attacks on southern Israel in October 2023.
Israel’s permanent mission to the UN in Geneva called the report’s allegations unfounded, biased and not credible. The mission said in a statement:
“Israel’s army has specific directives … and policies that explicitly prohibit such misconduct.”
A previous report issued by the Commission in June 2024 accused Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups of serious human rights violations in the 7 October 2023 attack, including torture and degrading treatment.
Palestinians are suffering from severe water shortages
Following Israel’s decision to close the border gates and cut off electricity to Gaza, the central desalination plant in the city of Deir al-Balah failed, depriving thousands of Palestinians of access to clean water during Ramazan.
Palestinian families were left without access to clean water, which is vital for meeting basic needs and normal daily life.
Rosalia Poulin, UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative in Gaza, noted that in November 2024, approximately 600,000 people had access to drinking water. However, supplies were soon suspended again, further exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the region.
The representative of the organisation stressed that the water shortage in Gaza has reached a critical level. At the moment, only one in ten people have access to safe drinking water, while 90 per cent of the population has to struggle to get clean water to survive, Poulin said.
Israel has denied displaced Palestinian families living in tents in Khan Younis town in the southern Gaza Strip access to clean water even during the holy month of Ramadan. Palestinians who use salty seawater for laundry, washing dishes and other needs face enormous difficulties in finding fresh water for cooking and drinking.
Women are forced to wash clothes using only a few litres of water in basins. Even when the water in which the laundry is washed becomes dirty, it is impossible to change it due to lack of other water. Dishes are also washed in contaminated water.
Since the Israeli attacks on eastern and southern Gaza that began on October 7, eight of the 19 wells in Deir al-Balah are completely out of service.
Nizar Ayyash, head of the Deir al-Balah city administration, noted that the power outage at the water treatment plant had reduced fresh water supplies in central and southern areas by 70 per cent, exacerbating the water crisis to unprecedented levels.
