A United Nations investigation concluded Thursday that Israel carried out "genocidal" acts in Gaza through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities.
The UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said Israel had "intentionally attacked and destroyed" the Palestinian territory's main fertility centre. It added that Israel had simultaneously imposed a siege and blocked aid including medication for ensuring safe pregnancies, deliveries and neonatal care.
The panel also flagged "the systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence" in its war in the Gaza Strip.
The commission found that Israeli authorities "have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare," it said in a statement.
It said this amounted to "two categories of genocidal acts" during Israel's offensive in Gaza, launched after the attacks by Hamas militants on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The United Nations' genocide convention defines that crime as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.
Of its five categories, the inquiry said the two implicating Israel were "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction" and "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group."
"These violations have not only caused severe immediate physical and mental harm and suffering to women and girls, but irreversible long-term effects on the mental health and reproductive and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a group," the commission's chair Navi Pillay said in a statement.
Pillay, a former UN rights chief, served as a judge on the International Criminal Court and presided over the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
The three-person Independent International Commission of Inquiry was established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021 to investigate alleged international law violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Its findings can be used as evidence for the International Criminal Court or other bodies that seek to prosecute war crimes.
Israel has refused to cooperate with the commission, accusing it and the council of being biased against it.
In its report released Thursday, the commission examined the widespread destruction of Gaza, the use of heavy explosives in civilian areas and Israeli attacks on hospitals and health facilities. It said all three led to "disproportionate violence against women and children."
The commission also accused Israeli security forces of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian detainees.
Israel's mission to the UN in Geneva rejected the accusations and accused the commission, which was created by the UN-backed Human Rights Council, of relying on "second-hand, single, uncorroborated sources."
"Israel categorically rejects the unfounded allegations," its mission in Geneva said in a statement.
Destruction of IVF clinic and 'extermination'
The report said maternity hospitals and wards had been systematically destroyed in Gaza, along with the Al-Basma IVF Centre, the territory's main in-vitro fertility clinic. It said Al-Basma was shelled in December 2023, reportedly destroying around 4,000 embryos at a clinic that served 2,000 to 3,000 patients a month.
The commission found that the Israeli Security Forces intentionally attacked and destroyed the clinic, including all the reproductive material stored for the future conception of Palestinians.
The commission found no credible evidence that the building was used for military purposes.
It concluded that the destruction "was a measure intended to prevent births among Palestinians in Gaza, which is a genocidal act."
Furthermore, the report said the wider harm to pregnant, lactating and new mothers in Gaza was on an "unprecedented scale", with an irreversible impact on the reproductive prospects of Gazans.
Such underlying acts "amount to crimes against humanity" and deliberately trying to destroy the Palestinians as a group, the commission concluded.
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."
Women and girls have also died from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth due to the conditions imposed by the Israeli authorities impacting access to reproductive health care, "acts that amount to the crime against humanity of extermination", it added.
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 Security Forces' "standard operating procedures" toward Palestinians.
(With inputs from AFP and AP)