Israel has been accused of finishing up “genocidal acts” towards Palestinians throughout the Gaza battle in a United Nations report.
It alleges a broad vary of violations perpetrated towards Palestinian ladies, males, women and boys since 7 October 2023 – which Israel has denied and rejected.
“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group,” stated the report by the UN Impartial Worldwide Fee of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, together with East Jerusalem, and Israel.
It alleges this was carried out by systematically destroying ladies’s healthcare amenities throughout the warfare in Gaza, and by “imposing measures intended to prevent births” – one of many classes of genocidal acts within the Rome Statute and the Genocide Conference.
As well as, a surge in maternity deaths as a result of restricted entry to medical provides amounted to the crime towards humanity of extermination, it stated.
The report stated: “Hundreds of Palestinian men and boys have been photographed and filmed in humiliating and degrading circumstances while subjected to acts of a sexual nature, including forced public nudity and stripping, full or partial.”
“Male detainees were subjected to attacks targeting their sexual and reproductive organs, including violence to their genitals…,” it added.
The fee alleged these and different types of “sexualised torture” are “committed with either explicit orders or an implicit encouragement by the top civilian and military leadership”.
“The evidence collected by the commission reveals a deplorable increase in sexual and gender-based violence,” stated its chair Navi Pillay.
“There is no escape from the conclusion that Israel has employed sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians to terrorise them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the report’s findings, saying they had been biased and antisemitic.
“Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organisation… the United Nations once again chooses to attack the state of Israel with false accusations,” he stated in an announcement.
Israel’s everlasting mission to the UN in Geneva additionally refuted the allegations as unfounded, biased, and missing credibility.
“The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) has concrete directives… and policies which unequivocally prohibit such misconduct,” it stated in an announcement, including its assessment processes are in keeping with worldwide requirements.
A earlier report by the fee in June final yr accused Hamas and different Palestinian armed militant teams of significant rights violations in its 7 October 2023 multi-pronged shock assault on southern Israel, together with torture and degrading therapy.
Israel is celebration to the Genocide Conference and was ordered in January 2024 by the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice (ICJ) to take motion to forestall acts of genocide throughout its warfare towards Hamas.
South Africa has introduced a genocide case towards Israel’s actions in Gaza on the ICJ.
Israel isn’t celebration to the Rome Statute, which provides the Worldwide Prison Courtroom (ICC) jurisdiction to rule on particular person prison circumstances involving genocide and crimes towards humanity.
Arrest warrants for Mr Netanyahu, former defence secretary Yoav Gallant – and senior Hamas commander Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al Masri – had been issued by the ICC in November over alleged warfare crimes.
