Israel perpetrates ‘disproportionate violence’ against women in Palestine: UN report News
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Israel perpetrates ‘disproportionate violence’ against women in Palestine: UN report

A report presented to the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday found that Israel’s military operations in Gaza since October 7, 2023 have disproportionately impacted Palestinian women and girls, through their systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence.

The report, which was presented by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem and Israel, found that females comprise 33 percent of the over 46,000 people killed in Gaza since October 2023. This proportion of female fatalities indicates an upward trend since the 2008 and 2014 conflicts, where females comprised 15 and 22 percent of fatalities respectively, the report noted.

According to the report, this upward trend is primarily due to the Israel Security Force’s (ISF) increased use of heavy air bombardment and a potential expansion of the ISF’s targeting criteria. As the report notes, in populated areas, the use of heavy explosive weapons has a gendered impact due to the socially prescribed gender roles which see women being responsible for the home environment.

Verified cases of the deliberate and targeted killing of civilian women and girls by the ISF were also outlined in the report. The report contained testimony that suggested the murder of a pregnant woman on her way to hospital by the Israeli forces.

Palestinian women have also been disproportionately impacted in terms of their access to healthcare, with the report noting that direct attacks on healthcare facilities offering sexual and reproductive healthcare services have resulted in extremely unsafe conditions for women to give birth in. Measures preventing births constitute genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.

The report also highlighted the lack of access to menstruation products increases the risk of reproductive and urinary tract infections, in turn increasing the risk of infertility, birth complications and sexually transmitted infections.

According to the report, both male and female members of the Palestinian community have been subject to sexual violence in differing forms. In addition, sexual violence and other forms of sexualized torture are committed with explicit orders or implicit encouragement by the military leadership.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the report’s findings, stating in a media release on Thursday:

Instead of focusing on the crime against humanity and the war crimes that were perpetrated by the Hamas terrorist organization in the worst massacre carried out against the Jewish People since the Holocaust, the UN has again chosen to attack the State of Israel with false accusations, including baseless accusations of sexual violence.

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