More than a human can bear
“More than a human can bear”
TEHRAN – The UN has found that the Israeli occupation regime committed “genocidal acts” in Gaza, including ongoing attacks on women’s healthcare.
A 49-page report has concluded that Israeli occupation forces have also used sexual violence as a weapon of war to “dominate and destroy the Palestinian people.”
Critics argue that despite mounting evidence from international bodies of genocidal acts committed by the Israeli regime in Gaza, many regional and international politicians or media outlets are misinforming their audiences by refusing to cover the story.
According to the report from the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East al-Quds (Jerusalem), Israeli occupation forces have increasingly used sexual, reproductive, and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians.
The Commission found specific forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment such as threats of rape, and sexual assault, are part of the Israeli Occupation Forces’ standard operating procedures toward Palestinians.
Other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape and violence to the genitals, were carried out either under direct orders or with implicit encouragement from top Israeli political and military leadership.
The report states that these actions are part of a broader effort to undermine Palestinians’ right to self-determination and have included genocidal acts through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities.
The Commission documented cases where women and girls of all ages, including maternity patients, were targeted. These are acts that constitute the crime against humanity of murder and the war crime of willful killing.
It highlights a wide range of violations committed against Palestinian women, men, girls, and boys across the Occupied Palestinian Territory since October 7, 2023.
The UN report titled “More than a human can bear” found these violations as a significant part of the mistreatment of Palestinians and links them to the unlawful occupation and persecution of Palestinians as a group.
This is while Israeli forces have imposed a siege and a ban on humanitarian aid, including essential medication and equipment needed for safe pregnancies, deliveries, and post-partum and neonatal care.
These actions violate women’s and girls’ reproductive rights and autonomy, as well as their right to life, health, family life, human dignity, physical and mental integrity, freedom from torture and other cruel or degrading treatment, self-determination, and the principle of non-discrimination.
Women and girls were found to have died from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth because the conditions imposed by Israeli authorities have denied access to reproductive healthcare.
These acts, the report found, amount to the crime against humanity of extermination.
The report documents how Israeli authorities have partially destroyed the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare.
This amounts to two categories of genocidal acts under the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention, including deliberately inflicting conditions of life designed to cause the physical destruction of Palestinians and implementing measures aimed at preventing births.
“The evidence collected by the Commission reveals a deplorable increase in sexual and gender-based violence,” said Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission.
“There is no escape from the conclusion that Israel has employed sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians to terrorize them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination,” the report states.
“The targeting of reproductive healthcare facilities, including through direct attacks on maternity wards and Gaza’s main in-vitro fertility clinic, combined with the use of starvation as a method of war, has impacted all aspects of reproduction,” said Commissioner Pillay.
“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.”
A climate of impunity exists regarding sexual and gender-based crimes committed by illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, aimed at instilling fear in the Palestinian community and driving them out.
The report's release was accompanied by two days of public hearings in Geneva on March 11-12.
During these sessions, the Commission heard from victims and witnesses of sexual and reproductive violence, medical personnel who provided care, as well as representatives from civil society, academics, lawyers, and medical experts.
The sessions further exposed that sexual and gender-based violence, which has increased in both frequency and severity, is being used across the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a strategy of war by Israeli authorities to dominate and destroy the Palestinian people.
“The exculpatory statements and actions by Israeli leaders and the lack of effectiveness shown by the military (judicial) system to prosecute cases and convict perpetrators send a clear message to members of the Israeli Security Forces that they can continue committing such acts without fear of accountability,” said Pillay.
“In this context, accountability through the International Criminal Court and national courts, through their domestic law or exercising universal jurisdiction, is essential if the rule of law is to be upheld and victims awarded justice.”
The Commission found an increasing proportion of female fatalities in Gaza, occurring on an unprecedented scale due to an Israeli strategy of deliberately targeting residential buildings and using heavy explosives in densely populated areas.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, around 50,000 Gazans have been killed in the U.S.-backed genocidal Israeli war on the coastal enclave, most of them women and children.
source: tehrantimes.com