Hawzah News Agency- United Nations experts have said in a report that Israel committed “genocidal acts” and sexual violence against Palestinians, including those living in Gaza, as part of a broader effort to undermine their right to self-determination.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory issued its report on Thursday, saying that Israel carried out those actions against Palestinians in order to control their population.

“The evidence collected by the Commission reveals a deplorable increase in sexual and gender-based violence,” said Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission, according to a press release by the UN human rights office.

“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” Pillay said.

The report pointed out to a rise in “frequency and severity” of sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians, documenting different cases from rape and sexual assault to forced public undressing.

Those crimes were committed “either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership,” the report further said.

The UN experts also said Israel committed genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza by systematically demolishing reproductive healthcare centers and blocking the import of medicines for pregnant women and newborns, which caused deaths among them.

Such acts amount to “the crime against humanity of extermination, the report added.

It also said “Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention.”

The report also pointed out to female fatalities occurring at “an unprecedented scale” as a result of an Israeli strategy of deliberately targeting residential buildings and using heavy explosives in densely populated areas.

The commission’s findings are based on interviews with victims and witnesses and images of incidents in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and al-Quds since October 7, 2023 when the Gaza war broke out.

Source: IRNA