تقرير للأمم المتحدة يكشف عن استخدام ممنهج للعنف الجنسي ضد الفلسطينيين من قبل قوات الاحتلال منذ 7 أكتوبر

Content disclaimer: This article includes detailed descriptions of sexual violence. 

On Thursday, March 13, 2025, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel submitted a 49-page report to the United Nations Human Rights Council (OHCHR) detailing the Israeli Occupation Forces’ (IOF) systemic use of sexual, reproductive, and gender-based violence against Palestinians since Oct. 7, 2023. The report describes sexual violence perpetrated by the IOF against Palestinians across Occupied Palestine, as well as attacks on reproductive health through the bombing of healthcare facilities in Gaza, denying access to menstrual health products, and manufacturing unsanitary conditions.

The release of the report coincided with two days of public hearings in front of the OHCHR in Geneva on March 11 and 12, where survivors and witnesses were able to testify. One man, a hematology nurse at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, testified to being “kidnapped” by the IOF while escorting a patient to another facility. He described IOF soldiers stripping him naked under threat of being shot and held outside for three days without clothes, beating him for asking to go to the bathroom, forcing him to wear diapers, holding in dog cages at the infamous Sde Teiman detention camp. He also witnessed the death of an elderly man who was tortured and denied medical attention by IOF soldiers.

An international advocacy officer from the Women's Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC), a Jerusalem-based NGO, provided testimony on behalf of several of her clients from across Occupied Palestine, including Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. She said that these women were repeatedly sexually assaulted by female IOF soldiers, strip-searched, and beaten on their genitals. She said that this happened to women at multiple detention centers who would usually fall under different legal jurisdictions depending on where they were arrested, leading WCLAC to conclude that the beatings were likely part of a directive given by the IOF military leadership to soldiers. Many of the women from Gaza were “forcibly disappeared” and “kidnapped” while fleeing to the south of the Strip along the so-called “safety corridor.” The women also reported that Israeli civilians would regularly come to detention centers to watch and photograph them “as if it was a zoo.” They were forced to strip naked and sit together in large groups.

The Commission concluded that sexual harassment is “standard operating procedure” for the IOF. The Sde Teiman detention camp, where many of the victims who testified at the hearings were taken, has become infamous after footage was released of soldiers sexually assaulting a Palestinian male prisoner. Riots erupted last July following the arrest of nine soldiers accused of committing the abuse. The UN report details that many of the perpetrators film their crimes and post them on online platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. Filming and photographing the assaults is meant to further humiliate Palestinians across Occupied Palestine. The report also includes testimonies from victims of sexual violence in Gaza and at checkpoints in the West Bank and Jerusalem. 

The report also detailed how the destruction of healthcare and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza has specifically affected reproductive health. Lack of access to water, sanitation, and menstrual health supplies has led women and girls to resort to “make-shift alternatives,” which has led to an increase in vaginal and urinary tract infections. The destruction of the healthcare sector has made those increasingly difficult to treat. Medical personnel reported increases in maternal mortality, as well as fetal and neonatal infant death caused by the lack of healthcare resources. One obstetrician told the Commission of Inquiry about several patients who died due to malnutrition, infection, or other preventable complications citing “lack of adequate medication and treatment.” Many women are also forced to undergo cesarean sections without any pain medication. 

The systematic destruction of Gaza’s hospitals and other healthcare facilities has also included reproductive health centers, such as the Al-Basma IVF Centre. An Israeli strike hit the Centre was shelled in December 2023, which destroyed around 4,000 embryos. According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), attacks on other reproductive health facilities have impacted 540,000 women and girls.

In a press release published on the UN Human Rights Council’s site following the release of the report, Navi Pillay, the Chair of the the Independent International Commission of Inquiry, said, “The evidence collected by the Commission reveals a deplorable increase in sexual and gender-based violence. 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.”

UN Humanitarian Affairs Coordinator Martin Griffiths told Al Jazeera, “It’s good that the UN is now talking about genocide, because up to now it’s been very careful about that word.” However, he went on to say that he does not think that the International Criminal Court (ICC) or the International Court of Justice (ICJ) would hold anyone accountable for these crimes, despite the report concluding that Israel is guilty of two categories of genocidal acts under the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention, namely “destroying in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births” and “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians as a group.”

Corrections were made on April 24, 2025: An earlier version of this article referred to the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel using the abbreviation UNISPAL which is the United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine. This reference has been replaced with 'The Commission" for accuracy.