U.N. Accuses Israel of Targeting Reproductive Health Facilities in Gaza
The New York Times
March 13, 2025
A report by a U.N. committee found that Israel has committed “genocidal acts” intended to prevent births. Israel quickly rejected the findings as biased.
Basma I.V.F. Center, Gaza’s largest fertility clinic, was struck by an Israeli shell during the war with Hamas. Credit...Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters
Reporting from Geneva
A United Nations commission on Thursday accused Israel of targeting hospitals and other health facilities in Gaza that provide reproductive services, including an I.V.F. clinic where thousands of embryos were destroyed, in what it called an effort to prevent Palestinian births.
The report by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, called that and other actions that cause harm to women and girls “genocidal acts” and accused Israel of punishing Palestinians collectively for the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed 1,200 people.
Israel’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva immediately rejected the report, saying in a statement that the commission was engaged in “a shameless attempt to incriminate” the Israeli military “to advance its predetermined and biased political agenda.” Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accused the United Nations Human Rights Council of attacking the country with “false accusations.”
The commission, set up by the Human Rights Council in 2021 and made up of three lawyers with expertise in human rights, said its report drew on earlier investigations it had carried out since the Hamas attack on southern Israel and on some 25 interviews conducted over recent months with medical experts, as well as victims and witnesses of the violence in Gaza. Some of the testimony was aired over two days of hearings in Geneva this week.
The report marked the first time a United Nations committee has found that Israel has committed genocidal acts under the Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court, and under the international treaty that criminalizes genocide.
“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 commission said.
Israeli officials have long accused the rights council of singling Israel out, arguing that U.N. officials and committees condemn the country with far greater frequency than it does dictatorships like North Korea. In February, Gideon Saar, the Israeli foreign minister, said Israel would stop participating in the council, accusing it of demonizing Israel.
The Israeli military’s bombardment and invasion decimated Gaza’s health care system in a way that aid groups and international bodies have called “systematic.” The report said this included damage to clinics and other facilities that provide maternity services affecting more than half a million women and girls of reproductive age in Gaza.
Israel has said that Hamas fighters have embedded themselves in hospitals and other buildings. Under international law, if there is doubt about whether a hospital is being used for military purposes, it should be presumed not to be, according to the Red Cross, and civilians should not be targeted.
The report cited in particular the destruction of Al Basma I.V.F. clinic, Gaza’s largest fertility clinic, which was destroyed in December 2023 by artillery fire, which is typically less accurate than missiles. The commission heard from expert witnesses that the clinic’s destruction caused the loss of some 4,000 embryos and other reproductive material from Palestinian patients for whom it often represented a last chance to have children.
Al Basma I.V.F. Center lost some 4,000 embryos when it was hit by Israeli forces, experts said. Credit...Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters
The circumstances of the destruction of the clinic are not entirely clear, but Chris Sidoti, a member of the panel, said at a news conference that Israeli military commanders had detailed knowledge of the location and services provided by all the medical facilities in the enclave.
The commission said that it did not find any evidence that the facility was a legitimate military target at the time that it was attacked by Israeli forces. “It is not possible to say the destruction of the building was unintentional or accidental,” Mr. Sidoti said.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the claim.
The commission also said that Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which curbed humanitarian aid and access to medical care, had caused severe reproductive harm to women and girls, which it said was calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians as a group. Women and girls died from pregnancy and childbirth complications because of Israel’s siege, the commission said. That, it declared, amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination.
The commission also documented what it said were wide-ranging abuses, including forced stripping and nudity, sexual harassment, rape or threats of it, and the sexual torture of detainees, which it said had become standard operating procedures for Israeli security forces toward Palestinians.
Israeli forces who invaded Gaza after the Oct. 7 attack have detained men, women and children by the thousands. The New York Times has previously reported on accounts by nearly a dozen detainees or their relatives who described being stripped, beaten, interrogated and held incommunicado. Israeli military officials say that soldiers routinely order detainees to strip for security reasons to be sure that they are not carrying weapons, including explosive vests.
The U.N. committee said that the frequency, prevalence and severity of sexual and gender-based violence showed it has been “increasingly used as a method of war by Israel to destabilize, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people.”
The U.N. panel also said it had documented cases of rape and severe physical assaults carried out against Palestinian detainees in Israel’s Sde Teiman detention center. An Israeli military prosecutor charged five reservist soldiers with abuse of a Palestinian detainee, including using a sharp object to injure his rectum. But the commission noted that the five were not ultimately indicted for any sexual offense, although prosecutors had initially suspected them of doing so.
The commission said that it had not seen evidence that the Israeli authorities have taken any effective measures to prevent acts of sexual violence and that it had not seen any move to identify and punish perpetrators despite witness and other evidence.
On the contrary, “the lack of effectiveness shown by the military justice system to prosecute cases and convict perpetrators sends a clear message to members of the Israeli Security Forces that they can continue committing such acts without fear of accountability,” Navi Pillay, a former U.N. human rights chief and the commission’s chair, said in a statement released with the report.
Israel’s mission said that Israeli military orders unequivocally prohibit sexual violence and that any allegations were investigated in accordance with international norms.
Nitrogen tanks, where embryos were stored, at Al Basma I.V.F. Center.Credit...Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters
Previous commission reports to the U.N. Human Rights Council have identified what it said were war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza war. A report released last year found signs that participants in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel committed sexual violence in multiple locations and said that some hostages held in the Gaza Strip had been subjected to rape and sexual torture.
Although the commission said in its new report that Israel had carried out two categories of genocidal acts, it stopped short of concluding that Israel had committed genocide, a determination that requires a higher standard of proof of intent.
The committee has no legal standing to intervene in the ICJ case , but Mr. Sidoti said that its findings would help inform the deliberations of the International Court of Justice, which is considering a South African case accusing Israel of genocide, and the International Criminal Court, which in November issued warrants for the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Israel denies that it has committed genocide in Gaza, characterizing the claim as a perversion of history.
The reports may also form part of the evidence presented in a number of cases brought in national courts or under universal jurisdiction considering the legality of providing arms to Israel, Mr. Sidoti said.
Aaron Boxerman in Jerusalem contributed reporting.
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For the text of the UN Commission Report see the attachment below: