An investigation by a special UN commission has declared that Israel perpetrated acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip through the systematic destruction of reproductive health care facilities during its bloody onslaught on the territory. 

The report released Thursday by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East al-Quds, and Israel outlines a broad range of violations perpetrated against Palestinian women, men, girls and boys since October 7, 2023. 

“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,” it said.

The inquiry found that Israel engaged in at least two of the five acts classified as genocide by the UN Convention.

Those actions, in addition to a surge in maternity deaths due to restricted access to medical supplies, amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination, the commission said.

Israel, it said, is “deliberately inflicting conditions of life on the group (Palestinians) calculated to bring about its physical destruction and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”.

“These violations not only caused severe direct physical and psychological harm to women and girls, but also had long-term, irreversible consequences for the psychological and reproductive health and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a whole,” Navi Pillay, chair of the committee, said in a statement.

The inquiry found that Israel conducted systematic assaults aimed at Gaza’s healthcare facilities, specifically hospitals and clinics that offer reproductive health services.

This resulted in the almost complete collapse of the health sector’s capacity to provide care for pregnant women and newborns, it said.

The investigation underlined that “severe restrictions on essential medical supplies and medicines exacerbated the deteriorating reproductive health of women and girls in Gaza, directly contributing to high maternal and newborn mortality rates.”

The report also condemned Israeli forces over using forced public stripping and sexual assault as part of their standard operating procedures to punish Palestinians following the Hamas-led surprise and large-scale attack against the Zionist entity in October 2023. 

Hamas: UN probe indicates Israel perpetrated ‘genocide’ 

The Hamas resistance movement said the UN inquiry confirming “genocidal acts” of Israeli forces in Gaza showed that the occupying Tel Aviv regime perpetrated “genocide and humanitarian” violations in the Palestinian territory during the war.

“The UN’s investigation report on Israel’s genocidal acts against the Palestinian people confirms what has happened on the ground: genocide and violations of all humanitarian and legal standards,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem stated.

Backed by the United States and its Western allies, Israel launched the war on Gaza, after Hamas and other Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movements carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the Israeli regime in response to its decades-long campaign of oppression against Palestinians.

Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has led to the death of at least 48,524 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injury of 111,955 others since early October 2023.

A ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement went into effect in Gaza on January 19, halting Israel’s aggressive campaign against the coastal region.