Israel attacks on Gaza reproductive centers 'genocidal': UN probe

GENEVA

A United Nations investigation concluded yesterday that Israel carried out "genocidal" acts in Gaza through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities.

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry said Israel had "intentionally attacked and destroyed" the Palestinian territory's main fertility center and had simultaneously imposed a siege and blocked aid including medication for ensuring safe pregnancies, deliveries and neonatal care.

The commission found that Israeli authorities "have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare,” it said in a statement.

It said this amounted to "two categories of genocidal acts" during Israel's offensive in Gaza, launched after the attacks by Hamas.

The U.N.’s genocide convention defines that crime as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

Of its five categories, the inquiry said the two implicating Israel were "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction" and "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

"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," the commission's chair Navi Pillay said in a statement.

The report said maternity hospitals and wards had been systematically destroyed in Gaza, along with the Al-Basma IVF Centre, the territory's main in-vitro fertility clinic.

It said Al-Basma was shelled in December 2023, reportedly destroying around 4,000 embryos at a clinic that served 2,000 to 3,000 patients a month.

Israel said that the report is on par with the most damaging antisemitic conspiracy theories throughout history.

“It is one of the worst cases of blood libel the world has ever seen [and the world has seen man]),” the Foreign Ministry said in a tweet.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also slammed the “false and absurd” findings.

The report came after The International Court of Justice announced that it will hold hearings next month on Israel's humanitarian obligations towards Palestinians, after the Israeli government blocked aid access to Gaza earlier this month.

The hearings will open on April 28 at the court's seat in The Hague.