The United Nations accuses Israel of targeting reproductive health facilities in Gaza

On Thursday, the United Nations Committee accused Israel of targeting hospitals and other health facilities in Gaza, which provide reproductive services, including the IVF clinic, where thousands of embryos were destroyed, in what was called an effort to prevent Palestinian births.

the a report By the United Nations Investigation Committee on the occupied Palestinian territories, this called for and other acts that cause harm to women and girls “genocide actions” and accused Israel of collecting the Palestinians collectively for the leadership of Hamas on October 7, 2023, the attack that killed 1,200 people.

Israel’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva immediately refused the report, saying in a statement that the committee was working in a “preventive attempt to integrate the” Israeli army “to advance in its pre -determined political agenda. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the US Human Rights Council of attacking the country with “false accusations.”

The committee, which was established by the Human Rights Council in 2021 and consisted of three lawyers who have human rights experience, said that its report conducted the previous investigations he conducted since Hamas’s attack on southern Israel and about 25 interviews in recent months with medical experts, as well as victims and witnesses of violence in Gaza. Some certificate has been broadcast for two days of hearings in Geneva this week.

The report represents the first time that the United Nations Committee finds that Israel has committed genocide under the Rome Law, which established the International Criminal Court, and under the international treaty that criminalizes genocide.

The committee said: “The Israeli authorities have partly destroyed the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including imposing measures aimed at preventing births, which is one of the groups of genocide in the Rome law and the genocide agreement.”

Israeli officials have long accused the Rose Council in the individual of Israel, on the pretext that United Nations officials and committees condemn the country with much more frequency than dictatorships such as North Korea. In February, Gideon Saar, the Israeli Foreign Minister, He said Israel will stop participating in the council, accused of clarifying Israel.

The bombing and invasion of the Israeli army jumped in Gaza in a way that restores international groups and bodies He called “a methodologyThe report said this included damage to clinics and other facilities that provide maternity services that affect more than half a million women and girls of childbearing age in Gaza.

Israel said that Hamas fighters have merged themselves into hospitals and other buildings. under International lawIf there is doubt whether the hospital is used for military purposes, it must be assumed that it is not, according to the Red Cross, and civilians should not be targeted.

The report was particularly martyred Destruction of Al Basma IVF clinicThe largest fertility clinic in Gaza, which was destroyed in December 2023 by fire artillery, which is usually less accurate than missiles. The committee heard expert witnesses that the destruction of the clinic caused the loss of about 4000 embryos and other reproductive materials from Palestinian patients who often represent a last opportunity to have children.