GAZA(Palestine Foundation Information Center) Israel’s systematic and widespread sexual and gender-based crimes against Palestinians, both men and women, amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, the Euro-Med for Human Rights Monitor said in a new report issued on Thursday.
The report demonstrates that Israel has been responsible for acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip since October 2023, the Euro-Med added.
“Israel’s long-standing policy of impunity, which has allowed it to continue its unprecedented crimes against the Palestinians, must end immediately due to the seriousness of the report’s contents.”
In its report, “More than a human can bear: Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since October 2023,” released today, March 13, 2025, the International Commission of Inquiry came to the conclusion that the frequency, severity, and prevalence of sexual and gender-based crimes against Palestinian men and women in occupied Palestinian territory show that Israel is increasingly using these forms of violence as a tool to destabilize, control, oppress, and destroy the Palestinian people’s social structure.
According to the committee, thousands of women have died in Gaza since October 7, 2023, as a result of Israeli military operations that have disproportionately affected civilians, especially Palestinian women and girls, many of whom were directly targeted.
The committee said that systematic Israeli violations of Palestinian women and girls also resulted in severe gender-related harm, including death from pregnancy and childbirth complications, as well as serious physical and psychological harm. This resulted from Israeli policies that intentionally destroyed Gaza’s health system and restrictions that denied them access to reproductive healthcare.
The report also revealed that sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians—men, women, and children—occurred throughout the occupied Palestinian territory, whether in the context of arrest, detention facilities, or forced relocation in Gaza. Both Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Israeli security forces routinely violated these laws.
The Euro-Med emphasized that according to the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention, the Commission determined that some of the sexual and reproductive crimes committed by Israel in the Palestinian territories since October 7, 2023, qualify as acts of genocide. These crimes include war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.
The Euro-Med called on the international community to take immediate action to ensure the Palestinian people’s right to live in freedom and dignity, support their right to self-determination in line with international law, and eradicate the underlying causes of their suffering and continuous oppression over the past 76 years.
“They must also seek to lift the illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip, ensure accountability for Israeli offenders, guarantee Palestinian victims’ rights to redress and compensation, end the illegal Israeli occupation and settler colonialism imposed on Palestinian territories, and demolish the system of isolation and apartheid imposed against Palestinians.”
