GENEVA: Israel carried out "genocidal acts" against Palestinians by systematically destroying women's healthcare facilities during the conflict in Gaza, United Nations experts said in a report on Thursday.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the report's findings, saying they were biased and antisemitic.
Israel has disengaged from the Human Rights Council in February.
"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," said the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
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.
The report accused Israel's security forces of using assault as part of their standard operating procedures to punish Palestinians following the attacks on southern Israel in October 2023.
During a series of hearings held by the commission this week in Geneva, a Gaza nurse identified only as Said for his protection, said that Israeli forces had kidnapped him and made him publicly strip down. During his captivity, he was beaten, he said.
"This is physical abuse, but it's also psychological abuse. It's designed to humiliate," said Chris Sidoti, one of three members of a commission of inquiry into abuses committed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel has rejected the accusations.
"The IDF (Israeli Defence Force) has concrete directives... and policies which unequivocally prohibit such misconduct", the permanent mission to the UN in Geneva responded in a statement, adding that its review processes are in line with international standards.
Israel is party to the Genocide Convention and was ordered in January 2024 by the International Court of Justice to take action to prevent acts of genocide during the war.
It is not party to the Rome Statute, which gives the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to rule on individual criminal cases involving genocide and crimes against humanity. South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel's actions in Gaza at the International Court of Justice. - AFP
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