Executive Summary

The ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip has compounded several humanitarian and legal violations, particularly inrelation to the reproductive rights of Palestinian women. Since the launch of its military offensive in October 2023, Israelhas systematically targeted Palestinian women in ways that undermine their ability to survive, give birth, and raisechildren. More than 12,300 women have been killed, 4,700 women and children are missing, and approximately 800,000women have been forcibly displaced. An estimated one million women and girls now suffer from acute food insecurity.Israel’s actions constitute a deliberate attempt to impair the reproductive capacities of Palestinian women, aimed atdismantling the future of Palestinian society. Through the bombing of shelters, destruction of hospitals, blockading ofmedical and hygiene supplies, and attacks on fertility clinics and maternity wards, Israel’s policy of erasure is notincidental, it is intentional.

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Executive Summary

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is vital inproviding humanitarian aid, education, and health services to Palestinian refugees across Jordan, Lebanon,Syria, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Beyond its humanitarian role, UNRWA represents aninternational commitment to Palestinian refugees' right of return, as established in UN General AssemblyResolution 194 in 1948. However, Israel has long sought to undermine the agency through financial, political,and military means.Recent Israeli actions have escalated, with the Israeli Knesset passing legislation banning UNRWAoperations in areas under Israeli control, effectively revoking its legal status. Concurrently, Israel hasintensified military attacks on UNRWA facilities. In the Gaza Strip since October 2023, Israeli forces havetargeted 310 UNRWA sites, destroying schools and killing 273 UNRWA employees alongside hundreds ofcivilians sheltering in its facilities. Throughout the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military has been turningUNRWA facilities into military bases and detention centers, and has closed UNRWA’s headquarters in EastJerusalem. These actions violate multiple international legal agreements and aim to erase Palestinian refugeeidentity and their legal rights.

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The shocking human cost that occupation has taken on Palestinian women is laid bare in research published today. Combining research, extensive surveys, and first-hand testimonies from over 40 Palestinian women, Palestinian Women: The Disproportionate Impact of The Israeli Occupation provides new insight into the gendered experience of occupation, looking into four issues in particular:

• women refugees
• the impact of residency revocation on Palestinian women in Jerusalem
• the experience of women prisoners
• Gazans’ access to health

Co-authored by four Palestinian NGOs – the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development (PWWSD), the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC), and Women Media and Development (TAM), the report includes detailed findings that demonstrate how the oppression occupation has permeated women’s daily lives, and the particular impact is has had on women in Palestinian refugee camps, Palestinian women living in Jerusalem, women prisoners, and residents of Gaza who require health services.

The impact on refugee women

Researchers spoke to 500 Palestinian refugee women from 12 Palestinian camps (7 in the West Bank, 5 in Gaza). Their findings included the following:

• A third of women surveyed had been directly exposed to physical assault by Israeli Occupation Forces. 9% had been exposed to threats of being attacked by police dogs during Israeli night raids on their homes.
• Over a third (37%) of respondents had been exposed to detention or interrogation, while 38% said that they or members of their households had been exposed to verbal abuse during Israeli army raids, at checkpoints or while visiting religious places.
• Nearly a quarter (24%) were forced to live in shelters or with extended family. 22% were forced to live under unhealthy conditions. 13% stated that the female and male members of their families were separated as a result of having to live in shelters.
• More than one in five (21%) had been exposed to beatings or tear gas at Israeli checkpoints while they were pregnant. 4% reported that they aborted or gave birth at Israeli checkpoints.
• The majority (64%- 321 cases) had been unable to visit religious or recreational places because of Occupation restrictions.

Jerusalem: Residency Revocation and Family Reunification

According to official figures, 14,595 Palestinians from East Jerusalem had their residency status revoked between 1967 and the end of 2016.

Through residency revocations, Israel has separated husbands from wives, parents from children, and extended families from one another, causing traumatic complications for women attempting to remain with their families in both Jerusalem and the West Bank.

This leads to traumatic fears of separation from children for mothers and an entrenching of patriarchal practices across society. Palestinian women living in Jerusalem lose residency rights if they get divorced or their husbands remarry. Limiting their access to justice, female victims of domestic violence fear reporting abuse to authorities in case they are forcibly transferred away from their children.

Women prisoners

Since the beginning of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine in 1967, approximately 10,000 Palestinian women have been arrested and detained by Israeli military forces. According to the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs’ 2017 annual report, 1,467 children were arrested last year.

Our researchers spoke to prisoners who experienced physical and psychological torture at arrest and imprisonment, and traumatic, gendered treatment, including:

• Women denied access to menstrual products while detained
• A woman arrested while pregnant who gave birth while chained to a prison hospital bed
• Ex-prisoners who report being subjected to rape and death threats during interrogation, including a girl in of 15-years old threatened with rape
• Women who were subjected to frequent forced and violent strip searches
• A prisoner who reported toothache, only to have the wrong tooth removed

Access to Health in Gaza

Israel exercises strict control Gaza’s borders, a policy of ‘actual authority’, constituting continued occupation, despite the withdrawal of its permanent presence. This control in particular affects those who need medical treatment outside of Gaza’s struggling health system, who require permission to leave. The report shows that the rate of approval applications is falling year-by-year:

• 92.5% of applications were successful in 2012
• 88.7% in 2013
• 82.4% in 2014
• 77.5% in 2015
• 62.1% in 2016

Of the 26,282 permit applications submitted by patients aiming to exit through Erez in 2016, 8,242 (31.4%) were delayed. Many applicants received no response from border authorities, even after lawyers filed formal applications on their behalf. These delays regularly extend months and years beyond medical appointments, worsening already life-threatening diseases and in some cases resulting in death.

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Palestinian Women – The Disproportionate Impact of the Israeli Occupation

On 27 and 28 June 2006, the Israeli military attacked the Occupied Gaza Strip, bombing 3 bridges and its only domestic electricity source, the Gaza power plant, which provided approximately 50 per cent of the Gaza Strip’s electricity.1 Between 08:00 27 June and 08:00 08 July, Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip killed 39 Palestinians and injured 111. In the past several days, there has been a dramatic increase in the death toll, with 30 Palestinians, out of the total 39, killed in the 48-hour period between 08:00 06 July and 08:00 08 July.

In the days since Israel’s massive military offensive began, the Israeli military has fired hundreds of artillery shells and tens of missiles into the Gaza Strip, causing widespread destruction of Palestinian property. Israeli F16 combat aircraft have repeatedly patrolled the skies over the Gaza Strip, carried out diversionary air raids, and broke the sound barrier, breaking the windows of many civilian houses and causing massive psychological damage to the civilian population – some 1.4 million residents, of whom, approximately 50 per cent are under 15 years of age. Israel’s recent military attack has worsened the already severe humanitarian situation caused, primarily, by Israel’s repeated closure of Gaza crossing points.

The Israeli military has characterized its actions as a response to an armed Palestinian group’s 25 June capture of an Israeli soldier during an attack on an Israeli army post near Karm Abu Salim (Karem Shalom) Crossing, as well as due to Palestinian individuals’ firing of mortars towards Israel. Yet, through its attack on the Gaza Strip, particularly its infrastructure, Israel is collectively punishing the Palestinian civilian population. Collective punishment on the part of an occupying power is prohibited by International Humanitarian Law, which stipulates that protected persons may not be punished for an offence that they did not personally commit.2 All collective penalties and all measures of intimidation against this population are therefore illegal and prohibited.

Moreover, Israel’s military attacks and related recent actions in the Gaza Strip have been grossly disproportionate.3 State practice prohibits the launching of an attack that may cause incidental injury or damage to civilians that would be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage. In this case, the degree of harm inflicted on the Palestinian civilian population is manifestly disproportionate to the threat posed by the attacks carried out by Palestinian individuals, the overwhelming majority of which result in no Israeli casualties4.

Summary of Events

At 06:35 on 25 June, an armed Palestinian group attacked an Israeli army post near Karm Abu Salim (Karem Shalom) Crossing and captured an Israeli soldier. Immediately following the attack, the Israeli army reinforced the pre-existing concentration of its armed forces along the northern and eastern borders of the Gaza Strip; carried out a limited incursion into the eastern Rafah district; imposed a sea blockade that has prevented Palestinian fishing boats from sailing; and closed crossings into the Gaza Strip. Of 7 total crossings, 6 were closed and 1 was partially open, as of 08:00 08 July.5 On 27 and 28 June, the Israeli military expanded the scope of its military operation by attacking infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, including bombing the Gaza power station and 3 bridges, thereby dividing the Gaza Strip into 3 isolated units. On the morning of 03 July, the Israeli army invaded an area 700 metres inside Palestinian territory located north and east of the town of Beit Hanun in the district of Northern Gaza. At 22:00 on 05 July, the Israeli army again expanded the scope of its incursion by taking control of the debris of the evacuated settlements of Eli Sinai and Dugit north of the town of Beit Lahiya (where the Israeli army has imposed a free fire zone through open fire as well as artillery and air attacks since 28 December 2005). In addition, the Israeli army re-captured the areas of Al ‘Atatira and Al Waha, north and northwest of the town of Beit Lahiya, and levelled agricultural land.

As of 08:00 08 July, the Israeli army was positioned in areas located north and east of the town of Beit Hanun, north and northwest of the town of Beit Lahiya, and east of the town of Jabalya.

From 08:00 27 June – 08:00 08 July, the Israeli military carried out 227 attacks on the Gaza Strip, including 81 air attacks by Israeli F16s, UAVs and helicopters firing over 100 missiles into the Gaza Strip. Additionally, the Israeli military fired some 800 artillery and other shells into the Gaza Strip and Israeli military aircraft, including F16s, have carried out over 185 air patrols. During this period, Israeli military operations resulted in the deaths of 39 Palestinians – including 30 civilians, 5 Palestinian security officers, 1 Palestinian Naval officer and 3 armed individuals. In addition to those killed, 111 Palestinians were injured.

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The following summary table and overview of events is a survey of Israeli violations during the period 01 September 2004 to 30 September 2004. The report includes a summary table of violations by type throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in addition to a comparative table surveying events over the past three months. The survey is compiled from Daily Situation Reports of the Palestinian Monitoring Group (PMG), Negotiations Affairs Department, Palestine Liberation Organization. The PMG monitors all aspects of ground conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including Israeli violations, Palestinian violations and Palestinian achievements. The PMG Daily Situation Reports are a survey of daily events collated from information provided by Palestinian Authority civilian ministries and security agencies. The information reported through the PMG process only represents data available at the time of distribution.

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