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.

Read the full report here, or download it here:

Palestinian Women – The Disproportionate Impact of the Israeli Occupation

1. SUMMARY POINTS

• Crossing points into Gaza remain largely closed. Agreed mechanisms for commercial and humanitarian food imports have not yet been re-established. The re-opening of Karni crossing is vital to prevent general food shortages in 2-4 weeks.

• WFP reports a 40% increase in the price of wheat flour over the past week. Available food stocks are at risk of hoarding by individual consumers and bulk traders.

• Seven truckloads of food (WFP) and 3 trucks of medical supplies (ICRC/WHO) entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing on 19 June. WFP hopes to move 10 truckloads per day through the crossing. Meanwhile, 104 UNWRA containers await transit through Karni.

• UNRWA wheat flour reserves will be exhausted in 10 days, and WFP food reserves in 7 days, unless normal imports are resumed.

• Fuel, electricity and water supplies remain normal.

• The ICRC is working to coordinate the transfer of 12 critical medical cases awaiting referral abroad

• Some 250 Gaza residents seeking exit at Erez are being aided by, ICRC, UNRWA and the IDF.

2. ACCESS TO THE GAZA STRIP

All parties have expressed their desire to ensure that basic food and medical supplies enter the Gaza Strip. For a crisis to be avoided, commercial and humanitarian food stocks must be replenished regularly and reliably. However, with the noted exception of small quantities of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza on 19 June, the area remains effectively closed. Six days after the end of the recent crisis, no reliable systems for the entry of basic commodities into the Gaza strip have been re-established. The Secretary General, and the Quartet, have called for the cooperation of all parties to ensure that appropriate access conditions for the passage of humanitarian goods are restored. In addition, arrangements are being sought to resume the secure movement of humanitarian personnel in and out of Gaza.

3. INTERNAL FOOD AVAILABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY

Figures from WFP and the Gaza Businessmen’s Association indicate that commercial stocks of basic commodities, such as flour, sugar, rice, pulses and oil, appear sufficient for 2-4 weeks. In addition, most fresh vegetables remain available on local markets. However, access to basic food items is becoming more difficult for the 87% of Gazans now living below the poverty line1: WFP estimates that flour prices have risen by 40% in the past week. A sudden, 350% rise in wheat-flour purchases in some areas of Gaza raises serious concerns about hoarding by bulk traders due to the uncertainty of commercial imports. Steep price increases and hoarding are expected to drive up food insecurity, which affected 56 % of Gaza residents prior to the recent conflict. Dairy and other perishable products are reported to be out of stock in several neighbourhoods.

UNRWA, which provides emergency food assistance to 850,000 Gaza refugees, has 10 days of wheat flour stocks. UNRWA wheat flour is purchased locally. UNRWA operations therefore depend directly on commercial grain imports through the Karni crossing. In addition, UNRWA is currently waiting to receive 104 containers of food commodities which remain at Ashdod port due to the closure of Karni crossing.

WFP, which provides emergency food assistance to 275,000 non-refugees in Gaza, completed a round of regular distributions on Tuesday 29 May. After importing seven truckloads on 19 June through the Kerem Shalom crossing, WFP currently has 7 days’ worth of emergency food stocks available in Gaza. WFP are currently working to establish import levels of 10 trucks per day via the crossing.

4. FUEL, ELECTRICITY AND WATER

Supplies of all fuels, including cooking gas, petrol and industrial fuel continues to enter from Israel normally, despite speculation about interruptions. No interruptions in electricity or water supplies from Israel have been reported.

5. HEALTH

Hospitals, primary clinics and emergency services of the Ministry of Health continue to operate. Immediate shortages in medical supplies were offset by the import of 3 WHO and ICRC truckloads via Kerem Shalom on 19 June, and of refrigerated UNICEF 1 The official poverty line in the oPt is set at $2.4 daily income.

vaccines via Erez on 20 June. However, fuel supplies for hospital generators and ambulances will be exhausted within one week unless payments to Israeli providers are ensured. A total of 400 medical cases are listed for referral outside of Gaza. Of a reported 19 critical cases awaiting immediate evacuation for treatment in Israel, seven were moved with facilitation by the ICRC on 19 June. A further 12 critical cases await transferral.

6. CIVILIAN PROTECTION

The Gaza Strip has been relatively calm since 15 June. However, the number of recorded causalities from the period between 9-14 June continues to rise due to the deaths of critically wounded. The Ministry of Health currently reports 135 deceased and 487 injured. Independent estimates are higher. Since the end of the fighting, there continue to be intermittent reports of extrajudicial killings. These raise serious concerns about violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

Also of concern is the situation of a reported 3,500 people at Rafah awaiting re-entry into Gaza from Egypt. In addition, some 250 people wishing to leave Gaza due to perceived threats to their personal security have fled to Erez crossing. They are currently receiving assistance from UNRWA, the ICRC and the Israel Defense Forces, but their situation remains unresolved.