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

On Monday evening, 20 September 2004, two members of the 'Izziddin al-Qassam Brigade, the military wing of Hamas, were extra-judicially executed by Israeli troops in Gaza City. This latest execution was the second of its kind in Gaza City in less than 24 hours. PCHR strongly condemns violations of human rights perpetrated by Israeli occupying troops in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, especially the policy of extra-judicial killings, which has been officially adopted by the Israeli political and military establishments.

According to PCHR's preliminary investigations, at approximately 19:20 on Monday, 20 September 2004, Israeli aircrafts fired one missile at a civilian car, a grey Mitsubishi jeep, that was traveling in the densely populated Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in the south of Gaza City. The missile hit and burnt the car. Two Palestinians who were traveling in the car were instantly killed:

1.Rabah Darwish Zaqqout, 37, from al-Boreij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip; and

2.Nabil Ibrahim al-Su'aidi, 38, also from al-Boreij refugee camp.

The two were members of the 'Izziddin al-Qassam Brigade, the military wing of Hamas. In addition, 5 passing Palestinian civilians, including 4 children, were injured by shrapnel from the missile, and the injury of one of them was described by medical sources as serious.

PCHR remains gravely concerned about such escalation by the Israeli government and its occupying troops. Israeli violations of human rights, including extra-judicial and indiscriminate killings, further indicate Israel's disregard for international law and humanitarian law, which prohibit such acts that constitute a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), in particular article 147. PCHR asserts that the policy of extra-judicial executions officially adopted by the Israeli government serves to increase tension in the region and threatens the lives of Palestinian civilians. PCHR reiterates its calls for the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfill their obligations to ensure protection for Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

On Monday morning, 12 July 2004, Israeli military bulldozers demolished a house while an elderly physically disabled Palestinian civilian was still inside. Despite attempts by his wife and daughter to draw attention to his presence the IOF continued with the demolition. The incident occurred during a wide scale Israeli military incursion into the camp, accompanied by intense shelling from tanks and helicopter gunships. This latest operation left 34 Palestinian houses demolished. In a similar Israeli military operation in the same camp on 8 July 2004, 40 Palestinian houses were demolished. Thus, the number of houses destroyed in the camp by Israeli troops in less than 5 days has mounted to 74.

According to PCHR's preliminary investigations, at approximately 01:45 on Monday, 12 July 2004, Israeli occupying troops, reinforced by heavy military vehicles and helicopters, moved into Khan Yunis refugee camp, coming from "Neve Dekalim" and "Gadid" settlements, west and south of Khan Yunis respectively. Under the cover of intense shelling, they started to bulldoze Palestinian houses without warning their residents. A number of these residents, who were surprised and terrified by this attack, were able to escape from their homes. Israeli military bulldozers moved towards a house belonging to Ibrahim Mahoud Mohammed Khalafallah, 75, who is physically disabled. His wife and daughter tried to carry him out of the house, but they could not. They left the premises and called on Israeli troops to stop the demolition of their house, but the Israeli military bulldozers continued with the demolition process, despite the fact that he was still inside the house. The man was crushed by the ensuing rubble from his home while his wife and daughter watched. By 04:30, Israeli military bulldozers had completely demolished 31 houses, in which 255 people (41 families) and partially demolished 3 others, in which 20 people (3 families).

PCHR strongly condemns this incident, which comes in the context of a series of crimes perpetrated by Israeli occupying troops in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), illustrating blatant disregard for international law and humanitarian law. PCHR remains extremely concerned about these ongoing attacks against civilians and their property perpetrated by Israeli troops during their incursions into Palestinian areas, in disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians. PCHR calls upon the international community to immediately intervene to stop prevent further similar incidents. PCHR reminds the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 of their legal obligations to ensure respect for the Convention and take effective steps to stop Israeli grave breaches of the Convention in the oPt.

PRESS RELEASE
Ref: 61/2004
Date: 21 April 2004
Time: 10:00 GMT

In a serious escalation of attacks against Palestinian civilians and their property, on 20 April 2004, Israeli occupying forces killed 9 Palestinians and injured about 40 others. A number of children were included in this figure, one of whom has since been pronounced clinically dead. This major incursion, which is still ongoing, is focused on the al-Nada housing project. The al-Nada project is located between the towns of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip. A large number of the victims were hit in the upper body. This indicates the intention of Israeli occupying forces to cause serious injury and fatalities among Palestinian civilians. Reports are still coming into PCHR about further casualties; this is of particular concern as Israeli forces have reportedly fired on ambulances.

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 09:30, on Tuesday, 20 April 2004, 3 Israeli tanks and 2 military bulldozers moved from “Nissanit” settlement, north of Beit Lahia. The tanks were positioned on a hill, approximately 150 meters to the northwest of the al-Nada housing project in the northern Gaza Strip, while bulldozers leveled areas of land. In the meantime, Israeli occupying forces completely closed Erez crossing and imposed restrictions on the movement of international staff and diplomats. At approximately 12:00, a number of Palestinian children and young men gathered in the area and threw stones at Israeli military vehicles. In an excessive and disproportionate use of force, Israeli soldiers in the tanks fired live bullets and artillery shells at the stone throwers. Until 20:30, 4 Palestinian civilians, including 2 children, were killed:

1. Mo’tassem Rafiq Mohammed Nusair, 18, from Beit Hanoun, hit by a live bullet to the head;
2. Khaldoun Ziad Hassan Abu Jarad, 17, from Beit Lahia, hit by a live bullet to the head;
3. Ibrahim basher Rayan, 19, from Tal al-Za’tar, hit by a live bullet to the head; and
4. Mohammed Ibrahim ‘Ata al-Tanani, 17, hit by a live bullet to the chest.

In addition, 24 civilians, including 21 children, were wounded. One of the children was pronounced clinically dead.

At approximately 03:00 on Wednesday, 21 April 2004, about 30 Israeli heavy military vehicles, supported by helicopters, moved from Erez crossing and “Nissanit” settlement into Beit Lahia. They razed areas of Palestinian agricultural land and destroyed the fence of a building of the Palestinian Ministry of Social Affairs, which was still under construction. At approximately 05:45, an Israeli helicopter launched a missile at a number of members of the Palestinian resistance who were near the offices of the Ministry of Education in the area. Five members of the resistance and a member of the Palestinian Security Forces were wounded.

At approximately 09:00, a number of members of the Palestinian resistance clashed with Israeli occupying forces, while some civilians were throwing stones at these forces. Immediately, Israeli helicopters and tanks opened fire at them. Four resistance men and a child were killed:

1. Suhail ‘Abdul Karim al-Heresh, 25, hit by a live bullet to the neck;
2. Mohammed ‘Abdul Muttaleb al-‘Ajjouri, 18, hit by a live bullet to the chest;
3. Ra’fat Abu Hassira, 28, hit by a live bullet to the head;
4. Mohammed Khader al-Rantissi, 18, hit by a live bullet to the head; and
5. Radwan Samara Hamttu, 16, hit by a live bullet to the heart.

PCHR’s field worker in the northern Gaza Strip reported that Israeli occupying forces opened fire at an ambulance of the Palestinian Ministry of Health that was trying to reach one of the wounded. The vehicle was hit by several bullets, but its personnel were not inside at the time. The wounded person remained in the area bleeding. Israeli forces also started to raze areas of Palestinian agricultural land.

PCHR strongly condemns these Israeli actions, which constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention. They indicate Israel’s disregard for international human rights law and international humanitarian law. PCHR asserts that the Israeli policies serve to increase tension in the region and threaten the lives of Palestinian civilians. PCHR calls upon the international community to immediately intervene to prevent further deterioration of the situation in the OPTs. PCHR also reminds the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention of their legal obligations under the Convention to ensure protection for Palestinian civilians in the OPTs.

On Tuesday morning, 16 March 2004, Israeli occupying forces destroyed the educational studies campus of al-Aqsa University, located near al-Shuhada (Netzarim) junction, south of Gaza city. This attack occurred within the context of the continuous escalation of Israeli belligerent attacks on Palestinian civilian properties and facilities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs).

According to preliminary investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 02:30 on Tuesday, dozens of Israeli military vehicles moved from "Netzarim" settlement, south of Gaza city, towards al-Shuhada junction. Israeli forces then moved at least 1 kilometer to the north inside al-Zaytoun neighborhood, took position near a concrete factory, and imposed a siege on the area, which included the educational studies campus of al-Aqsa University and neighboring houses. According to a number of residents of the area, Israeli soldiers forced them out of their homes and planted explosives inside the campus of al-Aqsa University, destroying it. As a result, a number of neighboring houses were damaged and a woman and two members of the Palestinian National Security Force were injured. Israeli military bulldozers also razed areas of agricultural land in the same area.

According to Dr. Nihad al-Yazaji, Deputy Head of Administrative Affairs at al-Aqsa University, the destroyed campus stood on a 5.5-donum area of land. One of its buildings consisted of two floors and stood on a 1272-square-meter area of land, and another building consisted of one floor and stood on a 500-square-meter area of land. These buildings included 16 classrooms, 6 offices, 3 laboratories, a library and a cafeteria. The campus used to serve about 3000 students, and the university administration has been forced to transfer those students to other campuses since 18 January 2001, due to repeated Israeli military attacks on the campus. According to university sources, the losses resulting from this destruction are estimated preliminarily to be more than US$ 700,000, not including the price of the land on which it stood and equipment inside.

PCHR strongly condemns this violation of international law, which comes as part of continuous belligerent Israeli military attacks on Palestinian educational institutions. PCHR notes with concern that these attacks have destroyed 73 educational institutions in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the current Intifada. PCHR calls upon the international community, through the United Nations bodies, to immediately act to stop these gross violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, perpetrated by Israeli occupying forces against Palestinian civilians and their properties, including the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. PCHR calls upon UNESCO to immediately intervene to stop the Israeli attacks on the Palestinian educational institutional system. It also calls upon it to establish an commission of inquiry to investigate Israeli military attacks on Palestinian educational institutions and present the findings to the United Nations. PCHR calls upon international NGOs to take up their expected role in pressuring their governments to force Israel to comply with international instruments and treaties, especially International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including the right of people to self-determination.