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

B’Tselem has completed an initial investigation into the IDF operation in the northern Gaza Strip. The investigation reveals that from the beginning of the operation until this afternoon (Monday October 4):

* 75 Palestinians have been killed by IDF forces. This includes 31 civilians who took no part in the fighting. Among the dead are 19 children, ages 17 and under.

* The IDF has completely demolished some 55 houses in the eastern neighborhoods of the Jabaliya refugee camp.

* Some 50 additional houses have been severely damaged.

* Some 50,000 people living in seven Palestinian neighborhoods in Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and the Jabaliya refugee camp, are under complete siege. The water and electricity supplies have been cut off and food stocks are running out.

Daud Asliya, a 33 year-old resident of the a-Sica neighborhood in the eastern part of the Jabaliya refugee camp, told B’Tselem: “Since the invasion began we have been under siege and cannot leave the house. A tank is positioned about 50 meters from my house and is intensively shelling all the time…. We have been surviving on the water that I had stored in barrels, but this has almost run out. Yesterday almost all of our food ran out, except for some bread and tea…. The children are panicked and cry around the clock.”

The Qassam rocket attacks on Sderot carried out by Palestinian militants are illegal and constitute a war crime. However, the grief for the death of Israeli civilians cannot justify such extensive harm to Palestinian civilians uninvolved in the hostilities.

B’Tselem calls on all sides involved in hostilities to respect the principles of international humanitarian law and to avoid all targeting of civilians. In addition, B’Tselem calls on the IDF to:

* Avoid firing upon combatants if such firing is liable to cause widespread civilian casualties; * Avoid destruction of houses that is not necessitated by urgent military needs; * Ensure the continuous supply of water, food and medicine, in accordance with the High Court ruling regarding the IDF operation in Rafah in May 2004

B'Tselem's report deals with one of the primary, albeit lesser known, elements of Israel's restrictions on Palestinian movement in the Occupied Territories: the prohibition on Palestinian travel along certain roads in the West Bank.

The forbidden roads regime is a slippery policy, in part because its rules and regulations have never been set in writing: not in Knesset legislation, nor in decisions of the political echelon, nor in military orders, nor in press releases, nor even in road signs warning Palestinians that their travel on a road is prohibited or restricted. The regime is based on verbal orders given to soldiers, and in practices that the IDF has employed in the West Bank since the current intifada began.

The Forbidden Roads

B'Tselem's investigation indicates that the roads subject to the regime may be classified into three categories based on the severity of the restrictions on Palestinian travel on these roads: completely prohibited, partially prohibited, and restricted use roads.

Completely prohibited roads - The first category consists of roads for the exclusive use of Israeli citizens. This includes what the IDF calls "sterile roads" where the prohibition against Palestinian travel is explicit and obvious: Israel places a staffed checkpoint through which only Israeli vehicles are allowed to pass. This category also includes roads on which travel is not possible, or pointless, because the access roads leading to and from Palestinian villages are blocked.

Partially prohibited roads - The second category includes roads on which Palestinians are allowed to travel only if they have special permits issued by the Civil Administration, or if the identity cards of the driver and passengers indicate that they are residents of villages entirely dependent on the road on which they are traveling.

Restricted use roads - The third category includes roads on which Palestinian vehicles are allowed to travel without a special permit, but access to the roads is restricted by concrete blocks and other obstacles. In most cases, a driver who wants to get onto the road has to go to an intersection where soldiers check the vehicles and persons wanting to use the road.

The roads regime is enforced through a variety of means: an aggressive and discriminatory enforcement of the traffic laws against Palestinians only, prolonged delays of Palestinians, and confiscation of Palestinian vehicles with no due process. As a result, many Palestinian drivers refrain from using even those roads nominally open to them.

Issuance of Permits

The Civil Administration and the District Civil Liaison offices (DCLs) are responsible for providing Palestinians with the permits they require to travel on various roads. This bureaucracy lacks all transparency and acts in a patently arbitrary manner. There are no fixed criteria for granting or rejecting requests for permits, so the decision is based solely on the discretion of the DCL staff.

Also, notice of rejection is given verbally and without explanation. Requests by Palestinians who are considered "prevented for security reasons" are automatically denied. Only the General Security Service can remove this ground for rejection. This being the case, the GSS exploits the applicants' need for the permits and pressures them to serve as collaborators.

Disrupting All Aspects of Life

The forbidden roads regime has forced West Bank Palestinians to use long and winding routes rather than roads that lead directly from one town or district to another. Travel on these alternate roads disrupts all aspects of daily life in the West Bank, in such areas as the economy, health, and education, and gravely affects social and family life. In addition, Palestinians suffer the insult and humiliation that are part and parcel of the measures used by Israeli security forces to enforce the discriminatory roads regime.

Israel constructed an extensive road network in order to serve the Israeli settlements. To justify expropriating privately owned Palestinian land for these roads, Israel argued that the roads would also benefit the Palestinian population. Now these same roads are completely off-limits to Palestinians.

Israel contends that the restrictions on Palestinian travel along these roads result from imperative security considerations and not from racist motivations. Indeed, since the outbreak of the intifada, in September 2000, there has been an increase in the number of attacks by Palestinian organizations against Israeli civilians inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories. More than 600 Israeli civilians, including over 100 minors, have been killed. Attacks aimed at civilians violate fundamental legal and moral norms, and constitute war crimes in international humanitarian law. The attacks are unjustifiable, regardless of the circumstances. Not only is Israel entitled to take measures to defend its citizens against such attacks, it is required to do so. However, its actions must comply with Israeli and international law.

The roads regime infringes the Palestinians' right to freedom of movement and the right to equality. Israel is therefore in breach of fundamental principles of international law set forth in treaties to which Israel is party, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racism, and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Discrimination-based separation � An Apartheid Practice

The roads regime, which is based on separation through discrimination, bears clear similarities to the racist apartheid regime that existed in South Africa until 1994. An individual's national origin determines their right to use various roads. This policy is based on a racist premise: that all Palestinians are security risks, and it is therefore justifiable to restrict their movement. Thus the policy indiscriminately harms the entire Palestinian population, in violation of their human rights and of international law.

B'Tselem demands that the government of Israel immediately end the forbidden roads regime and that it respect the right of Palestinians to freedom of movement on all roads inside the West Bank.

B'Tselem issues a new report today: The Forbidden Roads: The Discriminatory West Bank Road Regime. In its new report, B'Tselem finds that:

Israel restricts Palestinian travel on forty-one roads and sections of roads throughout the West Bank, totaling more than 700 kilometers of roadway (the report includes a detailed map of the Forbidden Roads Regime).

B'Tselem has divided the Forbidden Roads Regime into three categories of roads: "sterile roads" where Palestinian traffic is completely prohibited, roads where Palestinians require special permits, and roads with restricted access. The regime applies only to Palestinians. Israeli vehicles are allowed to travel freely along these roadways.

Permits for Palestinians to travel on restricted roads are issued at the sole discretion of the Israeli security establishment. Rejections are given verbally and without explanation. According to the head of the Civil Administration, Brig. Gen. Ilan Paz, "There are no definitive clear criteria for examining requests for a permit."

The Forbidden Roads Regime has been in operation for years, but the rules and regulations for its implementation have never been issued in writing. Thus, Israel frees itself of accountability and increases the arbitrariness with which it enforces the regime.

The Forbidden Roads Regime operates under the premise that every Palestinian is a security risk. Based on this premise, the Roads Regime violates the rights to freedom of movement and to equality of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel has an obligation to safeguard the lives of its citizens. But this obligation does not allow it to cause such harsh, extensive, indiscriminate, and prolonged harm to the local population.

By unlawfully discriminating against Palestinians based on their national origin, the Forbidden Roads Regime is reminiscent of the apartheid system that existed in South Africa. The regime violates fundamental principles of international law that are binding on the State of Israel.

B'Tselem demands that the government of Israel immediately end the Forbidden Roads Regime and that it

respect the right of Palestinians to move freely on all roads inside the West Bank.

Israeli human rights group B'Tselem issued a report on Friday elaborating on the amount of destruction caused by Israel’s military raids into Rafah over the past five days. The report also elaborated on the discrepancies between the actual destruction caused by the Israeli army’s wanton military activity and its own representation of what transpired, clearly demonstrating an Israeli attempt to downplay the amount of destruction, in particular with regard to home demolition.

According to B’Tselem’s research, at least 62 homes were demolished in the Brazil and a-Salam areas of Rafah between Thursday and Friday. Israeli army reports for the same period talk of only five buildings and hardly mention other types of destruction to local infra-structure or human casualties, focusing solely on perceived operational “success.”

A senior Israeli military officer claimed that the destruction seen in “Palestinian” footage had actually been destroyed over the course of the past three and a half years.

While talking to reporters at a briefing on Friday, Brig.-Gen. Shmuel Zakai, the Gaza division commander, described Palestinian reports of destruction in Rafah as a "well-oiled propaganda machine," adding that none of the residents were suffering from starvation.

During the hearing, the IDF claimed that medical supplies and ambulances are able to enter the camp. The IDF announced it would allow a truckload of medical equipment sent by Physicians for Human Rights Israel into the camp. The truck, which had been waiting for clearance since yesterday, entered Rafah immediately after the hearing. The judges announced their decision would be given at a later date.

Yesterday, Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz told the IDF to formulate an alternative to the plan prepared by the Southern Command for the expansion of the Philadelphi route. The original plan included the demolition of hundreds of houses along the route, which separates the Gaza Strip from Egypt. Mazuz demanded the IDF examine alternatives which would cause less harm to civilians in the area. Mazuz made these demands at a meeting he held with top IDF and Justice Ministry officials. He announced that he would convene additional meetings during the coming days to discuss the matter.

This morning, the press reported that IDF forces were pulling out of the Tel a-Sultan, Brazil and a-Salam neighborhoods of Rafah. B'Tselem continues to receive reports of humanitarian distress in the neighborhoods which remain under siege. As the IDF continues to restrict movement into and around the Rafah, some the following reports are based solely on telephone testimonies. The information provided has been verified as extensively as possible under the present circumstances. The reports are intended as examples and do not purport to provide the whole picture or the most grave events taking place in Rafah.

B'Tselem Research: IDF Destroys 62 Homes in the Brazil and a-Salam Neighborhoods

B'Tselem research reveals: Over the last two days, the IDF has demolished 62 homes in the Brazil and a-Salam neighborhoods in which 741 people lived. 44 of the homes demolished were in the Brazil neighborhood and 18 in a-Salam. These figures contradict the numbers reported by the IDF to the media. As Tel a-Sultan is still under siege, B'Tselem has been unable to ascertain how many homes the IDF demolished in the neighborhood.

An IDF bulldozer hit the house of the 'Azzam family in the Brazil neighborhood in the south of Rafah. The entire family was inside the house at the time. At around 12:30 P.M., 'Abd al-Fatah 'Azzam heard loud sounds of something being demolished nearby. The parents gathered their four children in the basement as the father reported to the Al-Mezan human rights organization and B'Tselem what was going on. Only after about three hours, did IDF soldiers allow the family to leave the house. The soldiers then blew it up.

A day earlier, an IDF bulldozer hit the home of the Bradawil family in the Tel a-Sultan neighborhood. Bilal Bardawil, age 21, told B'Tselem: “I heard the sound of a bulldozer breaking the outer door and slamming into the walls. The entire house was shaking and I thought that it was going to crash down on top of us. We heard loud knocks on the door and my mother went to open it. Dozens of soldiers were standing at the entrance. They took the ID cards of all the males in the house and demanded we expose our stomach and chest. Then they confiscated our cellular phones and gathered us all in one room. There were fourteen of us in a room of 12 meters and one window. A soldier was sitting on a chair, pointing his gun at us. The electricity was out and we didn't have any food or water. After a few hours we felt like we were going to pass out from the lack of oxygen due to the over crowding. My father who is diabetic looked weak. My mother asked the soldier to let her open the window and get food and water for the kids. He shouted at her and refused. After a few hours, a soldier came and brought water, bread and tomatoes. He allowed the children to go to the bathroom...” At 4:00 A.M., close to twenty hours after their arrival, the soldiers left the house.

Haidar Hasuna from Tel a-Sultan told B'Tselem today: “Since the army demolished our house two days ago, my family and I have been staying with our neighbors. The neighborhood's infrastructure is completely ruined. The water supply is down; the sewer system has been hit; the electricity, phone lines and roads are cut off and the asphalt has been “peeled” off the roads. The food in the houses has almost run out and all the shops are closed. Tel a-Sultan is completely surrounded. I can see tanks and bulldozers around 130 meters from my home. There are four ambulances there but they won't let them pass Now, I can see the ambulances turning around and going back.”

Hani Kashta from the a-Salam neighborhood, age 17, said yesterday: “I live about 400 meters from the Egyptian border. Ever since the tanks came into the neighborhood it's been impossible to leave the house. The streets are empty and all you hear is shooting and tanks. From my window, I can see two bulldozers uprooting our neighbor's olive trees. We're using water from our water tank because there's no water in the taps. Soon we'll run out. What little food is left will also run out soon. We're under tremendous mental pressure. We're scared. I go to high school in Rafah. I was supposed to take my final exams today.”

Woman in Labor Climbs Rope from 2nd Floor to Give Birth

On Tuesday, Asmaa Abu Ghali, resident of the Canada neighborhood in Rafah, had to climb down from the second floor on a rope on her way to give birth. Her husband, Sami Abu Ghali told B'Tselem yesterday over the phone: “She couldn't take the pain anymore and was about to give birth. I didn't know what to do. I called an ambulance, but everyone said it wouldn't be able to make it to us.”

Sami Abu Ghali spoke to nurses who live about 500 away who said they would help deliver the baby at their home. Abu Ghali said: “My wife couldn't leave the house and couldn't go down the stairs because the staircase is exposed to snipers. I had to get her down from the second floor using a rope. I got my 55-year-old mother down in the same way so she could go with her."

Abu Ghali lost contact with his wife and found out only the next day that she had given birth to a girl.

Yesterday, a Tel a-Sultan resident went into labor but could not leave her house to go to the hospital. Her sister called a local radio station and was put in touch with a physician who guided her through the labor live on air. The baby was born healthy.

Muhammad Yunis, a resident of Tel a-Sultan, told B'Tselem yesterday that his diabetic mother's insulin supply had run out on Wednesday. According to Yunis, his mother is in terrible condition since she had not taken the medicine. Yesterday morning, they got some insulin from neighbors whose son is also diabetic, but the supply had already run out by later in the day.

On Tuesday, we reported that a clinic in Tel a-Sultan had been surrounded by IDF soldiers who were preventing staff members from leaving. Later that day, staff members managed to leave the clinic on foot, leaving the ambulances behind. It was only this afternoon that coordination for the ambulances to leave was reached through the Red Cross and the Palestinian District Coordination Office. A Rafah municipality bulldozer removed the mounds of sand that had blocked the exit to the clinic's yard. At around 2:00 PM, IDF soldiers checked the ambulances and allowed them out of the complex.

Three Siblings Wounded by IDF Gunfire. Ambulance Sent to Evacuate them Sinks in IDF Dirt Mound

Yesterday at around 8:00 A.M, IDF soldiers ordered the Hassan family to leave their house in the Brazil neighborhood while waving white flags. As the family stepped onto the street, IDF soldiers fired at them from machine guns mounted on a tank. The Al-Mezan human rights organization reported that a 17-year-old daughter of the family was injured in the legs, her 15-year-old brother was hit by a bullet in the shoulder and a nine-year-old brother was lightly wounded by shrapnel.

An ambulance that was on its way to evacuate the three siblings sank in a dirt mound used by the IDF to block the road near the Bakker Mosque. B'Tselem field researchers spoke on the phone with the ambulance driver as he and the two volunteers who were with him tried to get the ambulance out and get to the wounded. Israeli soldiers in an IDF tank present at the scene were aiming their guns at the ambulance team at the time. The ambulance was eventually released at around 2:45 P.M., but did not manage to get to the Hassan family.

At present, the fate of the three injured siblings is unknown. The IDF Spokesperson claimed that the IDF had not cleared the way for the ambulance since its arrival had not been coordinated and that the passage of the ambulance was eventually made possible thanks to a tank that was present at the scene and cleared the roadblocks along the way.

Now's the Time to Act

The Attorney General has yet to finalize his decision.Write Mazuz (fax: +972-2-6274481) demanding he declares the planned house demolitions unlawful.

Following is a sample letter:

I write to express my deep concern at the government's plan to destroy hundreds of houses in the Rafah refugee camp, in order to widen the Philidelphi Route. This plan severely violates international humanitarian law, to which Israel is obligated. Israel, as the occupying force in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, is obliged to protect the local population and ensure its safety and welfare. While Israel may derogate from its obligations for military necessity, it must nevertheless balance military needs with the rights of the residents of the occupied territory. The planned demolitions will render homeless thousands of civilians who have not taken part in hostilities. I therefore urge you to determine that these planned demolitions run contrary to Israel's legal obligations.