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.

To view the Full Policy Paper as PDF

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.

To view the Full Policy Paper as PDF

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

Contents:
1. Population Statistics
2. Restricting Access to Schools
3. Deteriorating quality of education
4. Hope for the next generation

With the participation of: United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), United Nations Officefor the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights(UNOHCHR), United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), World Food Program (WFP), World Health Organization (WHO).

Jerusalem – Ten United Nations institutions call on the Israeli authorities to ease restrictions on movement in the occupied territory to enable 60,000 Palestinian students to sit for their Tawjihi matriculation final exams beginning today 7^th of June.

Almost 60,000 Palestinian children out of the 1.2 million children of school age will sit for Tawjihi high school matriculation exams starting today. In Rafah alone, more than 3,000 school children will take these important and future defining exams.

“Failure to sit for these exams will result in forfeiting the entire school year” Said David S. Bassiouni, UNICEF Special Representative in the West Bank and Gaza. “Students will not be able to study in universities and they will be forced to repeat their studies next year.” he added.

“If these children are denied safe access to their examination sites, their whole future is undermined” Said Anders Fänge Director of UNRWA Operations in the West Bank.

According to Khaled Abdelshafi, Head of the UNDP in Gaza said “the recent incursions in Rafah have had a detrimental effect on the economy of the area, with substantial damages to infrastructure.” For Abdelshafi “to add this restriction of preventing the school children from writing these exams to the already volatile equation will seriously stifle our efforts to attain human development in the area…It’s like adding insult to injury.”

Regular and safe access to schools has been an ongoing problem for many Palestinian children, the violence and access problems have had implications on the education journey of the Palestinian children. A survey of UN-run schools showed a 16 per cent low-achievement rate, and an 11.5 per cent rate of fear and anxiety among school children.

(For more details see the UN fact sheet published on the occasion of the International Children’s day on the 1st. of June 2004)

For further information, please contact:
Monica Awad, UNICEF, Tel: 5830013 Ext. 213, or 057-7-784374
Ehab Shanti, UNDP, Tel: 052-2269610, by email at ehab.shanti@undp.org
Sami Mshasha’, UNRWA, Tel: 02-5890408 or 050-5-317094
Costanza Farina, UNESCO, c.farina@unesco.org

World Food Program (WFP), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN (FAO), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs (OCHA), United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), Untied Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO

New York and Gaza City, March 26- The heads of the United Nations agencies may have to reduce or terminate some critical humanitarian relief operations in Gaza due to new movement restrictions imposed on UN personnel and humanitarian assistance by the Government of Israel.

For the last three weeks, nearly all UN and other humanitarian agency vehicles have been prohibited from crossing through the Erez checkpoint. In addition, the movement of food containers through Karni – the only commercial crossing point in Gaza – is currently obstructed.

These unacceptable limitations on access for humanitarian staff and goods are undermining UN operational capability to deliver essential services and food relief to Gaza’s civilian population. These operations provide more than half of Gaza’s essential social services, as well as food assistance to several hundred thousand people. Any cutbacks will lead to a further deterioration of the already fragile humanitarian situation in Gaza.

The UN recognizes Israel’s legitimate security concerns and senior official have repeatedly sought to engage the Government of Israel to resolve these concerns, but without success. Because the restrictions persist, the UN is compelled to call publicly on the Government of Israel to restore full access to Gaza for UN and humanitarian workers and goods.

The UN agencies include:

UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
World Food Programme
UNICEF
UNDP
WHO
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
UN Special Co-ordinator’s Office (UNSCO)

***

For more information, please contact:
Mark Dennis, Senior Adviser, UNSCO + 972-55-627-807, dennism@un.org