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

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have continued air strikes on the Gaza Strip, especially on its north. They have attacked a number of civilian facilities and agricultural areas. This escalation has come in the context of a plan made by the Israeli Ministry of Defense to respond to launching locally made rockets at Israeli towns located to the east of the Gaza Strip. PCHR is concerned that such attacks may endanger the lives of Palestinian civilians and destroy their property.

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 23:30 on Sunday, 18 December 2005, IOF started to launch a series of air strikes, which continued until Monday morning. IOF war planes launched at least 13 air strikes on a number of roads in the northern Gaza Strip towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia. They attacked the following targets:

1. A number of missiles hit al-Sikka Bridge in the south of Beit Hanoun, destroying it and making a large crater into the main road that links the south with the north of the Gaza Strip and leads to Erez crossing.
2. Three missiles hit Salah al-Din Street, making craters and destroying it partially.
3. A missile hit the road leading to a site of the Palestinian Naval Police in al-Sudaniya area in the west of Beit Lahia.
4. Three missiles hit the main road in Sheikh Zayed town in Beit Lahia, partially destroying it and damaging a number of houses;
5. A missile destroyed the road leading to Um al-Nasser village, nearly 100 meters away from Balsam Hospital, whose windows were also destroyed.

As a result of these air strikes, 6 Palestinian civilians, including a 3-month-old infant, were injured by shrapnel. Palestinian civilians were extremely terrified.

On Sunday morning, 18 December 2005, IOF war planes launched 6 mock air raids on the same areas. They also attacked agricultural areas to the east of the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis.

In light of the above:

1. PCHR reiterates its condemnation for this latest escalation, which further proves that the Israeli Disengagement Plan was a form of IOF redeployment rather than an end of occupation as the Israeli occupation is still effective both physically and legally.
2. PCHR is concerned that more casualties may occur among Palestinian civilians in light of the green light given by the Israeli government to IOF to commit more extra-judicial executions and attack Palestinian areas in the Gaza Strip.
3. PCHR reminds the Palestinian resistance groups of their responsibilities with regard to protection of civilians in keeping with international law, and calls on them to abstain from launching any military activities from inside or near civilian areas or which target civilians or civilian areas. Attacks against civilians are in clear violation of international humanitarian law.
4. PCHR calls for campaigning for the complete implementation of international humanitarian law and that the perpetrators of attacks against civilians must be dealt with in accordance with international humanitarian law.

On Thursday, 17 November 2005, IOF extra-judicially executed two activists of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the Fatah movement, in Jenin. This is the third extra-judicial execution committed by IOF in the northern West Bank in 5 days. IOF claimed that they ordered the victims to stop, and then fired at the two men when they did not obey the order. However, PCHR’s preliminary investigations refute this claim and confirm that IOF could have arrested the two men or used non-lethal force.

According to preliminary investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 12:15, on Thursday, 17 November 2005, an undercover IOF unit of IOF moved into Jenin using a medium-sized truck (Mercedes 410) with a Palestinian license plate. When the undercover unit reached the water reservoir in Haifa Street, they passed another civilian car heading from al-Yamoun village to Jenin. The unit members opened fire at the other car without warning and hit the two people in the car. Both were killed instantly. Their bodies were taken to Dr. Khalil Suleiman Hospital in Jenin. According to medical sources, the dead men were hit by gunshots to the head. They were identified as Ahmad Saber Mohammad Mahmoud 'Abahra, 20; and Mahmoud Jamal Mohammad Zayed, 20, from al-Yamoun village, southwest of Jenin.

PCHR strongly condemns this crime and asserts that extra-judicial executions are the most blatant example of premeditated willful killings perpetrated by IOF against Palestinian civilians, with the official approval of the highest political and judicial bodies in Israel. These crimes are classified as war crimes under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. In addition, they are a flagrant violation of human rights instruments, especially the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights of 1966. PCHR believes that that the policies of military incursions; willful and extra-judicial killings; and arbitrary arrests, implemented by IOF almost daily in the West Bank, serve to escalate tension in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and threaten the lives of Palestinian civilians. Consequently, PCHR calls upon the international community to cease their silence in light of such attacks, and reiterates its call for the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 to fulfill their obligations to ensure protection for Palestinian civilians in the OPT.

For the third consecutive day, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have continued to shell Palestinian civilian targets in the Gaza Strip using warplanes, gunboats as well as tanks positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Israeli warplanes carried out mock air raids and conducted sonic booms over the Gaza Strip. IOF have also closed all border crossings of the Gaza Strip, including commercial ones. This Israeli escalation came in a response to launching a number of locally made rockets by Palestinian gunmen at the Israeli town of Sedorot to the north of the Gaza Strip. This latest wave of attacks on the Gaza Strip has been the second of its kind since the middle of last September, when IOF evacuated Israeli settlements and redeployed around the Gaza Strip.

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 20:30 on Monday, 24 October 2005, an Israeli F-16 fighter jet launched a missile at an uninhabited area to the north of al-Nada housing project. No casualties were reported, but the missile made a large crater into the ground.

At approximately 22:30 on the same day, IOF positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast of Beit Hanoun fired a number of artillery shells and gunshots at Palestinian areas located to the west of the border. No casualties were reported, but Palestinian civilians were extremely terrified.

At approximately 23:30 on the same day, Israeli gunboats launched a number of missiles at a number of sites of the Palestinian National Security Forces in al-Sudaniya area in the northern Gaza Strip. No casualties or damage were reported.

At approximately 01:00 on Tuesday, 25 October 2005, Israeli warplanes launched a missile at the office of Fatah movement in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanound. The office was severely damaged, but no casualties were reported.

At approximately 01:30 on the same day, an Israeli helicopter gunship launched a missile at al-Ihsan Cultural Centre on the second floor of a building belonging to the Solidarity Society for Community Development in al-Shaboura refugee camp in Rafah. The missile hit a concrete pillar in the building and shrapnel from it hit two neighboring houses. The centre, a clinic on the first floor of the building and the two houses were severely damaged. A third house was lightly damaged. In addition, 5 Palestinian civilians, including an old woman and two children, in one of these houses, and the guard of the centre were injured by shrapnel.

At approximately 06:25 on the same day, an Israeli F-16 fighter jet launched a missile at an uninhabited area in the south of Beit Hanoun. No casualties or damage were reported.

At approximately 01:00 on Wednesday, 26 October 2005, IOF positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, east of Beit Hanoun, fired 12 artillery shells at uninhabited areas located nearly 1000 meters to the west of the border. No casualties were reported. This Israeli shelling continued sporadically for two hours. IOF also declared the targeted area known as al-Masriyeen area a closed military zone and prevented Palestinian civilians from leaving their houses. This Israeli declaration remained effective until 06:00, when Palestinian civilians started to move normally, but nearly 1500 meters away from the border.

In light of the above:

1. PCHR strongly condemns this serious escalation in attacks by IOF, which proves that IOF continue to occupy the Gaza Strip, despite the recent evacuation of Israeli settlements. PCHR reiterates its position declared on 13 October 2004 that IOF did not end their occupation of the Gaza Strip rather they redeployed around it, while the occupation has remained effective in its legal and materialistic forms.
2. PCHR is gravely concerned that a green light given to IOF by the Israeli government, allowing them to launch wide scale attacks, including extra-judicial killings and incursions, in the Gaza Strip, may result in more casualties among Palestinian civilians.
3. PCHR remains also gravely concerned at repeated mistakes in firing those rockets hitting civilian areas and endangering civilians. PCHR also reminds the Palestinian resistance groups of their responsibilities with regard to protection of civilians in keeping with international law, and calls on them to abstain from launching any military activities from inside or near civilian areas or which target civilians or civilian areas. Attacks against civilians are in clear violation of international humanitarian law.
4. PCHR calls for continuing efforts to press for the complete implementation of international humanitarian law and that the perpetrators of attacks against civilians must be dealt with in accordance with international humanitarian law.

Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) committed another extra-judicial execution crime yesterday evening . The victim was Nehad Khaled Abu Ghanem, 33 years old from the village of Barqeen , west of Jenin. He died after sustaining several gunshot wounds in the upper body. IOF troops chased him and fired at him from close range, killing him instantly.

Initial investigations by PCHR and eyewitness accounts indicate that at 16:30 in the afternoon of Sunday the 16 of October Nehad Khaled Abu Ghanem (33) was driving a black "Citroen" on his way from Qabatya to his home village, Barqeen. When Nehad reached the Martyrs' Triangle intersection off the Jenin – Nablus road, he noticed a number of Israeli military jeeps around the intersection. He may have thought that he had been ambushed. He drove his car towards the southwestern entrance of Martyrs Triangle village, about 200 meters away from the jeeps. IOF soldiers noticed him and gave chase. Nehad drove away quickly and accidentally hit the wall of a house. The car stopped completely. Several soldiers got out of their jeeps and surrounded Nehad. They opened fire at him from close range while he was in the car. He died instantly.

A Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance transported Nehad's body to "Martyr Dr. Khalil Suliman" governmental hospital in Jenin. After examination, medical sources in the hospital announced that Nehad was hit by 6 bullets in the mouth, head, chest, and abdomen.

Eyewitnesses reported that the IOF troops could have easily detained Nehad without being exposed to any danger. However, IOF did not make the arrest due to their premeditated intent to kill.

This crime comes one week after the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, published on 9 October, that IOF announced a reduction in detention operations against "key wanted activists" in the West Bank who are expected to resist arrest. IOF claimed that Nehad had been "wanted" since his release from Israeli jails 9 months ago. He served a four and a half years sentence for membership in Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad.

PCHR views with great concern the continued escalation by the Israeli government and IOF in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). This incident is added to the list of ongoing Israeli violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law, including through extra-judicial executions. These incidents are further evidence that the Israeli government disregards international law and international humanitarian law. PCHR affirms that the extra-judicial execution policy adopted by the Israeli government threatens to drag the region into a new cycle of violence. PCHR calls upon the international community to break its silence regarding these and other incidents. The Centre renews its demand to the High Contracting Parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfill their obligations and guarantee the right to protection for Palestinian civilians in the OPT.