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

INSIDE:

Casualties ▪ Incidents involving ambulances ▪ Curfew ▪ House demolition/Demolition orders\People displaced ▪ Land levelling\Requisitions ▪ Closure\Restrictions on movement ▪ Access to schools ▪ Olive harvest incidents ▪ Labour movement to Israel ▪ Other ▪ Appendix

1. Casualties

Palestinians: Deaths: 12 Injured: 35 (approximate)

Israelis: Deaths: Injured: 5 (approximate)

Sources: OCHA FCU, PRCS, UNRWA, IDF website, Israeli MoFA.

2. Incidents involving ambulances and medical teams

West Bank: Denial of access: 0 Delay (30 minutes): 0 Shooting/Damage to Ambulance: 0

Gaza: Denial of access: 0 Delay (30 minutes): 2 Shooting/Damage to Ambulance: 0

Sources: OCHA FCU, PRCS, Palestinian MoH

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INSIDE:

• Casualties
• Incidents involving ambulances 
• Curfew
• House demolition/Demolition orders\People displaced 
• Land levelling\Requisitions 
• Closure\Restrictions on movement
• Access to schools
• Labour movement to Israel 
• Other 
• Appendix

1. Casualties

• Palestinians: Deaths: 25 Injured: 82 (approximate)
• Israelis: Deaths: 1 Injured: 3

Sources: OCHA FCU, PRCS, UNRWA, IDF website, Israeli MoFA.

2. Incidents involving ambulances and medical teams

West Bank:

• Denial of access: 1
• Delay (30 minutes): 0
• Shooting/Damage to Ambulance: 0

Gaza:

• Denial of access: 0
• Delay (30 minutes): 0
• Shooting/Damage to Ambulance: 0

Sources: OCHA FCU, PRCS, Palestinian MoH

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Since the beginning of 2004, the humanitarian situation in the Gaza strip has sharply deteriorated. Intensified movement restrictions on the Palestinian civilian population and the escalation in the conflict are the primary cause. Economic options for Palestinians are disappearing and coping mechanisms for the community are nearly exhausted. Israel has been facing serious security concerns particularly from militant attacks and Qassam rockets. Yet Israel also has obligations to ensure the humanitarian needs of Palestinian civilians are met.

All movement through Gaza’s borders is controlled. An Israeli security fence surrounded all of Gaza and sea access to the west is prohibited. Palestinian movement in and out if Gaza is limited to tow crossing points controlled by the Israeli security forces: Eretz Terminal, for laborers with permits to work in Israel, and Rafah terminal in the south into Egypt. Commercial goods enter and exit mainly through the Karni Terminal but new security measures have restricted access.

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Twelve United Nations organizations working in Gaza today stated that the ongoing violence on top of the sharply deteriorating humanitarian situation this year is pushing the Palestinian population into a deep crisis.

They voiced their serious concern about the ability of the population to cope. Since 28 September 2004, 82 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza including 24 children; 5 Israelis have been killed including 2 children.

During 2004, approximately 45 Palestinians have been killed each month in Gaza and poverty rates are predicted to rise to 72%. The attached ‘fact sheet’ highlights the dimensions of the developing crisis.

At the same time, IDF movement restrictions have prevented effective delivery of humanitarian aid. UNRWA has not been able to deliver emergency food aid to the north of Gaza. The IDF has also denied UN personnel secure access into Gaza for the last 14 days – making a total of 65 days so far this year that the UN has not been able to enter. The UN organizations recognize Israel’s legitimate security concerns, particularly the need to stop Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks into civilian areas, however, its actions should be in conformity with international humanitarian law and it should not use disproportionate force.

The UN agencies call on Israel to:

• Guarantee humanitarian agencies unrestricted and secure access into Gaza for both personnel and relief supplies;
• Ensure the free movement of humanitarian goods and personnel within the Gaza Strip;
• Respect its obligations under international humanitarian law by ensuring the safety of the Palestinian civilian population.

For further information: David Shearer - UN OCHA +972-(0) 545-627-841 Paul McCann - UNRWA +972-(0) 57-721-4431, +972-(0)59-428-008

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNOHCHR), United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Office of the United Nations Special Co-ordinator (UNSCO), World Food Program (WFP), World Health Organization (WHO), Food & Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), International Labour Organization (ILO)