The Israeli occupation forces are deliberately targeting women in their genocidal onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip, a Palestinian minister says.
The announcement was made in a Sunday press statement by the Ramallah-based Palestinian government’s Minister of Women’s Affairs Mona al-Khalili.
She noted that 9,560 Palestinian women have been killed by the regime’s forces since the beginning of the Israeli genocide in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
“Women in the Gaza Strip are suffering from the most dangerous and harsh conditions in decades, as a result of deteriorating health and living conditions, displacement, and lack of shelter, in addition to the lack of food and water,” the minister said.
Al-Khalili stated that that there are approximately 15,000 pregnant women currently in the Gaza Strip, “95 percent of whom do not eat sufficient amounts of food, which increases health risks to the mother and fetus.”
She added that there are about a million forcibly displaced women who face exacerbated risks in shelter centers, which lack basic necessities.
Al-Khalili said approximately 37 mothers are killed every day in Gaza, leaving behind devastated families and displaced children.
In an exclusive interview with the Press TV website on March 26, Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, said the violence inflicted on Palestinian women and children by Israel could qualify as acts of genocide under Article 2 of the Genocide Convention. These are acts that relate to “imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group.”
She added that Israel is inflicting “reproductive violence” on Palestinian women, newborns, babies, infants and children.
“So in addition to the forced starvation, ethnic cleansing, torture, executions, arbitrary detention, indiscriminate bombardment and forced displacement, they have also been subjected to reproductive/obstetric violence, sexual violence and targeted as mothers,” she added.
Alsalem said Palestinian women have been persecuted for decades “for being Palestinian and for being women,” have suffered “systematic violations of their individual and collective rights as Palestinians” and been “targeted in a very gendered manner because they are women.”
According to a detailed report by the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, female Palestinian detainees from Gaza have been subjected to sexual violence, torture, inhuman treatment, strip searches, sexual harassment, etc.
