Women looking out from the windows of a building adjacent to an area that was hit by Israeli shelling in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, on 7 February 2024
Il compagno Alessandro M. ci segnala questo testo che volentieri pubblichiamo come documentazione e denuncia di un altro aspetto (occultato) della criminale operazione sionista-occidentale a Gaza. (Red.)
Said Khatib/AFP
Translated from French by Noël Burch.
On March 4, the UN released a report on the rapes and sexual aggression on Israeli women perpetrated on October 7. While this text encountered a vast echo in the media [un testo, secondo noi, largamente lacunoso – n.], another UN report was not so fortunate. It dealt with the treatment of Palestinian women, in particular the rapes and sexual aggression which they have endured since the beginning of the war on Gaza.
Eight UN experts,1 all women, raised the alarm on 19 February. Expressing their ‘deepest concern’ over the information obtained from ‘various sources’. They denounced extrajudicial executions, rapes, sexual aggression, cold-blooded beatings, and humiliations perpetrated on Palestinian women in both Gaza and the West Bank. They report ‘credible allegations of flagrant violations of human rights’ of which Palestinian women and girls ‘have been and continue to be the victims’.2 According to the testimony, information, and images that they were able to cross-check, ‘women and girls have reportedly been arbitrarily executed in Gaza. “Women are often executed together with family members, including their children.” “We are shocked by reports of the deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing of Palestinian women and children in places where they sought refuge or while fleeing”3 sometimes when they were holding pieces of white cloth in full view as a sign of peace. A video broadcast by Middle East Eye and which has been widely viewed on the Internet shows, among other things, a Palestinian grandmother shot down by Israeli forces in the centre of Gaza City on 12 November, while she and others are attempting to flee the area. At the moment of her execution this woman, whose name is Hala Khreis, was holding by the hand her grandson who was holding a white flag.
According to these same UN experts, hundreds of women have been arbitrarily detained since 7 October. These include human rights defenders, journalists, and humanitarian workers. All in all, “204 women and girls in Gaza, 147 women and children in the West Bank” are currently detained by Israel, according to Reem Alsalem, UN special rapporteur on violence to women and girls. She tells of women “literally kidnapped” from their homes and living in “atrocious” circumstances of detention. Several of them have been subjected to “inhuman and degrading treatments, denied menstruation pads, food and medicaments,” the UN press release goes on to specify. Further testimony tells of women detainees in Gaza kept in a cage in the rain and cold without food.
RAPES AND SEXUAL AGGRESSION
Next comes the sexual violence. “We are particularly distressed by reports that Palestinian women and girls in detention have also been subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers. At least two female Palestine detainees were raped, and others threatened with rape and sexual violence,’ the experts report. These Palestinian women ‘were severely beaten, humiliated, denied medical assistance, striped naked and photographed in degrading positions. The photos were then shared among the soldiers,’ according to Reem Alsalem. ‘There are disturbing reports of at least one female infant forcibly transferred by the Israeli army into Israel, and of children being separated from their parents, whose whereabouts remain unknown.’ The press release accuses.
All these presumed acts having been perpetrated by ‘the Israeli army or its affiliated forces’ (police, prison staff, etc.). The group of experts call for an independent, impartial, prompt, thorough and effective investigation into these allegations and for Israel to cooperate with such investigations. ‘Taken together, these alleged acts may constitute grave violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, and amount to serious crimes under international criminal law that could be prosecuted under the Rome Statute,’ they warn. ‘There must be an immediate investigation into these crimes, the perpetrators must be held accountable, and the victims and their families have the right to reparations and complete justice for all.’
In an interview given to UNNews4, Reem Asalem deplores the contempt with which Israeli authorities have greeted these revelations:
‘We have received no reply, which is unfortunately standard behaviour from the Israeli government who will not deal constructively with the special procedures or independent experts.’
She went on to say that ‘the arbitrary detention of Palestinian women and girls is nothing new in Gaza or the West Bank.’
These allegations have been firmly rejected by the Israeli UN mission, claiming that no complaints have been received by Israeli authorities and denigrating on X’ a group of so-called UN experts. ‘Clearly, the co-signatories are not motivated by the truth but by their hatred of Israel and its people’.
And yet a 41-page report by the Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), entitled’ Systematic Violations of Human Rights, The incarceration conditions of Palestinians in Israel since October 7’ bears out the UN accusations. It contains many eyewitness reports describing the ‘degrading treatments and serious abuse’ including non-isolated cases of sexual harassment and aggression, violence, torture and humiliation. According to PHRI, the number of Palestinians detained by the Israeli penitentiary system has risen from 5,500 before October 7 to 9,000 in January 2024, including dozens of minors and women. Nearly one third of these detainees are held in administrative detention with no indictment or trial: in short, they are hostages. The NGO report confirms the fact that the Israeli army has arrested hundreds of Gaza inhabitants without providing any information, even four months later, as to their well-being, place of detention and conditions of incarceration.
KISSING THE ISRAELI FLAG
This Israeli NGO’s report contains testimony from Palestinians telling how guards belonging to the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) forced them to kiss the Israeli flag and how those who refused were violently beaten. Such was the fate of Nabila, whose account was broadcast on Al Jazeera. She spent 47 days in arbitrary detention and described her experience as ‘horrifying’. She was kidnapped on December 24 from an UNWRA school in Gaza City well she had found refuge. The women were taken to a mosque where they were body-searched repeatedly and questioned with guns pointing at them, so violently that she said she thought they were going to be executed. After that, they were detained in the cold in conditions tantamount to torture.