Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians, a new report released on Thursday by United Nations experts has found.

The U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory explained in its report that these actions are part of a broader effort to undermine Palestinians' right to self-determination and are considered "genocidal acts" via the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities.

Israel systematically destroyed women's healthcare facilities during its onslaught on Gaza, thus destroying "in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group," the report reads, "including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention."

In addition to causing a surge in maternity deaths due to restricted access to medical supplies, the commission warns that these actions amount to the crime against humanity of extermination. Its findings also outline the ways in which Israel's security forces used forced public stripping and sexual assault as part of their standard operating procedures to punish Palestinians.

"Other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape and violence to the genitals, were committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership," the report reads.

The report found that sexual and gender-based violence – which has risen in frequency and severity – is being perpetrated across the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a strategy of war for Israel to dominate and destroy the Palestinian people.

Israel has rejected the accusations. "The [Israeli army] has concrete directives ... and policies which unequivocally prohibit such misconduct," the permanent mission to the U.N. in Geneva responded in a statement, adding that its review processes are in line with international standards.

A previous report published by the Commission in June 2024 accused Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups of serious rights violations in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack. In March last year, a team of United Nations experts said there were "reasonable grounds to believe" sexual violence, including rape, occurred at several locations during the militant group's assault.

Israel is party to the Genocide Convention and was ordered in January 2024 by the International Court of Justice to take action to prevent acts of genocide during the war against Hamas.

It is not party to the Rome Statute, which gives the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to rule on individual criminal cases involving genocide and crimes against humanity.

South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel's actions in Gaza at the International Court of Justice.