Israel is carrying out ‘reproductive genocide’ against Palestinians
A malnourished Palestinian girl, Mariam Dawwas, is carried by her mother in the Rimal neighbourhood in Gaza City on 2 August 2025
Oscar Rickett reports in Middle East Eye on 1 July 2026:
Israel has for decades carried out a “reproductive genocide” of the Palestinian people, obliterating medical institutions, executing women and children and degrading the lived environment to such a point that it results in infertility, a new report says.
This practice, the Palestinian Feminist Collective report contends, has accelerated since Israel’s genocide in Gaza began following the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023, with the intention of making it impossible for Palestinian life to continue.
Last week, the UN’s top investigative body on Palestine and Israel concluded that Israeli forces had deliberately targeted Palestinian children as a central element of their assault on Gaza. The UN’s report examined the full scope of harm inflicted on children, from precision shootings by snipers and drones, to torture in detention, reproductive violence and the destruction of schools and hospitals.
Israel has killed more than 21,000 Palestinian children since October 2023, with a further 5,160 children estimated to be buried under rubble, according to the UN report. As of October 2024, at least 15,000 children had lost their mothers. In one case documented by the UN, the cutting of electricity by Israeli forces at al-Nasr paediatric hospital led to the death of four babies, whose decomposed bodies were later discovered still attached to defunct life support machines.
At the beginning of the genocide, the United Nations estimated that there were 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, giving birth to 5,500 babies each month. Many required a form of emergency care that has been rendered impossible by the Israeli military.
Miscarriages at the time rose by over 300 percent, as widespread malnutrition, anaemia and a lack of prenatal supplements intensified the risks of pre-term birth, low birth weight and fatal bleeding during labour.
‘A predatory state’
The 188-page Palestinian Feminist Collective report, titled A Predatory State: Israeli Systemic Sexualised and Gendered Violence Against Palestinians and supported by the Progressive International, notes that with clean water, menstrual products and basic supplies to Gaza blocked by the Israelis, many Palestinian women “resorted to homemade pads or taking birth-control pills to stop their periods”.
Drawing on research conducted between December 2025 and April 2026, it brings together survivor and witness testimonies, declassified Israeli archives, Palestinian oral histories, academic research, documentary evidence, media reporting, human rights documentation, and United Nations reports and statements.