A Gaza woman named Najwa Abu Hamada felt no sense of justice when a U.N. Commission of Inquiry cited the destruction of a fertility clinic among actions that it said showed Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Instead, the commission’s findings revived painful memories in Abu Hamada of the embryos she had stored at the Al-Basma IVF centre and lost when it was hit by Israeli forces in late 2023, said a Reuters report today.
Like other Gazans, Abu Hamada feels helpless and without a voice to protest as Israel presses on with its nearly two-year-old military offensive in Gaza and the death toll keeps rising.
“The genocide is not only targeting men, children and women, it is also targeting frozen fertility eggs – my only hope,” Abu Hamada said in Qatar, where she now lives. “Israel came and even carried out genocide which reached even the embryos that belong to me at Al Basma centre. What can compensate me?”
Abu Hamada has already had one child by using fertility procedures in Gaza, and is still wondering if she can have another child at the age of 49. On Tuesday, she and her husband Eyad Abu Hamada spoke with her doctor Bahaeldeen Ghalayini, an obstetrician and gynaecologist who established the Al Basma IVF centre, about the possibility of undergoing further fertility treatments. “The doctor told us don’t lose hope,” said her husband.
The couple had travelled to Qatar for fertility treatment before the Gaza war began. The loss of her embryos back home in Gaza in 2023 dealt a huge blow to her hopes of having another child. Ghalayini confirmed to Reuters that Abu Hamada had embryos that were stored at the Gaza clinic before it was attacked in late 2023.
The U.N. Commission concluded that the destruction of the Al Basma IVF centre was “a measure intended to prevent births among Palestinians in Gaza” – one of five acts or violations that count as genocide under the 1948 convention.
“The Israeli security forces launched a tank shell that directly hit the clinic and caused the explosion of five liquid nitrogen tanks, consequently destroying all the reproductive material that was stored therein for future conception of Palestinians,” it said.
Abu Hamada had a son, Khalil, who was conceived through fertility procedures at a different clinic. He was killed when he was 17, during a flare-up of violence between Israel and the Islamic Jihad group in 2022.
“God blessed me with him after 12 years (of infertility) and five (IVF) transplant operations. He is gone after he became a young man and I wanted him to get married and celebrate his wedding, and I lost him,” said Abu Hamada. “We want everyone to stand by us. The whole world is watching and doing nothing.”
