An independent inquiry, commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), has for the first time concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
The findings come as the Israeli military has launched a ground offensive to occupy Gaza City – home to around 1 million Palestinians – amid mounting death toll.
Genocide in Gaza
On Tuesday, a team of independent experts, known as the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, released a 72-page report concluding that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and that top Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have incited these acts.
The report found that Israel has committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. These acts are “killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians, and imposing measures intended to prevent births,” the report stated.
“The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza. It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention,” the Commission’s head and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said.
Killing Palestinians
The report gave examples on how Israeli forces “directly targeted and killed” Palestinian civilians, journalists, healthcare and humanitarian workers across several places, including homes, hospitals, schools, religious buildings and designated safe zones.
Within this context, the report referred to the killing of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl brutally killed by Israeli troops in Gaza along with 6 members of her family in January 2024, as an example of how Israeli troops proceed to kill despite having “clear knowledge of the presence of Palestinian civilians along the evacuation routes and within the safe areas.”
It said the Israeli forces shot at civilians, including children, while some of them carried makeshift white flags, in addition to using wide-impact munitions to “intentionally kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
Blocking Aid
The Commission’s report accused Israel of weaponizing “the withholding of life-sustaining necessities, specifically by cutting off supplies of water, food, electricity, fuel and other essential supplies, including humanitarian assistance,” pointing to Israel’s total blockade on Gaza since the eruption of the war.
After the declaration of famine in Gaza City and the surrounding areas, Israel allowed a small amount of aid into the enclave, which the report called a “façade” to mislead the international community as it continues to “impose starvation and inhumane living conditions on the Palestinians.”
Targeting Children
The report said that Israel’s war on Gaza aims not only to destroy Hamas, but also “to physically destroy the (Palestinian) group by eliminating not only today’s children but the possibility of them having children in future,” citing the “extensive and deliberate targeting of Palestinian children.”
Moreover, it pointed to the mental and physical damage to Gaza’s children, noting that the widespread starvation in the Strip makes children “unable to develop speech and meet language milestones” which could lead to long-term cognitive issues.
The report also said that preventing baby formula and special infant milk from entering Gaza is “especially powerful evidence of an intention to destroy the population.”
Gender-based Violence
The Commission mentioned in its report “sexual and gender-based violence” committed by Israeli forces against Palestinians.
These included “rape, sexualized torture and other forms of sexual violence not only as a punishment against the individuals, but as part of a pattern of collective punishment to fracture, humiliate and subjugate the Palestinian population in its entirety.”
Israeli Leaders Complicity
According to the report, top Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, President Isaac Hertzog, and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, have incited genocide. “As early as 7 October 2023, Israeli officials made statements that indicated their intention to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a group,” the report said.
It added that “Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have had and continue to have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
Israel Denying Genocide
In response to the report, the Israeli Foreign Ministry released a statement on Tuesday, saying that “Israel categorically rejects the distorted and false report and calls for the immediate abolition of the Commission of Inquiry.” It also accused the report’s authors of being “proxies for Hamas,” saying that the report “relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods.”
The war in Gaza, which broke out after Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, has killed about 65,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured around 165,000 others, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
On Monday, Israel launched a ground offensive to occupy Gaza City, further expanding the war and risking more devastating humanitarian consequences.
