An independent United Nations commission said on Tuesday Israeli attacks on schools, religious and cultural sites in Gaza amount to war crimes and the crime against humanity of seeking to exterminate Palestinians.
“Israel has obliterated Gaza’s education system and destroyed over half of all religious and cultural sites in the Gaza Strip,” the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in a report.
It accused Israeli forces of committing “war crimes, including directing attacks against civilians and wilful killing, in their attacks on educational facilities that caused civilian casualties.
“In killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites, Israeli security forces committed the crime against humanity of extermination,” the report said.
It noted: “While the destruction of cultural property, including educational facilities, was not in itself a genocidal act, evidence of such conduct may nevertheless infer genocidal intent to destroy a protected group.”
Commission chair Navi Pillay said in a statement accompanying the report: “We are seeing more and more indications that Israel is carrying out a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza.”
“Children in Gaza have lost their childhood,” the senior South African judge said. “They are forced to worry about survival amid attacks, uncertainty, starvation and subhuman living conditions.”
The three-member commission said Israeli attacks “targeted religious sites that served as places of refuge, killing hundreds of people, including women and children”.
– ‘Genocide’ warning –
The commission was set up by the UN to investigate violations of humanitarian and human rights law in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
In May, UN humanitarian relief chief Tom Fletcher urged the countries of the UN Security Council to take action “to prevent genocide” in Gaza.
Israel has denied committing genocide.
The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs demanded that Israel lift its aid blockade on Gaza, where the UN says the entire population of more than two million people is at risk of famine.
“For those killed and those whose voices are silenced: what more evidence do you need now?” Fletcher said on May 14. “Will you act — decisively — to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law?”
The UN commission’s report paid special attention to Gaza but also focused on Israeli attacks on civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories as a whole, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel itself.
It said Israel had “done little” to prevent or prosecute Jewish settlers in the West Bank who “intentionally targeted educational facilities and students to terrorise (Palestinian) communities and force them to leave their homes”.
The report said Israeli authorities had intimidated and, in some cases, detained Israeli and Palestinian teachers and students who “expressed concern or solidarity with the civilian population in Gaza”.
– Call to Israel –
The panel urged the Israeli government to stop attacking cultural, religious and education institutions, “immediately end its unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory” and cease all settlement activity.
It said the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should comply fully with provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice.
The court has ordered Israel “to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide against people in Gaza” and allow humanitarian aid to get through.
It also urged Hamas, the Islamist militant group that runs Gaza, “to cease using civilian objects for military purposes”.
Hamas fighters launched an attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
In response Israel launched an offensive during which the health ministry in Gaza says at least 54,880 people, the majority of them civilians, have been killed. The UN considers these figures reliable.
The commission is to present its findings to the UN Commission on Human Rights on June 17.
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