UNITED NATIONS, Jun 20 (APP): The Israeli military may have committed multiple war crimes and has made little effort to protect civilians in its genocidal war targeting Palestinians in Gaza, the U.N. human rights office said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a separate meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, the head of a U.N. Commission of Inquiry said the scale of Palestinian civilian losses amounted to \u201cextermination.\u201d The use of weapons with large destructive capacity in densely populated areas \u201cconstitutes an intentional and direct attack on the civilian population\u201d and those responsible should be held accountable, Navi Pillay, a former South African judge, said in her report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.N. report, focusing on six attacks that resulted in mass casualties and destroyed civilian infrastructure, said Israeli forces \u201cmay have systematically violated\u201d the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution. No prior warning was issued in five of the attacks, the report says, adding that international humanitarian law clearly defines the obligation to make protection of civilians a priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimize to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel\u2019s bombing campaign,\u201d UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker T\u00fcrk said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The report follows investigations by the UN human rights office, OHCHR, into six attacks that it has described as \u201cemblematic\u201d of Israeli tactics in the more than eight-month war, involving the suspected use of bombs weighing up to 2,000 lbs (920kg) on residential buildings, a school, refugee camps and a market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These weapons measuring approximately 12 feet (3.4 metres) along with smaller versions were deployed from 9 October to 2 December 2023 causing 218 confirmed deaths, OHCHR noted, adding that the true number of fatalities was likely much higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The report cited an Israeli Defense Forces update on 11 November 2023 that the Air Force had \u201cstruck over 5,000 targets to eliminate threats in real time\u201d since it began bombing Gaza a month earlier. By that time, the Gazan health authorities had documented the killing of 11,078 Palestinians, with another 2,700 missing and about 27,490 reportedly injured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Detailing strikes on Ash Shuja neighbourhood in Gaza City, the report\u2019s authors noted that the span of destruction measured approximately 130 metres across, destroying 15 buildings. The extent of the damage to buildings and the craters indicated that approximately nine 2,000 lb GBU-31 bombs were used, OHCHR said, adding that at least 60 people were reported killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIsrael\u2019s choices of methods and means of conducting hostilities in Gaza since 7 October, including through the extensive use of explosive weapons with wide area effects in densely populated areas, have failed to ensure that they effectively distinguish between civilians and fighters,\u201d the OHCHR report alleged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCivilian lives and infrastructure are protected under International Humanitarian Law (IHL). This law lays out the very clear obligations of parties to armed conflicts that make protection of civilians a priority.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile in Gaza, people today are forced to shelter amid \u201cunimaginable\u201d destruction, said Ajith Sunghay, Head of OHCHR Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking to journalists via video link from Amman after returning from an assessment mission in multiple locations across the enclave, Sunghay described how Gazans are \u201cbarely surviving\u201d after being repeatedly displaced by violence and IDF evacuation orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe hospitals are packed to overflowing and the smell is unbearable\u2026sewage is spilling into tents, there is no clean water\u2026If the bombs don\u2019t kill, disease will,\u201d Mr. Sunghay said, after visiting Khan Younis, Rafah and Deir-Al-Balah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe sounds of bombs, guns, drones are constant,\u201d he added. \u201cThe sound of war is non-stop day and night. In my 22 years of work at the UN, including in many conflict and post-conflict situations, I\u2019ve never seen such challenges for the UN and human rights and humanitarian aid partners to operate. The destruction is unimaginable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The landscape of Khan Younis is now \u201cchanged\u201d, the OHCHR officer continued. \u201cIt\u2019s full of completely and partially destroyed buildings, infrastructure. People I met told me how they have moved 10 times\u2026they\u2019re barely surviving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The focus of the report is on Israel but it also said that Palestinian armed groups have continued to fire projectiles toward Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani echoed those concerns while also warning that Israel\u2019s military commanders do not appear to have changed their tactics in Gaza in order to spare civilians, in line with the laws of war. Ms. Shamdasani also referenced statements from high-level Israeli officials including an Israeli military member quoted earlier in the war as having said: \u201cYou wanted hell, you will get hell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have seen a continued pattern of such attacks,\u201d the OHCHR spokesperson continued, \u201cthe types of weapons that were used, the means and the manner in which they were used, coupled with some of the statements that you heard from Israeli officials, give rise to very serious concerns about the compliance with international humanitarian law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ms. Shamdasani also insisted on the need for independent investigations into the attacks covered by the report in order to decide whether they constitute war crimes and to hold the perpetrators accountable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs time passes, it becomes much more difficult to carry out these investigations,\u201d she said. \u201cWe call first on the Israeli authorities to take steps to ensure that proper investigations, transparent investigations are held. In the absence of this \u2013 and if there is continued impunity \u2013 there is a need for international action in this regard as well.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 20 (APP): The Israeli military may have committed multiple war crimes and has made little effort to protect civilians in its genocidal war targeting Palestinians in Gaza, the U.N. human rights office said on Wednesday. In a separate meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, the head of a U.N. […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":7792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,2,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7791"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}