An impartial United Nations fee stated Tuesday that Israeli assaults on colleges, spiritual and cultural websites in Gaza quantity to warfare crimes and represent an try and “obliterate” Palestinian life.
“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 stated in a report.
Israel rejected the fee led by South African decide Navi Pillay as “an inherently biased and politicized mechanism of the Human Rights Council” and stated the report was “another attempt to promote its fictitious narrative of the Gaza war”.
The three-member fee nevertheless accused Israeli forces of committing “warfare crimes, together with directing assaults in opposition to civilians and finishing up wilful killing in assaults on instructional services.
“In killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites, Israeli security forces committed the crime against humanity of extermination,” the report stated.
“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.”
Pillay stated in a press release: “We are seeing more and more indications that Israel is carrying out a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza.”
The fee stated Israeli assaults “targeted religious sites that served as places of refuge, killing hundreds of people, including women and children”.
– ‘Genocide’ warning –
The fee was arrange by the UN to analyze violations of humanitarian and human rights regulation within the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
In May, UN humanitarian aid chief Tom Fletcher urged UN Security Council members to take motion “to prevent genocide” in Gaza. Israel has denied committing genocide.
The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs demanded that Israel carry its assist blockade on Gaza, the place the UN says the inhabitants of greater than two million individuals is liable to famine.
The UN fee’s report paid particular consideration to Gaza but in addition centered on Israeli assaults on civilians within the occupied Palestinian territories as a complete, together with East Jerusalem, and in Israel itself.
It stated Israel had “done little” to forestall or prosecute settlers within the occupied West Bank who “intentionally targeted educational facilities and students to terrorise (Palestinian) communities and force them to leave their homes”.
The report stated Israeli authorities had intimidated and, in some circumstances, detained Israeli and Palestinian academics and college students who “expressed concern or solidarity with the civilian population in Gaza”.
– Call to Israel –
The panel urged the Israeli authorities to cease attacking cultural, spiritual and training establishments and “immediately end its unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory”.
Israel has stated that Hamas makes use of hospitals, colleges and even former UN places of work as a canopy for its fighters.
Israel’s UN mission in Geneva stated: “The commission is ignoring Hamas’s widespread embedment of military operations and weaponry within civilian infrastructure and Gaza’s population for terror purposes. Hamas’s own leadership has openly admitted to using the people of Gaza as human shields.”
But the UN fee stated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s authorities ought to comply absolutely with provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice to “prevent” incitement to genocide and to let humanitarian assist into Gaza.
It additionally urged Hamas “to cease using civilian objects for military purposes”.
The warfare was set off by a Hamas assault on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted within the deaths of 1,218 individuals on the Israeli aspect, principally civilians, based on an AFP tally of official figures.
The well being ministry in Gaza says no less than 54,880 individuals, nearly all of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s army response. The UN considers the figures dependable.
The fee is to current its findings to the UN Commission on Human Rights on June 17.
Source: www.anews.com.tr