The United Nations investigators on Tuesday accused Israel of conducting “genocide” in Gaza in order to “destroy the Palestinians” and implicated Israel’s prime minister and other high officials for inciting it.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI), which does not speak on behalf of the world organization and has received strong criticism from Israel, concluded that “genocide is occurring in Gaza and is continuing to occur,” according to commission chief Navi Pillay.
“The responsibility lies with the State of Israel.”
The panel, responsible for evaluating the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, released its most recent report nearly two years after the conflict erupted in Gaza following Hamas’ lethal October 7, 2023, strike inside Israel.
According to estimates from Hamas’ health ministry in Gaza that the UN considers reliable, about 65,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began.
The great majority of Gazans have been moved at least once, with more mass displacement planned as Israel intensifies its efforts to capture control of Gaza City, where the UN has declared a full-fledged famine.
The COI ruled that since October 2023, Israeli authorities and troops have committed “four of the five genocidal acts” outlined in the 1948 Genocide Convention.
These are “killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
The investigators concluded that the genocidal actions in the Gaza Strip were committed with the goal to exterminate Palestinians as a group, based on statements made by Israeli civilian and military leadership and patterns of force conduct.
The investigation concluded that Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have “incited the commission of genocide and that Israeli authorities have failed to take action against them to punish this incitement.”
“The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons,” stated Pillay, 83, a former South African judge who once headed the international tribunal for Rwanda and also served as UN human rights chief.
The commission is not a legal body, but its reports can exert diplomatic pressure and collect evidence for eventual use in courts.
Pillay told AFP that the commission was working with the International Criminal Court prosecutor.
“We’ve shared thousands of pieces of information with them,” she said.
“The international community cannot stay silent on the genocidal campaign launched by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” insisted Pillay, presenting her final report.
“The absence of action to stop it amounts to complicity,” she warned.
Since the start of the conflict, Israel has been accused of perpetrating genocide in Gaza by numerous NGOs and impartial UN experts, as well as before international courts.
Israeli authorities vigorously deny the charges.
The UN has not labeled the situation in Gaza as genocide, although the organization’s aid director asked international leaders to “act decisively to prevent genocide” in May, and its rights chief blasted Israeli “genocidal rhetoric” last week.
In January of last year, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt acts of “genocide” in Gaza.
Four months later, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Angered by the move, US President Donald Trump’s administration imposed penalties on two ICC judges and two prosecutors last month, including preventing them from visiting the country and freezing their assets.
