United Nations investigators on Tuesday accused Israel of committing"genocide" in Gaza with the aim of "destroying the Palestinians" living there, and blamed the prime minister and other senior Israeli officials for instigating it. Israel, for its part, called the investigation"biased and mendacious." "Israel categorically rejects this biased and mendacious report and calls for the immediate dissolution of this commission of inquiry," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry (IOC), which does not speak for the world body and has been the target of fierce criticism from Israel, says"genocide is taking place in Gaza," said Navi Pillay, the head of the commission."The responsibility lies with the State of Israel," he stressed.
The commission, tasked with investigating the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, published its latest report nearly two years after the war in Gaza erupted following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Nearly 65,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began, according to figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, which the UN considers reliable.
The vast majority of Gazans have been displaced at least once, and more mass displacement is occurring as Israel intensifies its offensive to take control of Gaza City, where the UN has declared a famine.
The IOC concluded that, since October 2023, Israeli authorities and forces have committed"four of the five genocidal acts" listed in the 1948 Genocide Convention.
These include"killing members of the group, causing serious physical or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately subjecting the group to living conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part, and imposing measures designed to prevent births within the group."
The researchers stated that explicit statements by Israeli civilian and military authorities, along with the pattern of conduct by Israeli forces,"indicated that the genocidal acts were committed with the intent to destroy (...) the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip as a group."
The report concludes that Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant"incited people to commit genocide and that Israeli authorities failed to take action against them to punish this incitement."
A "serious saturation" of hospitals
The Health Ministry of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip warned Tuesday that the hospitals that remain operational in Gaza City are suffering from "serious saturation" following the start of Israel's ground operation, accompanied by an intensification of bombings against the population.
"Emergency services are severely overcrowded in the hospitals that remain open in Gaza City. Medical teams are working with depleted stocks of essential medicines and medical supplies," the Ministry of Health announced in a statement.
The ministry also reported that patients undergoing emergency procedures are in danger due to the"serious shortage of blood units and blood components" in hospitals.
The Health Ministry's announcement comes as the death toll in the capital has risen to 37 since midnight, following an intensification of bombings.
The attacks also affected other areas of the Gaza Strip, including the city of Deir al-Balah and the Bureij refugee camp, as well as the south. Al-Awda and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospitals (center) received six bodies, while Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis (south) received another three.
In Gaza City, 11 hospitals remain operational, all of them partially operational, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In total, only 50% of Gaza's hospitals (18 out of 36) are functioning.
UN human rights rapporteurs, international organizations, and a growing number of countries are calling the Israeli military offensive against the Gaza Strip since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, a genocide, in which nearly 65,000 people have died, including more than 19,000 children.
