Israel carried out a “joint policy of destroying Gaza’s health system” during its war with Hamas, an act that amounts to both a war crime and a crime against humanity of extermination, a United Nations investigation said today.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry’s report on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, also found that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups had committed “unlawful acts.” “I carried out this,” he said. “War crimes of torture, inhuman or cruel treatment of Israeli hostages, crimes against humanity and other inhuman acts.”
However, the government said Israeli forces had “intensified the siege on Gaza, restricting permission to leave the territory for medical treatment, while intentionally killing, detaining, and torturing medical workers and targeting medical vehicles.” He reserved most of the criticism.
NBC News has contacted the Israel Defense Forces for comment on the report. The report was prepared by a panel of independent experts not representing international organizations, led by former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay.
The report highlighted the killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab in what it called one of the “most egregious incidents”. When Rajab made her final plea on January 29, she became one of the conflict’s most high-profile war victims. The call he made to save his life was recorded by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and heard around the world.
Following an evacuation order issued by the Israel Defense Forces in Arabic, Hind and his relatives got into a car. As he tried to flee his neighborhood in Gaza City, he was shot and left Hind alone in the back seat of his car, trapped inside and surrounded by the bodies of his uncle, aunt and four younger cousins.
She spent hours on the phone with emergency services and her mother pleading for help. Twelve days later, when rescuers were able to reach the area, she was found dead in the back of the car. A blown-up ambulance carrying the bodies of two paramedics sent to rescue her was found nearby.
“The committee found on reasonable grounds that the 162nd Division of the Israeli army was operating in the area and was responsible for killing seven family members, shelling the ambulance, and killing the two emergency workers inside.” “This amounted to a war crime of intentional killing and attack on civilian objects,” the report said.
He also accused Israel of “institutional abuse of Palestinian detainees” held in prisons under the authority of the country’s ultra-nationalist Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir.
“The lack of accountability for actions ordered by Israeli government officials and carried out by individual members of the Israeli security forces, as well as the increasing acceptance of violence against Palestinians, allows such acts to continue uninterrupted and the organization and institutionalized,” the report said.
