UN report accuses Israel, Hamas of war crimes and crimes against humanity during Gaza War

Displaced Palestinians at a UN camp in Rafah, December 2023

Nir Hasson and Reuters report in Haaretz on 10 October 2024:

A United Nations commission of inquiry published a report on Thursday that found that both Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the course of the current war in Gaza.

The inquiry, led by former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, said that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system,” actions amounting to both war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination.

The report also found that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups “committed the war crimes of torture, inhuman or cruel treatment, and the crimes against humanity of enforced disappearance” by taking Israeli and foreign hostages and holding them captive.

The UN said that the hostages have been inflicted with “physical pain and severe mental suffering, including physical violence, abuse, sexual violence, forced isolation, limited access to hygiene facilities, water and food, threats and humiliation.”

The report also mentioned that Hamas forced hostages to participate in hostage videos “with the intent of inflicting psychological torture” on their families, and to “achieve political aims.”

The report said that “Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel,” and that these actions “constitute the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and of the destruction of protected civilian property.”  As an example, it cited the death of a Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, in February along with family members and two medics who came to rescue her from under Israeli fire.

The report also called out Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir by name, saying that “the institutionalized mistreatment of Palestinian detainees” took place under Ben-Gvir’s direct orders, and the violence against Palestinians in Israel’s prison system has become “systematic.”

The Israeli government did not cooperate with the inquiry, which it has accused of having an anti-Israel bias. The commission accused Israel of obstructing its work and preventing investigators from accessing both Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Pillay, the commission’s chair, called on Israel to “immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction of healthcare facilities in Gaza,” and called on Hamas and other Palestinian factions to “release immediately and unconditionally all Israeli and foreign hostages held in Gaza.”

Pillay is expected to present the full report to the UN General Assembly on October 30.

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