AS the united Nations officially confirmed that the Israeli war on Gaza is a ‘GENOCIDE’ yesterday, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) massively escalated their attack on Gaza City, subjecting its residents to heavy, relentless bombardment.
At least 85 Palestinians were killed between dawn and mid-afternoon as the IOF deployed different military tactics to force people to leave Gaza City to the south – most notably the deliberate destruction of high-rise buildings.
Eyewitness testimony confirmed the IOF deployed booby-trapped vehicles to destroy what was left of residential houses in the main urban centres.
IOF ground forces began slowly moving into the main residential neighbourhoods, expanding the use of explosive-laden troop carriers and armoured vehicles to demolish buildings and forcibly displace one million Palestinians from the City.
Israeli Army Minister Yisrael Katz boasted about the intensifying genocide, posting on social media: ‘Gaza is burning, and the army strikes with an iron fist.’
Yesterday’s escalation of the IOF bid to occupy the whole of Gaza coincided with the publication of the UN Commission of Inquiry (CoI), established by the UN Human Rights Council, which concluded that the Israeli authorities ‘intended to kill as many Palestinians as possible’ and have committed the crime against humanity of extermination.
The report cited direct targeting of civilians, including children, and mass killings in ‘far larger numbers’ compared to previous wars.
Israel intentionally created life-threatening conditions by withholding essential supplies, acts ‘calculated’ to achieve the ‘destruction of Palestinians’, the report said.
UN Commission chair on the Palestinian territories, Chris Sidoti accused Israel of refusing to engage with organisations which have raised concerns about the conduct of its army in Gaza.
The report cites statements by Israeli leaders, and the pattern of conduct by Israeli forces, as evidence of genocidal intent.
The three-member expert panel was chaired by Navi Pillay, a South African former UN human rights chief, Chris Sidoti, an Australian human rights lawyer, and Miloon Kothari, an Indian expert on housing and land rights.
The 72-page document says that Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit four of the five acts of genocide defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention against a national, ethnic, racial or religious group – in this case, Palestinians in Gaza.
The Commission says ‘genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference’ that could be concluded from the pattern of conduct of Israeli authorities and security forces in Gaza.
That has included intentionally killing and seriously harming an unprecedented number of Palestinians using heavy munitions; systematic and widespread attacks on religious, cultural and education sites; imposing a siege on Gaza and starving its population.
Pillay added: ‘It took us two years to gather all the actions and make factual findings, verify whether that had happened… It’s only the facts that will direct you. And you can only bring it under the Genocide Convention if those acts were done with this intention.’
The Commission says the acts of Israeli political and military leaders are ‘attributable to the State of Israel’, and that the state therefore ‘bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure to punish genocide’.
It also warns that all other countries have an immediate obligation under the Genocide Convention to ‘prevent and punish the crime of genocide’, employing all measures at their disposal. If they do not, it says, they could be complicit.
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