UN inquiry finds Israel’s war on Gaza to be genocide

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The UN report finds from statements of Israeli officials and evidence on the ground that Israel has committed genocide.

A United Nations inquiry has found that Israel’s war on Gaza is a genocide, a landmark moment after nearly two years of war.

Navi Pillay, chair of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, made the announcement of the UN inquiry to Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

“We’ve identified the president [Isaac Herzog], the Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and the former minister of defence [Yoav Gallant] based on their statements and the orders that they’ve given,” Pillay said in an interview.

“Because these three individuals were agents of the state, under the law, the state is held responsible. So we say it’s [the] state of Israel that has committed genocide,” she added.

According to the report, the Commission found that along with the statements made by the Israeli officials, there was “circumstantial evidence” that led to their findings of genocidal intent.

“The Commission concludes that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” the report found.

However, Israel’s Foreign Ministry slammed the report’s findings as “fake” in a post on X, and alleged that the report’s authors were “serving as Hamas proxies”.

“The report relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods, laundered and repeated by others,” the ministry said. “Israel categorically rejects this distorted and false report and calls for the immediate abolition of this Commission of Inquiry,” it added.

Israel’s Ambassador to Geneva, Daniel Meron, also condemned the report’s findings and referred to it as “scandalous”, “fake”, and a “libellous rant”.

‘Intentionally killed’

The report found that Israeli soldiers have “intentionally killed” civilians in Gaza through the use of “wide impact munitions”.

“The Commission therefore concluded that the Israeli authorities have committed the crime against humanity of extermination in the Gaza Strip by killing Palestinian civilians. While the number of victims is not relevant for an act to constitute an act of genocide, the Commission notes that the number of victims may be taken into consideration to establish genocidal intent,” it added.

Israel’s war in Gaza began on October 7 2023, following the Hamasled attack in southern Israel, which killed 1,139 Israelis and 251 people taken hostage, of which 48 remain held in Gaza.

Widespread and intense Israeli attacks across the enclave since then have killed at least 64,905 people and wounded 164,926 others, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported on Monday.

Amid the report’s findings, Israeli attacks on Gaza have only intensified, with Defence Minister Israel Katz announcing in the early hours of Tuesday that the enclave was “on fire”.

Since dawn, at least 41 Palestinians have been killed in attacks across the enclave, with 37 in Gaza City alone, medical sources told Al Jazeera Arabic.