According to an investigation carried out by the UN, Israel’s strategy is to cause maximum harm to civilians
The enormous loss of civilian life in Gaza (more than 37,000 so far) and the massive destruction of non-military infrastructure in the Strip are part of “a strategy consisting of causing maximum damage” intentionally attacking the population, concludes this Tuesday the first report by UN investigators on the conflict.
Prepared by the International and Independent Commission of Inquiry for Palestine, which analyzes by mandate of the United Nations all the events that have occurred since the October 7 attacks, concludes that both Israel and Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
In the case of Israel, the commission chaired by the veteran South African jurist Navi Pillay highlights that the Government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has given its carte blanche security forces to attack civilian targets widely and indiscriminately in Gaza.
This seems to respond to the application of the call ‘doctrina dahiya’which receives its name from a Beirut neighborhood once controlled by the Hezbollah militia, devastated in 2006 by the Israeli air force, and which consists of giving a disproportionate response, without distinction between civilians and military, to attacks by armed groups, something which appears to have been reproduced on a large scale in Gaza.
Thus, the United Nations report indicates, in many Israeli military actions after the October terrorist attacks “no military objectives that served as an argument to launch an attack”.
Also shoots to kill frequentlywithout distinguishing what the objectives are or if they really pose a threat, according to the document of more than 200 pages, with details about both the Hamas attacks of October 7 and the subsequent Israeli military response.
The report denounces a “total siege” of Israel against Gaza, which according to the same text was identified by the same Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, as a retaliatory measure in which ‘we fight against animals and we must act accordingly’. In the conflict there is “a clear intention to instrumentalize necessity and use it as a weapon, holding the population of Gaza hostage to achieve political and military objectives.”
The report, which will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council on June 19, compiles victim testimonies, forensic analysis, satellite images and other data to conclude that Israel, Hamas and their affiliated armed groups have committed serious violations of the international law and ‘must be held accountable’, in the words of Pillay, a former judge at the International Criminal Court. It accuses Israel of war crimes of “use of hunger as a weapon, murder, intentional attacks on civilians, forced transfer, sexual violence, torture and arbitrary detention.”
As Israelis quote “crimes against humanity”extermination, gender-based persecution against men and boys” and others also considered in the previous typology, such as forced deportations or cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees.
Hamas, also investigated
The report also studies in detail the October 7 attacks perpetrated by Palestinian armed groups, with abuses that could also constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to the commission, perpetrated in a coordinated manner by more than a thousand members of the military wing of Hamas and related militias. In them, the report details, they were More than 1,200 people were killed, of which at least 809 were civilians, 280 women, 40 children and 25 elderly people over 80 years old.
The document recounts cases such as that of a nine-month-old girl murdered when she tried to hide with her mother in the Beeri kibbutz, or that of a 79 year old woman and her granddaughter autistic people who were killed by the terrorists because they walked too slowly and made it difficult to retreat.
At the Nova Music Festival, the report indicates, 364 attendees were killed by Palestinian armed groups, some of them when they tried to escape or hide in public bathrooms, vehicles or garbage containers.
In these attacks, acts of sexual violence were perpetrated, not in isolation but repeatedly in different places, such as the humiliation of women ‘shown as trophies’, although it has not been possible to confirm whether rapes were committed, as reported at the time.
The report concludes that neither the October 7 attacks nor Israel’s subsequent military actions in Gaza “should be viewed in isolation” but rather as part of a cycle of violence and aggression against which the only way to act is by “ensuring a total respect for international law”. This includes, the commission emphasizes, ending the Israeli occupation of the territories of Palestine, as well as the discrimination, oppression and the denial of the right to self-determination from his town.
