Evidence is mounting of ‘a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza’, commission chair says.
Israel has committed the crime against humanity of “extermination” by attacking Palestinian civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites in Gaza, an independent United Nations commission report says.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, made the accusation in a report released on Tuesday.
The report also said Israeli forces have committed war crimes, “including directing attacks against civilians and wilful killing, in their attacks on educational facilities that caused civilian casualties”.
“We are seeing more and more indications that Israel is carrying out a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza,” commission chair Navi Pillay, a former UN high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement.
The report said Israel has damaged or destroyed more than 90 percent of the school and university buildings in Gaza and destroyed more than half of all religious and cultural sites in the territory.
“While the destruction of cultural property, including educational facilities, was not in itself a genocidal act, evidence of such conduct may nevertheless infer genocidal intent to destroy a protected group,” the report said.
“Israel’s targeting of the educational, cultural and religious life of the Palestinian people will harm the present generations and generations to come, hindering their right to self-determination,” Pillay continued.
While the report focused on the impact on Gaza, the commission also reported significant consequences for the Palestinian education system in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem as a result of ramped-up Israeli military activity, harassment of students and settler attacks.
“Children in Gaza have lost their childhood. With no education available, they are forced to worry about survival amid attacks, uncertainty, starvation and subhuman living conditions,” said Pillay.
“What is particularly disturbing is the widespread nature of the targeting of educational facilities, which has extended well beyond Gaza, impacting all Palestinian children.”
The report will be formally presented to the UN Human Rights Council on June 17.
Israel withdrew from the council in February after accusing it of bias.
The commission’s previous report on Gaza, published in March, accused Israel of committing “genocidal acts” by destroying reproductive healthcare facilities.
That prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accuse the council of being “an anti-Semitic, corrupt, terror-supporting, and irrelevant body”.
