A UN special committee has said that Israeli policies and practices in Gaza are “consistent with the characteristics of genocide”.
The committee, set up in 1968 to monitor the Israeli occupation, also said in its annual report that there were serious concerns that Israel was “using starvation as a weapon of war” in the 13-month-old conflict, and was running an “apartheid system” in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The international court of justice (ICJ) is investigating a claim put forward by South Africa that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza is genocidal, and has ordered Israel to take interim measures to prevent genocide taking place.
The new report is by the special committee to investigate Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories. The committee, set up in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, is made up of representatives from three member states: Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Senegal.
There was no immediate response from the Israeli government, which has portrayed the UN in general as obsessed with, and biased against, the country. The Israeli mission informed the body earlier this month that the government would stop cooperating with Unrwa, the main relief agency providing welfare services to Palestinians, within the coming three months.
The UN special committee said that its requests to visit Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and Israel had received no response, so its staff were not able to visit the areas it was scrutinising. It said its research raised “serious concerns of breaches of international humanitarian and human rights laws in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including starvation as a weapon of war, the possibility of genocide in Gaza and an apartheid system in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem”.
The developments over the past year had led the committee to conclude that “the policies and practices of Israel during the reporting period are consistent with the characteristics of genocide”, the report said.
“Civilians have been indiscriminately and disproportionally killed en masse in Gaza,” the report added. It also referred to the “life-threatening conditions imposed on Palestinians in Gaza through warfare and restrictions on humanitarian aid – resulting in physical destruction, increased miscarriages and stillbirths”.
The committee further accused Israel of deliberately using “food as a weapon of warfare”.
“Since the escalation of the conflict, Israeli officials have publicly supported policies depriving civilians of food, water, and fuel, indicating their intent to instrumentalise the provision of basic necessities for political and military objectives,” the report said.
In January the ICJ responded to the genocide case brought by South Africa by ordering Israel to take interim steps pending the court’s ruling, telling the Israeli government to refrain from acts violating the Genocide Convention, to prevent and punish incitement to genocide, to ensure humanitarian aid reached Gaza citizens and to preserve evidence of genocide.
Israel rejected the court’s ruling, and the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed that his country’s commitment to international law was “unwavering”.
• This article was amended on 15 November 2024 because the penultimate paragraph said that in January 2024 the IJC ordered South Africa to take interim steps to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza. That order was directed at Israel, as the rest of the sentence went on to say.
