A United Nations inquiry has accused Israel of carrying out a “concerted policy” of destroying the health care system in Gaza during its year-long conflict with Hamas in attacks it said amount to war crimes.
Israel’s actions in the besieged Palestinian enclave “constitute the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination,” the commission said in a statement Thursday.
“Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles” in Gaza, according to the report by the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
The Israeli attacks resulted in “fuel, food, water, medicines and medical supplies not reaching hospitals, while also drastically reducing permits for patients to leave the territory for medical treatment,” it said.
The Israeli foreign ministry called the accusations “outrageous” and said they were “another blatant attempt by the (commission) to delegitimize the very existence of the State of Israel and obstruct its right to protect its population while covering up the crimes of terrorist organizations.”
“This report shamelessly portrays Israel’s operations in terror-infested health facilities in Gaza as a matter of policy against Gaza’s health system, while entirely dismissing overwhelming evidence that medical facilities in Gaza have been systematically used by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad for terrorist activities.”
Hamas, it said, uses medical facilities to conceal operatives, store weapons, conduct attacks and hide hostages. Hamas has repeatedly denied that it uses hospitals for military activity.
The UN report also accused Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups of committing war crimes of “torture, inhuman or cruel treatment, rape and sexual violence” for their treatment of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza. It also investigated “institutionalized mistreatment” of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons.
The Israeli foreign ministry rejected “accusations of widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees,” saying Israel is “fully committed to international legal standards” on treatment of detainees.
In a statement accompanying the 24-page report, which does not have the force of law, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Israel “must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction” in Gaza.
“Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system,” she said.
As part of the report, UN experts investigated the killing of 5-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who made headlines in late January after a recording emerged of her pleading to emergency workers to rescue her and her family after they became trapped in their car due to Israeli shelling.
Despite an ambulance arriving at the scene while the girl was still alive, the presence of Israeli security forces effectively “prevented access,” meaning the bodies of Rajab’s relatives “could not be retrieved from their bullet-ridden car until 12 days after the incident,” the report said.
The report “determined on reasonable grounds that the Israeli Army’s 162nd Division” which operated in the area at the time is “responsible for killing the family of seven, shelling the ambulance and killing the two paramedics inside.”
The incident was just one of several alleged attacks on health care in Gaza, amid broader wartime conditions.
The report will be presented to the UN General Assembly on October 30.
The commission previously alleged that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the early stages of the Gaza war, and that Israel’s actions also amounted to crimes against humanity.