The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has called for the opening of an international investigation into the brutal crimes of Israel against the Palestinian women and girls in the besieged Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.
Hamas issued a statement on Tuesday, following a latest report by the Special Rapporteurs of the United Nations Human Rights Council that said the Palestinian women and girls have been sexually assaulted and raped by Israeli troops in Gaza and the West Bank.
The Special Rapporteurs are independent experts and part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council.
They warned Israel that such inhumane acts could “amount to serious crimes under international criminal law,” and that those responsible for such crimes must be “held accountable.”
Hamas said the Special Rapporteurs’ report, which documented Israel’s blatant human rights violations in Gaza and the West Bank, is “confirmation and additional evidence of the crime of genocide, and the ethnic cleansing committed by the occupation, led by the war criminal Netanyahu and his Nazi army, against our Palestinian people.”
Outlining incidents of rights abuse of the Palestinians at the hands of Israeli troops, the Gaza-based resistance movement placed a premium on such an investigation.
“The types and forms of violations that Palestinian women are subjected to by the occupation army, such as executions, arbitrary arrests, severe beatings, and deprivation of food and medicine during detention, in addition to the threat of rape and insults during interrogation, call for the opening of an international investigation,” Hamas said.
“This rogue entity and its leaders must be held accountable for their brutal crimes.”
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is holding historic hearings into Israel’s decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories, with 52 countries and international organizations expected to give evidence at the world’s highest court during a week-long session.
Since the Israeli occupation of Palestine in June 1967, the illegal entity has perpetrated a raft of crimes, including killing, displacement, abduction and torture of Palestinians and demolition of their homes.
Israel has killed more than 29,000 people, mostly women and children, in Gaza since early October. Some 70,000 others have been injured.
Providing Israel with an unbridled supply of arms and ammunition since the initiation of the Gaza war, the United States has also vetoed UN Security Council resolutions that called on the regime to cease hostilities.
