The United Nations reports gross human rights violations, including possible war crimes, during the Israeli regime’s ongoing genocidal war against the Gaza Strip.
The UN Human Rights Office provided the information on Friday in its annual report.
The regime has been waging the military onslaught since October 7, 2023, in response to Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, a surprise offensive staged by Gaza’s resistance groups against the occupied territories. The regime has simultaneously been employing an all-out siege against the coastal sliver, preventing the flow of water, food, electricity, and medical supplies into the territory.
So far, the war has killed 29,514 people, mostly women and children, and injured tens of thousands of others.
The UN report said the Israeli onslaught had led to “massive suffering of Palestinians, including through the killing of civilians on a broad scale, extensive repeated displacement, destruction of homes, and the denial of sufficient food and other essentials of life.”
“The blockade and siege imposed on Gaza amount to collective punishment and may also amount to the use of starvation as a method of war, which are war crimes,” it added.
The report identified three “emblematic” Israeli strikes — two on the Jabalia refugee camp and one in Gaza City — which led to massive casualties and material damage.
“Launching an indiscriminate attack resulting in death or injury to civilians, or an attack in the knowledge that it will cause excessive incidental civilian loss, injury or damage, are war crimes,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.
In a broader context, the UN official reflected on the Israeli regime’s decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories.
“The entrenched impunity reported by our office for decades cannot be permitted to continue,” Turk said.
“There must be accountability…for violations seen over 56 years of [Israeli] occupation and the 16 years of blockade of Gaza,” he added.
The Israeli regime claimed existence in 1948 after occupying huge swathes of Palestinian territories during a Western-backed war.
It occupied more land, namely the West Bank, including East al-Quds, and the Gaza Strip, in another such war in 1967.
Ever since, it has built hundreds of settlements upon the overrun territories and deployed the most aggressive restrictions on the movements of Palestinians there.
Tel Aviv withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but has been keeping the territory under an all-out land, aerial, and naval siege since a year after it left the enclave.
