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DRAFT UN REPORT FINDS ISRAEL HAS MET THRESHOLD FOR GENOCIDE  
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Brett Wilkins
March 25, 2024
Common Dreams
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_ "Israel's genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory
stage of a long-standing settler-colonial process of erasure." _

An injured Palestinian woman, covered in dust and blood, hugs an
injured girl at the hospital following the Israeli bombardment of Khan
Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on November 15, 2023., [Belal
Khaled/AFP]

 

The United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday published a draft
report that found "reasonable grounds to believe" that Israel is
committing genocide in Gaza [[link removed]],
a move that came on the same day as the U.N. Security Council passed
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resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in the ongoing war.

The advance unedited version of the report—entitled _Anatomy of a
Genocide_
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that Israel's far-right government and military "have intentionally
distorted jus in bello
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subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize
genocidal violence against the Palestinian people."

"The overwhelming nature and scale of Israel's assault on Gaza and the
destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to
physically destroy Palestinians as a group," the draft report states,
enumerating Israeli actions that violate Article II
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the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide: "Killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or
mental harm to group members; and deliberately inflicting on the group
conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction
in whole or in part."

"Israel has de facto treated an entire protected group and its
life-sustaining infrastructure as 'terrorist' or
'terrorist-supporting,' thus transforming everything and everyone into
either a target or collateral damage, hence killable or destroyable,"
the paper continues. "In this way, no Palestinian in Gaza is safe by
definition. This has had devastating, intentional effects, costing the
lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians, destroying the fabric of
life in Gaza, and causing irreparable harm to its entire population."

Israel rejected
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report as "an obscene inversion of reality."

According to Palestinian and international humanitarian officials,
Israel's 171-day Gaza onslaught has killed at least 32,333
Palestinians, most of them women and children, while wounding nearly
75,000 others and displacing around 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people.
Thousands more Palestinians are missing and believed to be dead and
buried beneath the rubble of bombed buildings. Disease
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deadly starvation
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and exacerbated by Israel's siege and blockade
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Gaza are spreading rapidly.

"Israel's genocide on the Palestinians in Gaza is an escalatory stage
of a long-standing settler-colonial process of erasure," the draft
report asserts. "For over seven decades this process has suffocated
the Palestinian people as a group—demographically, culturally,
economically, and politically—seeking to displace it and expropriate
and control its land and resources."

Referring to the flight and ethnic cleansing
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than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine
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the modern state of Israel in 1948, the paper contends that "the
ongoing Nakba must be stopped and remedied once and for all. This is
an imperative owed to the victims of this highly preventable tragedy,
and to future generations in that land."

The draft report urges U.N. member states to "enforce the prohibition
of genocide in accordance with their... obligations" under
international law. In January, the U.N.'s International Court of
Justice (ICJ) found
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Israel was "plausibly" perpetrating genocide in Gaza and ordered the
country's government to "take all measures within its power" to
prevent genocidal acts. Human rights defenders say
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has ignored the order.

"Israel and those states that have been complicit in what can be
reasonably concluded to constitute genocide must be held accountable
and deliver reparations commensurate with the destruction, death, and
harm inflicted on the Palestinian people," the publication argues.

The draft report recommends measures including:

* Immediate implementation of an arms embargo on Israel, as it
appears to have failed to comply with the binding measures ordered by
the ICJ;
* Immediate referral of the situation in Palestine to the
International Criminal Court in support of its ongoing investigation
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* Ensuring that Israel, as well as states who have been complicit in
the Gaza genocide, acknowledge the colossal harm done, commit to
nonrepetition, with measures for prevention and full reparations,
including the full cost of the reconstruction of Gaza;
* Deploying an international protective presence to constrain the
violence routinely used against Palestinians in the occupied
territories; and
* Ensuring that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is properly funded to
enable it to meet the increased needs of Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel on Monday informed
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no longer allow UNRWA convoys carrying food aid into northern Gaza,
even as the Palestinians are starving to death, a move that one
humanitarian campaigner called
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"death sentence."

_Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams._

* Israel-Gaza War
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* Genocide
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* UN Human Rights Council
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