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UN COMMISSION FINDS ISRAEL GUILTY OF CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY  
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Bashir Abu-Manneh
June 18, 2024
Jacobin
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_ A new report by a UN commission finds that Israel intended to
murder civilians en masse, inflict wide-scale civilian destruction,
and collectively punish Palestinians in Gaza — holding them hostage
to its political aims. _

Palestinian girls in Bureij Refugee Camp in Gaza on June 16, 2024. ,
Majdi Fathi / NurPhoto via Getty Images

 

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied
Palestinian Territory issued
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its “first in-depth investigation into the events that took place on
and since 7 October 2023.” The report holds the Israeli occupation
responsible for the ongoing catastrophic situation in Gaza. But it
also alludes to the possibility that October 7 is a watershed moment
for even harsher Israeli occupation unless international law is
urgently implemented.

While both Hamas and Israel are found to have committed war crimes
(including sexual violence), Israel is also sanctioned for committing
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“crimes against humanity of extermination, gender persecution
targeting Palestinian men and boys, murder, forcible transfer, and
torture and inhuman and cruel treatment.”

In clear and deliberate violation of international law, Israel
intended to commit these crimes: to murder civilians _en masse_,
inflict wide-scale civilian destruction, and collectively punish and
dehumanize Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinians were murdered. They
didn’t die as collateral damage or as unintended victims of Israeli
military operations, but as Israel’s deliberate targets.

The immense numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza and widespread
destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure were the inevitable
result of a strategy undertaken with intent to cause maximum damage,
disregarding the principles of distinction, proportionality and
adequate precautions. The intentional use of heavy weapons with large
destructive capacity in densely populated areas constitutes an
intentional and direct attack on the civilian population.

Such widespread and systematic destruction of whole neighborhoods in
Gaza is consistent with the application of the Dahiya doctrine to
Gaza, in which civilian infrastructure is deliberately destroyed as
part of a strategy of collective punishment, reminiscent of Israel’s
war on Lebanon in 2006.

The commission does leave the question of genocide for the ongoing
investigation of the International Court of Justice to adjudicate. But
it nevertheless accuses Israel of holding the whole civilian
population in Gaza _hostage_ to achieve its declared political and
military aims. If Israel has falsely and persistently accused Hamas of
employing “human shields” since 2008, the UN has yet again found
that, in practice, it is Israel that employs this illegal tactic.
Indeed, when opponents of the West take hostages, officials and
mainstream media dub them terrorists. By violently punishing
Palestinian civilians to achieve its political aims, Israel employs a
textbook case of terror.

As stated [[link removed]] in the Oxford Open
Letter on the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza as early as October 20,
2023: to think that the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas justify the
humanitarian crisis currently unfolding in Gaza is to indulge a
central tenet of terrorism — that all citizens must pay for the
misdeeds of their governments — as well as terrorism’s central
practice: collective punishment. As shown
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by investigative journalist Yuval Abraham, Israel does in fact use
such terror tactics systematically in Gaza.

In addition to retribution, Israel has also weaponized aid as part of
its war on Gaza and employed starvation as a weapon of war. The
commission identified “an intention to instrumentalize and weaponize
the provision of necessities, to hold the population of the Gaza Strip
hostage to achieve political and military objectives, including the
forced displacement of civilians from northern Gaza Strip and the
release of Israeli hostages.”

While basic subsistence necessities are blocked by military siege, the
“high acute food insecurity” is “the compounded result of the
destruction and prevention of local food production, including
agriculture, fishing and baking.”

Essential Palestinian human needs are callously violated and degraded
by Israel, with the result that: “As of March 2024, the situation is
continuing to deteriorate; 1.1 million people face catastrophic levels
of food insecurity.” A policy of deliberate mass dehumanization of
Palestinians is identified here.

If this is not damning enough, the report accuses Israel not only of
failing to protect its citizens on October 7, 2023, but, through its
illegal occupation, for being ultimately responsible for the root
cause of violence in Israel-Palestine. This explanatory context is
crucial.

Both the 7 October attack in Israel and Israel’s subsequent military
operation in Gaza must be seen in context. These events were preceded
by decades of violence, unlawful occupation and Israel’s denial of
the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, manifested in
continuous forced displacement, dispossession, exploitation of natural
resources, blockade, settlement construction and expansion, and
systematic discrimination and oppression of the Palestinian people.

Occupation as root cause is invoked in the report’s conclusion as
well. It sits at the foundation of the sexual- and gender-based
violence Israel intentionally uses against Palestinians to humiliate
their community. “This violence is intrinsically linked to the wider
context of inequality and prolonged occupation, which have provided
the conditions and the rationale for gender-based crimes, to further
accentuate the subordination of the occupied people.”

What, then, is the solution to Israel’s retaliatory and
“persecutory acts”?

The end of the Israeli occupation. As the report states: “These
crimes must be addressed by tackling their root cause; through
dismantling the historically oppressive structures and
institutionalized system of discrimination against Palestinians, which
are at the core of the occupation.”

Despite official talk about fighting terrorism and Israel’s bogus
right to defend itself against those it occupies, identifying the
occupation as the underlying reason for violence is key. It ultimately
puts the onus of responsibility on Israel itself, where peace can only
be achieved “by strict adherence to international law” — by
ending the Israeli occupation and recognizing the Palestinian right of
self-determination.

In an atmosphere in which explaining context and identifying root
causes are tarred with antisemitism or justifying terror, the
commission’s sober conclusion is a powerful defense of the
oppressed.

Importantly, a note of warning is sounded at the end. October 7 might
well usher in more occupation rather than peace. It’s a significant
historic judgment to contemplate: “7 October 2023 has marked a clear
turning point for both Israelis and Palestinians, and it presents a
watershed moment that can change the direction of this conflict; with
a real risk of further solidifying and expanding the occupation.”

Even though Israel, in line with its legal obligations as occupier,
owes Palestinians reparations for destroying Gaza and should
reconstruct Gaza now, it is likely to do the opposite: entrench its
occupation, unleash its settlers in the West Bank even further, and
block any meaningful restitution of Palestinian life in Gaza.

This is, in part, a judgment on the catastrophic effect of Hamas’s
October 7 military operation on the Palestinians. It is a clear
recognition that the current balance of power obviates against
Palestinian rights — as well as an implicit acknowledgement of the
obstacles that stand in the way of turning the real assets of
international law to political reality.

Ending the Israeli occupation requires a coherent Palestinian strategy
of emancipation that uses the impressive widespread grassroot support
for this just cause across the world and helps transform global
solidarity to state policies, isolating Israel internationally and
forcing it to pay the costs of its illegal occupation. This is the
challenge that Palestinians now face after the Gaza _nakba_.

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* Israel/Palestine; The UN Independent International Commission of
Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory;
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