A United Nations inquiry has accused Israel of carrying out a \u201cconcerted policy\u201d of destroying the health care system in Gaza during its year-long conflict with Hamas in attacks it said amount to war crimes. <\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s actions in the besieged Palestinian enclave \u201cconstitute the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination,\u201d the commission said in a statement Thursday. <\/p>\n
\u201cIsraeli security forces have deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles\u201d in Gaza, according to the report by the UN\u2019s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. <\/p>\n
The Israeli attacks resulted in \u201cfuel, food, water, medicines and medical supplies not reaching hospitals, while also drastically reducing permits for patients to leave the territory for medical treatment,\u201d it said. <\/p>\n
The Israeli foreign ministry called the accusations \u201coutrageous\u201d and said they were \u201canother 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.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThis report shamelessly portrays Israel\u2019s operations in terror-infested health facilities in Gaza as a matter of policy against Gaza\u2019s 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.\u201d <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
The UN report also accused Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups of committing war crimes of \u201ctorture, inhuman or cruel treatment, rape and sexual violence\u201d for their treatment of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza. It also investigated \u201cinstitutionalized mistreatment\u201d of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. <\/p>\n
The Israeli foreign ministry rejected \u201caccusations of widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees,\u201d saying Israel is \u201cfully committed to international legal standards\u201d on treatment of detainees. <\/p>\n
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 \u201cmust immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction\u201d in Gaza. <\/p>\n
\u201cChildren in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Despite an ambulance arriving at the scene while the girl was still alive, the presence of Israeli security forces effectively \u201cprevented access,\u201d meaning the bodies of Rajab\u2019s relatives \u201ccould not be retrieved from their bullet-ridden car until 12 days after the incident,\u201d the report said. <\/p>\n
The report \u201cdetermined on reasonable grounds that the Israeli Army\u2019s 162nd Division\u201d which operated in the area at the time is \u201cresponsible for killing the family of seven, shelling the ambulance and killing the two paramedics inside.\u201d <\/p>\n
The incident was just one of several alleged attacks on health care in Gaza, amid broader wartime conditions. <\/p>\n
The report will be presented to the UN General Assembly on October 30. <\/p>\n
The commission previously alleged that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the early stages of the Gaza war, and that Israel\u2019s actions also amounted to crimes against humanity. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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A United Nations inquiry has accused Israel of carrying out a \u201cconcerted policy\u201d of destroying the health care system in Gaza during its year-long conflict with Hamas in attacks it said amount to war crimes. Israel\u2019s actions in the besieged Palestinian enclave \u201cconstitute the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination,\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8603,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}