Gaza destruction a war crime: UN

The widespread and systematic bombardment of housing and civilian infrastructure in Gaza amounts to a war crime and a crime against humanity, an independent United Nations expert said Wednesday.

A month of Israeli attacks on targets within the Gaza Strip have destroyed or damaged 45 percent of all housing units in the Palestinian territory, Balakrishnan Rajagopal said, warning the destruction comes at a ‘tremendous cost to human life’.

The UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing stressed that systematic or widespread bombardment of housing, civilian objects and infrastructure are strictly prohibited under international law.

‘Carrying out hostilities with the knowledge that they will systematically destroy and damage civilian housing and infrastructure, rendering an entire city—such as Gaza City—uninhabitable for civilians is a war crime,’ he said.

When such acts are ‘directed against a civilian population, they also amount to crimes against humanity’, he said.

Israel launched its massive bombardment campaign in the Gaza Strip after Hamas militants staged an unprecedented attack on October 7, killing more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, and taking more than 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

According to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, Israel’s bombardment has killed more than 10,500 people, most of them women and children.

Nearly 2,500 others, more than half of them children, have been reported missing and are most likely trapped under the rubble.

Rajagopal, an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who does not speak on behalf of the United Nations, had previously coined the term ‘domicide’ to refer to the systematic and widespread attacks on civilian housing and infrastructure that cause death and suffering.

Domicide, he said, ‘is now being committed in Gaza’.

Around 1.5 million people have been displaced in Gaza amid the destruction and Israeli calls to evacuate the entire north of the territory, according to UN figures.

Rajagopal said the Israeli evacuation order, issued despite a lack of adequate shelter and aid for those fleeing and while cutting off water, food, fuel and medicine and repeatedly attacking evacuation routes and ‘safe zones’, was ‘a cruel and blatant violation of international humanitarian law’.

He said international humanitarian law is based on the distinction between civilian and military objects.

The expert stressed that civilian housing in Israel was also not a military object, warning that Hamas’s continuing indiscriminate launching of rockets from Gaza and elsewhere is also ‘a war crime’.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has called on Israel not to reoccupy Gaza once its war with Hamas ends.

Earlier this week, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would take ‘overall security responsibility’ for the territory following the war.

Key elements for a durable peace included ‘no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza… no use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism… no reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends’, Blinken said after a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Japan.

Qatar is mediating negotiations between Israel and Hamas for the potential release of a number of hostages held in Gaza in exchange for a humanitarian pause, a source briefed on the talks told AFP.

‘Negotiations mediated by the Qataris in coordination with the US are ongoing to secure the release of 10-15 hostages in exchange for a one- to two-day ceasefire,’ the informed source said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the talks’ sensitivity.

Thousands of Palestinians are fleeing south from Gaza City on foot, in some cases carrying nothing but the clothes on their back.

The Israeli army has told Palestinians in the north, where it is battling Hamas militants, to move south.

Already, more than 1.5 million people in Gaza have fled their homes in search of safety, and the exodus has grown as Israel’s air and ground attacks intensify, according to UN observers.

About 15,000 people fled on Tuesday, compared with 5,000 on Monday and 2,000 on Sunday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

As Israel relentlessly bombards Gaza, the health ministry in Hamas-run territory said the death toll had reached 10,569, including more than 4,300 children.

Hamas has accused the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) of ‘colluding’ with Israel in the ‘forced displacement’ of residents of Gaza.

‘UNRWA and its officials bear responsibility for this humanitarian catastrophe, in particular the residents of the Gaza (City) area and north of it’ who are following Israeli military orders to flee south, said Salama Maruf, head of the Hamas media bureau.

Israeli troops were ‘tightening the stranglehold around the city of Gaza’, defence minister Yoav Gallant said.

‘Gaza is the largest terrorist base ever built,’ Gallant said, vowing to destroy Hamas as Israel marked a month since the group’s October 7 attack.

AFP