An unbiased United Nations fee stated on Tuesday Israeli attacks on faculties, religious and cultural sites in Gaza quantity to battle crimes and the crime in opposition to humanity of looking for to exterminate Palestinians.
“Israel has obliterated Gaza’s education system and destroyed over half of all religious and cultural sites in the Gaza Strip,” the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory stated in a report.
It accused Israeli forces of committing “war crimes, including directing attacks against civilians and wilful killing, in their attacks on educational facilities that caused civilian casualties.
“In killing civilians sheltering in faculties and religious sites, Israeli safety forces dedicated the crime in opposition to humanity of extermination,” the report said.
It noted: “While the destruction of cultural property, together with academic services, was not in itself a genocidal act, proof of such conduct might however infer genocidal intent to destroy a protected group.”
Commission chair Navi Pillay said in a statement accompanying the report: “We are seeing increasingly indications that Israel is finishing up a concerted marketing campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza.”
“Children in Gaza have misplaced their childhood,” the senior South African judge said. “They are pressured to fret about survival amid attacks, uncertainty, hunger and subhuman residing circumstances.”
The three-member commission said Israeli attacks “focused religious sites that served as locations of refuge, killing tons of of folks, together with girls and kids”.
‘Genocide’ warning
The commission was set up by the UN to investigate violations of humanitarian and human rights law in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
In May, UN humanitarian relief chief Tom Fletcher urged the countries of the UN Security Council to take action “to forestall genocide” in Gaza.
Israel has denied committing genocide.
The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs demanded that Israel lift its aid blockade on Gaza, where the UN says the entire population of more than two million people is at risk of famine.
“For these killed and people whose voices are silenced: what extra proof do you want now?” Fletcher said on May 14. “Will you act — decisively — to forestall genocide and to make sure respect for worldwide humanitarian regulation?”
The UN commission’s report paid special attention to Gaza but also focused on Israeli attacks on civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories as a whole, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel itself.
It said Israel had “executed little” to prevent or prosecute Jewish settlers in the West Bank who “deliberately focused academic services and college students to terrorise (Palestinian) communities and power them to go away their properties”.
The report said Israeli authorities had intimidated and, in some cases, detained Israeli and Palestinian teachers and students who “expressed concern or solidarity with the civilian inhabitants in Gaza”.
Call to Israel
The panel urged the Israeli government to stop attacking cultural, religious and education institutions, “instantly finish its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory” and cease all settlement activity.
It said the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should comply fully with provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice.
The court has ordered Israel “to forestall and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in opposition to folks in Gaza” and allow humanitarian aid to get through.
It also urged Hamas, the Islamist militant group that runs Gaza, “to stop utilizing civilian objects for army functions”.
Hamas fighters launched an attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
In response Israel launched an offensive during which the health ministry in Gaza says at least 54,880 people, the majority of them civilians, have been killed. The UN considers these figures reliable.
The commission is to present its findings to the UN Commission on Human Rights on June 17.
Published – June 10, 2025 10:53 pm IST
