An independent UN commission yesterday said that Israeli attacks on schools, religious and cultural sites in Gaza amount to war crimes and the crime against humanity of seeking 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 said in a report.
It accused Israeli forces of committing “war crimes, including directing attacks against civilians and willful killing, in their attacks on educational facilities that caused civilian casualties.”
Photo: Reuters
“In killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites, Israeli security forces committed the crime against humanity of extermination,” the report said. “While the destruction of cultural property, including educational facilities, was not in itself a genocidal act, evidence of such conduct may nevertheless infer genocidal intent to destroy a protected group.”
Commission Chair Navi Pillay in a statement accompanying the report said: “We are seeing more and more indications that Israel is carrying out a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza.”
“Children in Gaza have lost their childhood,” the senior South African judge said. “They are forced to worry about survival amid attacks, uncertainty, starvation and subhuman living conditions.”
The three-member commission said Israeli attacks “targeted religious sites that served as places of refuge, killing hundreds of people, including women and children.”
The commission was set up by the UN to investigate violations of humanitarian and human rights law in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher last month urged the UN Security Council to take action “to prevent genocide” in Gaza.
Israel has denied committing genocide.
Fletcher demanded that Israel lift its aid blockade on Gaza, where the UN says the entire population of more than 2 million people is at risk of famine.
“For those killed and those whose voices are silenced: what more evidence do you need now?” Fletcher said on May 14. “Will you act — decisively — to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law?”
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 “done little” to prevent or prosecute Jewish settlers in the West Bank who “intentionally targeted educational facilities and students to terrorize [Palestinian] communities and force them to leave their homes.”
The report said that Israeli authorities had intimidated and, in some cases, detained Israeli and Palestinian teachers and students who “expressed concern or solidarity with the civilian population in Gaza.”
The commission is to present its findings to the UN Commission on Human Rights on Tuesday next week.
A Chinese aircraft carrier group entered Japan’s economic waters over the weekend, before exiting to conduct drills involving fighter jets, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said yesterday. The Liaoning aircraft carrier, two missile destroyers and one fast combat supply ship sailed about 300km southwest of Japan’s easternmost island of Minamitori on Saturday, a ministry statement said. It was the first time a Chinese aircraft carrier had entered that part of Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), a ministry spokesman said. “We think the Chinese military is trying to improve its operational capability and ability to conduct operations in distant areas,” the spokesman said. China’s growing
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
COMPLIANCE: The SEF has helped more than 3,900 Chinese verify documents, indicating that most of those affected are willing to cooperate, the MAC said More than 3,100 spouses from China have submitted proof of renunciation of their Chinese household registration, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The National Immigration Agency has since April issued notices to spouses to submit proof that they had renounced their Chinese household registration on or before June 30 or their Taiwanese household registration would be revoked. People having difficulties obtaining such a document can request an extension of the deadline or submit a written affidavit in lieu of it. The council said it would hold a briefing at 2:30pm on Friday at the immigration agency’s Taichung office in cooperation with the
The government-funded human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination is to be expanded to boys at junior-high school starting in September, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. The Taiwan Society of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, the Taiwan Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the Taiwan Immunization Vision and Strategy, the Infectious Diseases Society of Taiwan, the Taiwan Head and Neck Society, the Formosa Cancer Foundation and the National Alliance of Presidents of Parents Associations held a joint news conference in Taipei yesterday to raise public awareness about the risks of HPV infection, regardless of gender. Invited to give an address, HPA Director-General Wu Chao-chun
RSS