The United Nations demanded on Monday (May 18) that Israel take measures to prevent acts of “genocide” in Gaza, and decried indications of “ethnic cleansing” in the Palestinian territory and in the occupied West Bank.

In a fresh report, the UN rights office said Israel’s actions in Gaza since the start of the war in October 2023 involved “gross violations” of international law, amounting in many cases to “war crimes and other atrocity crimes”.

UN rights chief Volker Turk called in the report on Israel to ensure compliance with a 2024 International Court of Justice order that it take measures to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza.

Israel, he said, should ensure “with immediate effect that its military does not engage in acts of genocide, (and take) all measures to prevent and punish incitement to commit genocide”.

Israel has repeatedly and forcefully denied allegations of genocide, which have previously been brought by rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as independent UN experts, but never by the United Nations directly.

“UNLAWFUL KILLINGS”

Monday’s report, which covered the period from Oct 7, 2023, when Hamas’s unprecedented attack inside Israel sparked the Gaza war, up to May 2025, also condemned “serious violations” including some amounting to war crimes, by Palestinian armed groups during the initial attack and after.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.

Monday’s report highlighted the abuse suffered by the hostages seized by the Palestinian armed groups, many of whom reported torture and sexual abuse as they were held “in inhumane conditions” for months on end.

“Most hostages who died in Gaza died while held in secret detention, either killed by their captors or impacts of the conflict occurring around them,” it said.

Most of the focus however was on Israel’s actions in Gaza, where its retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 72,000 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.

Hundreds of thousands of people are still living in tents and conditions remain dire despite a ceasefire that took effect in October last year.

“The ceasefire diminished the immense scale of violence up to that point, and opened some modest humanitarian space,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN rights office in the occupied Palestinian territories, told reporters in Geneva.

“But killings and the destruction of infrastructure have continued on an almost daily basis, and the overall humanitarian situation remains dire,” he warned.

A large proportion of the killings since the start of the war “appear unlawful”, the report said.

It also highlighted how Israel had “directed attacks on civilian or protected objects, including healthcare and medical facilities and attacks on civilians, including journalists, civil defenders, health workers, humanitarian actors and police in a routine and repeated fashion”.

Israel’s conduct in Gaza had rendered living conditions in much of the territory “incompatible with Palestinians continued existence as a group”, it warned.

The report also looked at the situation in the West Bank, where violence has spiralled since the start of the war in Gaza, pointing out that “the use of unnecessary and disproportionate force (there had) led to hundreds of unlawful killings”.

“COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT”

“Force displacement on a mass scale” had been seen in both Gaza and the West Bank, it said.

It charged that “the deliberate and unlawful destruction of wide swathes of Gaza”, coupled with “the emptying and destruction of large parts of refugee camps in northern West Bank”, had contributed to forcing Palestinians from their homes, “with strong indications that Israel intends their displacement to be permanent”.

Taken together, Israel’s repeated violations across the occupied Palestinian territories indicated a pattern aimed at doling out “collective punishment of Palestinians”, and “forced displacement, emptying and ethnic cleansing of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, said the report.

“Incitement and derogatory and dehumanising language targeted at Palestinians as a group from Israeli officials was also observed with no accountability,” it warned.

The rights office stressed that it was “essential that there is due reckoning” for all violations listed in the report through “credible and impartial judicial bodies”.

Sunghay warned that “in a context like this, lack of action is not passivity. It is a license”.

Source: AFP

– Agencies