Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, UN inquiry commission finds

Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said in a landmark report released on Tuesday.

The commission urged Israel and all states to fulfil their legal obligations under international law to "end the genocide and punish those responsible for it."

After two years of investigations into events since Oct. 7, 2023, the commission concluded that Israeli authorities and security forces committed "four of the five" genocidal acts defined under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide -- killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.

Explicit statements by Israeli civilian and military authorities and the pattern of conduct of Israeli security forces indicate that the genocidal acts were committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as a group," the report said.

According to Navi Pillay, the chair of the commission, responsibility for the atrocity crimes lies with "Israeli authorities at the highest echelons who have orchestrated a genocidal campaign for almost two years now with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza."

Pillay stressed that Israel has "flagrantly disregarded the orders for provisional measures from the International Court of Justice and warnings from member states, UN offices, human rights organizations and civil society groups" and that the authorities "had no intention to change their course of actions."

The Israeli army has continued a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip, killing nearly 65,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, and experts have declared a famine there.