A UN special committee has found that Israel’s tactics of starvation and mass civilian slaughter in Gaza are “consistent with genocide,” in one of the strongest worded reports by a UN group yet on the Israeli siege.
The 27-page report documented the first nine months of Israel’s assault and was prepared by a UN committee established in 1968 to investigate Israeli human rights practices in the occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories. The committee finds that Israel is intentionally and consistently killing civilians and depriving Palestinians of the conditions of life in Gaza.
“[T]he policies and practices of Israel during the reporting period are consistent with the characteristics of genocide,” the report says.
“The targeting of Palestinians as a group; the life-threatening conditions imposed on Palestinians in Gaza through warfare and restrictions on humanitarian aid — resulting in physical destruction, increased miscarriages and stillbirths — and the killing of and serious bodily or mental harm caused to Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are violations under international law,” it goes on.
Israel has caused “unprecedented destruction of civilian infrastructure,” the report notes, while forcing civilians to evacuate into smaller and smaller areas of the Gaza Strip “with no regard for their rights to life.”
By the February 2024, Israeli forces had dropped the equivalent power of two nuclear bombs on Gaza, with over 25,000 metric tons of explosives — many provided by the U.S. The committee specifically raised concern about the Israeli military’s use of artificial intelligence to mass-produce Palestinian targets for assassination.
Those not killed by bombings or gunfire, meanwhile, face Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war, the committee noted. Together, these tactics indicate a widespread strategy of collective punishment of Palestinians, the group said.
“Since the beginning of the war, Israeli officials have publicly supported policies that strip Palestinians of the very necessities required to sustain life — food, water, and fuel,” the committee said in a statement. “These statements along with the systematic and unlawful interference of humanitarian aid make clear Israel’s intent to instrumentalise life-saving supplies for political and military gains.”
Israel’s extensive damage of Gaza has also robbed Palestinians of their futures. The debris left from the bombings has contaminated the land and water and released huge amounts of carcinogenic substances like asbestos. It has caused lasting trauma to everyone in the region, especially children; Israel has destroyed or damaged the vast majority of schools in the region, while also killing, injuring and orphaning tens of thousands of children.
“It is impossible to conceive of any durable solution to [Palestinians’] displacement, given Israel’s systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, atop the immense psychological toll the conflict has taken on the people of Gaza,” the report says.
The report examined a period between October 2023 and July 2024. Conditions have only worsened since then, with Israeli forces intensifying their humanitarian blockade even further and, this past month, conducting their campaign to ethnically cleanse north Gaza of Palestinians entirely.
Many international experts have warned that Israel’s assault amounts to a genocideSouth Africa brought its genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December. In January, the court found it “plausible” that Israel is conducting genocide in Gaza.
In recent weeks, UN agencies have also escalated their rhetoric; last week, the UN Human Rights Office found that the women and children make up nearly 70 percent of Israel’s death toll in Gaza, with children making up the largest single group of those killed. The findings indicate that Israel’s civilian killing ratio is extremely high — with the proportion of civilian deaths likely far higher when the scores of civilian men also killed are included.
The human rights office’s report noted that many of Israel’s actions indicate that its Gaza siege could constitute a genocide.
“In many instances, the violations documented in this report by the parties could amount to war crimes…. If committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, they may also constitute genocide,” the report said.
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