Human Rights Watch says Israeli forces have acted deliberately to cut availability of clean water
Israel’s restriction of Gaza’s water supply to levels below minimum needs amounts to an act of genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity, a human rights report has alleged.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigated Israeli attacks on the water supply infrastructure in Gaza over the course of its 14-month war there.
Suit claims state department is deliberately bypassing the Leahy Law by failing to sanction Israeli units accused of widespread atrocities in Palestinian territories
The state department is facing a new lawsuit brought by Palestinians and Palestinian Americans accusing the agency of deliberately circumventing a decades-old US human rights law to continue funding Israeli military units accused of widespread atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday, marks the first time that victims of alleged human rights abuses are challenging the state department’s failure to ever sanction an Israeli security unit under the Leahy Law, a 1990s-era law that prohibits US military assistance to forces credibly implicated in gross human rights violations.
But local branch of rights group says ‘serious crimes’ were potentially taking place that needed investigation
Amnesty International’s Israel branch has distanced itself from the rights group’s allegation that Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza, but said “serious crimes” were potentially taking place that needed investigation.
“While the Israeli section of Amnesty International does not accept the accusation that Israel is committing genocide, based on the information available to us, we are concerned that serious crimes are being committed in Gaza, that must be investigated,” it said in a statement.
Daniil Brodsky and the board members stepped down on Thursday, after the group said in a statement the report had “not proved genocidal intent beyond a reasonable doubt”.
Human rights group says Israel ‘brazenly, continuously and with total impunity … unleashed hell’ on strip’s 2.3m population
A report from Amnesty International alleges that Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip constitutes the crime of genocide under international law, the first such determination by a major human rights organisation in the 14-month-old conflict.
The 32-page report examining events in Gaza between October 2023 to July 2024, published on Thursday, found that Israel had “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity … unleashed hell” on the strip’s 2.3 million population, noting that the “atrocity crimes” against Israelis by Hamas on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war, “do not justify genocide”.
The unprecedented scale and magnitude of the military offensive, which has caused death and destruction at a speed and level unmatched in any other 21st-century conflict;
Intent to destroy, after considering and discounting arguments such as Israeli recklessness and callous disregard for civilian life in the pursuit of Hamas;
Killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm in repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, or deliberately indiscriminate attacks; and
Inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, such as destroying medical infrastructure, the obstruction of aid, and repeated use of arbitrary and sweeping “evacuation orders” for 90% of the population to unsuitable areas.
Charges against Israeli prime minister and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant mark first time western-affiliated leaders have been targeted for war crimes
Thursday’s announcement from the international criminal court’s pretrial chamber of arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has sent shockwaves through the international legal system. As the first time that officials from a democratic, western-allied state have been charged with war crimes, it is widely seen as the most significant action taken by the court since it was set up at the turn of the century.
Richard Villar has treated injured people in Gaza and is in no doubt that crimes against humanity are being committed there
I read with interest your article based on the recent report by Human Rights Watch (Israel accused of crimes against humanity over forced displacement in Gaza, 14 November). I am surprised that there is any debate. In my personal and non-legal view, crimes are being committed. I have been a war surgeon in Gaza on three occasions. The first two were for the Great March of Return in 2018, when I was operating in Gaza’s Khan Younis. There, I treated dozens of gunshot wounds to the shinbone (tibia) in men who were aged between 18 and 35. As most doctors will tell you, a shattered shinbone assures a lifetime of disability. It appeared that the intention was to disable, not to kill.
I was also in Gaza this year and have written about it in my recent book, Gaza Medic: A War Surgeon’s Story 2024. Most of the multitudinous patients I treated were children, women and elderly people. I never once saw fighters or tunnels, but I did see many families ripped apart and children rendered orphans in a blink.
A UN special committee has said that Israeli policies and practices in Gaza are “consistent with the characteristics of genocide”.
The committee, set up in 1968 to monitor the Israeli occupation, also said in its annual report that there were serious concerns that Israel was “using starvation as a weapon of war” in the 13-month-old conflict, and was running an “apartheid system” in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Human Rights Watch says it has evidence that suggests ‘the war crime of forcible transfer’ of civilians
Israel is using evacuation orders to pursue the “deliberate and massive forced displacement” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, according to a report by Human Rights Watch, which says the policy amounts to crimes against humanity.
The US-based group added it had collected evidence that suggested “the war crime of forcible transfer [of the civilian population]”, describing it as “a grave breach of the Geneva conventions and a crime under the Rome statute of the international criminal court”.
The Israeli army has distanced itself from comments made by a brigadier general that ground forces are getting closer to “the complete evacuation” of the northern Gaza Strip and residents will not be allowed to return home.
In a media briefing on Tuesday night, the Israel Defense Forces’ Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that “there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return”. He added that humanitarian aid would be allowed to “regularly” enter the south of the territory but there were “no more civilians left” in the north.
Prison staff assaulted Barghouti in his solitary confinement cell at Megiddo prison in northern Israel on 9 September, the Palestinian Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club and a support group for Barghouti said in statements.
At least 72 people have been killed in Israeli operations across Gaza in the past day, hospital officials in the besieged territory have said, although communication difficulties in the north of the strip mean the final toll could be much higher.
In the central town of Khan Younis, 38 people, including at least 13 children from the same family, were killed in airstrikes early on Friday, hospital records showed. Relatives cradled their bruised and broken bodies in the morgue of the nearby European hospital before they were buried, in some cases several children to a shroud.
The UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, has said the ‘darkest moment’ of Israel’s war is unfolding in northern Gaza as the ‘Israeli military is subjecting an entire population to bombing, siege and starvation, as well as being forced to choose between mass displacement and being trapped in an active conflict zone’. Türk called on the international community to uphold humanitarian law
UN Women says figure doubled in 2023 amid ‘blatant disregard’ of laws that left women and children unprotected
The proportion of women killed in conflicts around the world doubled last year, with women now accounting for 40% of all those killed in war zones, according to a new report by the United Nations.
The report from UN Women, which looks at the security situation for women and girls affected by war, says UN-verified cases of conflict-related sexual violence also rose by 50% in 2023 compared with 2022.
More than 20 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Christian town in northern Lebanon, prompting Hezbollah to fire rockets at Tel Aviv, as Israel’s multifront war continues to escalate.
It was also a particularly bloody 24 hours in the Gaza Strip. Four people were killed in an Israeli bombing of a hospital courtyard in central Gaza, another strike on a nearby school used as a shelter killed at least 20 people, and a drone strike killed five children playing on the street in al-Shati camp in Gaza City, according to local health authorities.
NSW Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi calls for the Australian Human Rights Commission to be ‘held to account’ due to concerns over its treatment of staff. Faruqi reads parts of four resignation letters under parliamentary privilege, including one from human rights lawyer Sara Saleh
Former AHRC staff member alleged management viewed her Palestinian identity as a risk and leaked information about her to a shock jock, Mehreen Faruqitells parliament
Human rights lawyer Sara Saleh has alleged senior management at the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) viewed her Palestinian identity as a risk, and leaked information about her resignation from the commission to a rightwing shock jock, the Senate has heard.
Saleh, who was employed as a legal researcher at the commisson, is one of at least seven staff in the last quarter to quit the AHRC alleging concern over the commission’s treatment of staff who express support for Palestinians, the Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi told the Senate on Wednesday.
Ashraf al-Muhtaseb is a musician who described leaving Israel’s jails with no hearing in his left ear, four fractured ribs and a broken hand, so ill and weak from hunger he could no longer walk.
Dropped at an Israeli checkpoint on his own, he says he began crawling towards his home in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron, until a passerby picked him up.
Violence, extreme hunger, humiliation and other abuse of Palestinian prisoners has been normalised across Israel’s jail system, according to Guardian interviews with released prisoners, with mistreatment now so systemic that rights group B’Tselem says it must be considered a policy of “institutionalised abuse”.
Former detainees described abuse ranging from severe beatings and sexual violence to starvation rations, refusal of medical care, and deprivation of basic needs including water, daylight, electricity and sanitation, including soap and sanitary pads for women.
Both the political and military establishments in Israel have been willing to deny or turn a blind eye to the repeated allegations of torture at Sde Teiman
The ICJ in the Hague found in a landmark but non-binding advisory ruling on Friday that “Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law”.
The court said that the UN Security Council, the General Assembly and all states had an obligation not to recognise the occupation as legal and not to give aid or support toward Israel in maintaining it.
The ICJ ruling confirmed what the UN Security Council found in passing resolution 2334 in 2016.
This resolution was co-sponsored by New Zealand, which had a place on the Security Council at the time under a National-led government.
The United Nations Security Council stated that, in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israeli settlements had “no legal validity” and constituted “a flagrant violation under international law”.
It said they were a “major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace” in the Middle East.
ICJ-Israel Occupied territories resolution. Video: Al Jazeera
The ICJ ruling reinforced the UN resolution and the need for government action, the PSNA statement said.
“New Zealand, which co-sponsored the UN resolution in 2016 should lead the way on this,” said PSNA national chair John Minto.
“We need to put our money where our mouth is — especially since the current far-right Israeli government has said its ‘top priority’ is to push ahead with more illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land”.
New Zealanders have been holding national rallies in protest over Israel’s war on Gaza for nine months and protesters were expected to be out in their thousands this weekend to demand government action.
The international court of justice, the UN’s top court, has ruled that Israel’s settlement policies and use of natural resources in the occupied Palestinian territories violate international law. The ICJ said: ‘The transfer by Israel of settlers to the West Bank and Jerusalem, as well as Israel’s maintenance of their presence, is contrary to article 49 of the fourth Geneva convention’
Prisoners held at an Israeli detention camp in the Negev desert are being subjected to widespread physical and mental abuses, with at least one reported case of a man having his limb amputated as a result of injuries sustained from constant handcuffing, according to two whistleblowers who worked at the site.
The sources described harrowing treatment of detainees at the Israeli Sde Teiman camp, which holds Palestinians from Gaza and suspected Hamas militants, including inmates regularly being kept shackled to hospital beds, blindfolded and forced to wear nappies.
Prisoners held at an Israeli detention camp in the Negev desert are being subjected to widespread physical and mental abuses, with at least one reported case of a man having his limb amputated as a result of injuries sustained from constant handcuffing, according to two whistleblowers who worked at the site.
The sources described harrowing treatment of detainees at the Israeli Sde Teiman camp, which holds Palestinians from Gaza and suspected Hamas militants, including inmates regularly being kept shackled to hospital beds, blindfolded and forced to wear nappies.
Andrew Mitchell preparing to share details of assessment that there is no clear risk in breaching international human law
The British government is preparing to publish a summary of its legal advice stating there are no clear risks that selling arms to Israel will lead to a serious breach of international humanitarian law (IHL).
In a pre-prepared concession to the business select committee, the deputy foreign secretary, Andrew Mitchell, said: “In view of the strength of feeling in the IHL assessment process, I will look to see what more detail we could offer in writing on the IHL assessments in relation to Israel and Gaza both in process and substance.”
Red Cross officials are to hold talks with the UK over a Foreign Office plan to visit Palestinian detainees held by Israel. Critics say this bypasses a duty on Israel under the Geneva conventions to give the Red Cross access to detainees.
Israel has suspended the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from access to Palestinian detainees since the Hamas attack on 7 October, and says it will not rescind the policy until Hamas grants access to Israeli hostages.
Spokesperson says confusion results from Gaza health ministry’s new way of classifying those not yet fully identified
The UN has denied that the estimated death toll of women and children in the war in Gaza has been revised downward, pointing towards a confusion between the total numbers of dead bodies recorded, and the number of those who have so far been fully identified.
After the Gaza health ministry’s revised totals of those killed first appeared on the website of the UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha), they were quickly seized on as proof by pro-Israel media and commentators that the UN had previously been exaggerating the toll.
Joe Biden’s latest executive order gives scope to target the finances of Israeli politicians and businesses linked to extremists
Escalating US sanctions on violent settlers, initially taken as a mostly political rebuke to extremists, are now seen by some inside Israel as a potential threat to the financial viability of all Israeli settlements and companies in the occupied West Bank.
The Biden administration’s new controls on a handful of men andorganisations linked to attacks on Palestinian civilians, first announced in February then expanded twice in March and April, have generally been treated in Israel and beyond more as a humiliating public censure of a close ally than as a major political shift.