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volker türk
UN Report Condemns Israel's 'Appalling Destruction' of Gaza Hospitals
The recent raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza reflects a "pattern of attacks" on healthcare facilities across the enclave, said the United Nations.
Dec 31, 2024
As rights advocates and family members demanded that Israel release Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the destroyed Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, the United Nations human rights office said Israeli attacks on healthcare infrastructure across Gaza for over a year raise "serious concerns" about the country's compliance with international law.
The "appalling destruction" of Kamal Adwan Hospital and the surrounding area is hardly an anomaly, said the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in a new report, and instead reflects a "pattern of attacks" that started in November 2023 when Israel launched its first military operation against al-Shifa Medical Complex.
Months later, a second raid left al-Shifa in "complete ruin" by April 1, and officials reported that after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrew they found three mass graves containing 80 corpses, including some "with catheters and cannulas still attached, suggesting they had been patients."
"As if the relentless bombing and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza were not enough, the one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe in fact became a death trap," said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk. "The protection of hospitals during warfare is paramount and must be respected by all sides, at all times."
The OHCHR's report documents attacks on hospitals between October 12, 2023 and June 30, 2024, before Kamal Adwan was destroyed in recent days.
Over that period, the IDF launched at least 136 strikes on at least 27 hospitals and 12 other medical facilities—killing and injuring patients and medical staff as well as other civilians and "causing significant damage, if not complete destruction of civilian infrastructure."
More than 500 medical professionals were killed in Gaza during the period covered by the report, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The OHCHR noted that the U.S.-backed IDF has apparently used MK 83 munitions in at least one airstrike on a hospital—one that was waged on January 10 on al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. MK 83 munitions are 1,000-pound bombs that have wide-area effects and are manufactured in the U.S., which has supplied Israel with at least $12.5 billion in military aid since October 7, 2023, and sends more than $3 billion per year to the IDF.
At least 12 people were reportedly killed in the al-Aqsa attack, which the OHCHR said raised "serious concerns of an indiscriminate attack."
The report noted that Israel has frequently claimed that Gaza hospitals are used by Hamas, but said that "insufficient information has so far been made available to substantiate these allegations, which have remained vague and broad, and in some cases appear contradicted by publicly available information."
OHCHR emphasized that even in "exceptional circumstances when medical personnel, ambulances, and hospitals lose their special protection because they fulfill the strict criteria to be considered military objectives," militaries must still observe international humanitarian law when attacking medical infrastructure.
"Intentionally directing attacks against hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are treated, provided they are not military objectives; intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such, or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities, including the launching of an indiscriminate attack resulting in death or injury to civilians; and intentionally launching disproportionate attacks, are also war crimes," reads the report.
The report comes days after Israeli raids on Kamal Adwan Hospital left northern Gaza—where the IDF has been conducting a ground offensive for nearly three months—without any operating medical facilities. Israel has confirmed that Abu Safiya was detained for questioning, prompting outcry from medical professionals and rights groups across the globe.
Gaza Health Ministry Director General Muneer Alboursh said Tuesday that Abu Safiya is one of 450 medical personnel who have been detained by Israel and said the doctor is being held in Israel's Sde Teiman prison, where Israel is accused of torturing healthcare workers.
Türk demanded "independent, thorough, and transparent investigations" of all Israeli attacks on hospitals and medical workers, "and full accountability for all violations of international humanitarian and human rights law which have taken place."
"It must also be a priority for Israel, as the occupying power, to ensure and facilitate access to adequate healthcare for the Palestinian population," he said, "and for future recovery and reconstruction efforts to prioritize the restoration of the medical capacity which has been destroyed over the last 14 months of intense conflict."
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'Horrific Reality': Nearly 70% of UN-Verified Gaza Deaths Are Women and Children
The United Nations human rights office noted the "unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness, disease, displacement, detention, and destruction" wrought by Israel's 13-month onslaught.
Nov 08, 2024
Nearly 7 in 10 people killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during an earlier six-month period of the ongoing assault on the Palestinian enclave were women and children, the United Nations human rights office said this week.
The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verified 8,119 of the more than 34,500 Palestinians killed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bombs and bullets between November 2023 and April 2024. Among those killed were 3,588 children and 2,036 women ranging in age from newborns to nonagenarians. Minors under the age of 18 made up 44% of the victims in the analysis.
The OHCHR report noted the "unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness, disease, displacement, detention, and destruction" wrought by Israel's onslaught, as well as the "wanton disregard" by Israeli forces and Hamas of international humanitarian law.
The analysis also highlights "the Israeli government's continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate, and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement."
"If committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population... these violations may constitute crimes against humanity," OHCHR said. "And if committed with intent to destroy—in whole or in part—a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, they may also constitute genocide."
South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. On Thursday, Ireland became the latest of around 30 countries and regional blocs to announce its intent to intervene in the case on behalf of Palestine.
OHCHR found that 88% of the verified Palestinian fatalities from Israeli attacks on residential buildings were people killed in strikes that claimed at least five lives. In recent weeks, Israel's renewed offensive in northern Gaza—which some experts believe is an attempt to ethnically cleanse the area by bombing and starving its people before forcibly expelling them to make way for Israeli recolonization—has wiped out a staggering number of civilians, including many women and children, in single strikes on homes, hospitals, and refugee camps.
"The high number of fatalities per attack was due to the IDF's use of weapons with wide area effects in densely populated areas," the analysis states, adding that some Palestinians may have been killed by errant projectiles launched by Hamas or other Gaza-based militants.
The new report also raises concerns over Isrsel's forcible transfer of Palestinians, systematic attacks on medical workers, journalists, and reported use of white phosphorus munitions—which are banned in populated areas.
Israel has not yet responded to the OHCHR report but has previously said that it "will continue to act, as it always has done, according to international law."
Since October 7, 2023, when Israeli forces launched their assault on the densely populated coastal enclave of 2.3 million people in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel, the Gaza Ministry of Health and U.N. agencies say that more than 43,600 Palestinians have been killed and over 102,500 others wounded. More than 10,000 others are missing and believed dead and buried beneath the ruins of bombed homes and other structures.
Among those killed, say officials, are more than 18,000 children. Last month, the U.K.-based charity Oxfam International said that Israel's yearlong assault on Gaza has been the deadliest year of conflict for women and children anywhere in the world over the past two decades.
The relentless death and destruction has caused the "complete psychological destruction" of Gaza's youth, according to the charity Save the Children. The same has been said of many Gazans of all ages.
Last December, the U.N. Children's Fund called Gaza "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts.
The ICJ—which is a U.N. body—has issued three provisionsal orders in the ongoing genocide case, including directives for Israel to prevent genocidal acts, stop its assault on Rafah, and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel has been accused of flouting all three orders.
"The trends and patterns of violations, and of applicable international law as clarified by the International Court of Justice, must inform the steps to be taken to end the current crisis," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement Friday.
"The violence must stop immediately, the hostages and those arbitrarily detained must be released, and we must focus on flooding Gaza with humanitarian aid," he added.
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UN Officials Urgently Call for Lebanon Cease-Fire as Middle East on 'Brink of Catastrophe'
However, there was no hint of de-escalation as Israeli warplanes bombed Beirut, killing dozens of people including senior Hezbollah commanders and women and children.
Sep 21, 2024
As Israel followed up its remote bombings of communications devices in Lebanon with airstrikes on Beirut, the United Nations Security Council held an emergency session Friday during which officials urgently called for an immediate cease-fire and warned that the Middle East is on "the brink of catastrophe."
"We risk seeing a conflagration that could dwarf even the devastation and suffering witnessed so far," U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo told representatives of the 15-member Security Council (UNSC) during the session.
"It is not too late to avoid such folly. There is still room for diplomacy," DiCarlo stressed. "I also strongly urge member states with influence over the parties to leverage it now."
"It is not too late to avoid such folly. There is still room for diplomacy."
Officials voiced alarm over this week's remote bombings of pagers, walkie-talkies, and other devices Israel said belonged to members of Hezbollah, the Lebanese political and paramilitary group, which killed at least 37 people including two children and wounded thousands more. While Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attacks, U.S. officials have attributed the attacks to their key ally.
"These attacks represent a new development in warfare, where communication tools become weapons," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk told the council.
"This has unleashed widespread fear, panic, and horror among people in Lebanon, already suffering in an increasingly volatile situation since October 2023 and crumbling under a severe and longstanding economic crisis," Türk added. "This cannot be the new normal."
Speaking during the meeting, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the "unfathomable" Israeli electronic attacks "represent a serious unprecedented event in the history of wars" and warned that "no one in this world is safe anymore."
Habib demanded the council condemn Israel's "terrorist attack" and asserted that "accepting what happened amounts to opening a Pandora's box," with countries and militant groups carrying out similar bombings around the world.
"This is the moment of truth," he added.
French U.N. Ambassador Nicolas de Rivière told the Security Council that "the risk of an open war with potentially tragic consequences is growing every day."
"Such a prospect must be avoided at all costs," he added. "It is urgent that all parties work towards de-escalation."
Deputy U.S. U.N. Ambassador Robert Wood defended Israel, asserting that "no member of this council facing a terrorist organization on its border would tolerate daily rocket attacks on its territory."
However, some experts
said that the Israeli device bombings were acts of terrorism under international law.
There was no hint of de-escalation as Israeli warplanes bombed a residential area of Beirut on Friday, killing at least 31 people, including multiple Hezbollah commanders, and wounding at least dozens of others. Lebanon's Ministry of Health said that the dead include three women and seven children.
During a Saturday television interview, Israeli Minister of Education Yoav Kisch falsely proclaimed that "there is no difference between Hezbollah and Lebanon."
"The way things are progressing at the moment, Lebanon will be annihilated," he vowed. Pressed on the genocidal implications of the word "annihilated," Kisch said, "Lebanon as we know it will not exist."
Hezbollah and Israeli forces have traded limited—yet deadly and destructive—cross-border fire since October 7, when Israel retaliated for Hamas-led attacks by launching a war for which it is currently on trial for genocide at the U.N. International Court of Justice in The Hague.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, Israel's bombs, bullets, and blockade have killed and maimed more than 147,000 Palestinians in Gaza over the past 351 days. Nearly all of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced by Israel's bombardment and invasion, which, along with the "
complete siege" on the coastal enclave, has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation and disease.
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