Israel on Friday condemned a UN probe which concluded it was deliberately seeking to destroy healthcare in the Gaza Strip and abusing Palestinian detainees, branding the findings as “outrageous.”
The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry (CoI) said Israel had “perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system.”
The country is “committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities,” the report released on Thursday added.
Israel firmly rejected the allegations in a statement from its mission in Geneva. “This latest report is another blatant attempt by the CoI to delegitimize the very existence of the State of Israel and obstruct its right to protect its population, while covering up the crimes of terrorist organizations,” it said.
The statement argued that the report unfairly portrayed Israel’s operations in “terror-infested health facilities” in Gaza as an attack on the health system, while dismissing evidence that groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad use medical facilities for terrorist activities.
Israel also rejected accusations of widespread abuse of Palestinian detainees, calling the claims of war crimes and crimes against humanity baseless. “Israel is fully committed to international legal standards regarding the treatment of detainees,” the mission stated, adding that it prohibits excessive use of force and ill-treatment.
The mission accused the commission of creating an “alternate reality,” worsening the conflict, and urged states to condemn the “prejudiced approach” of the inquiry.
The three-person commission, established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021, published this report as its second since Hamas’s October 7 attack last year, which triggered the ongoing war.
Israel invaded the Gaza Strip after the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants, which killed 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 42,000 people in Gaza, according to figures from Gaza’s health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.
Comments About This Article
Please fill the fields below.