An independent United Nations commission has accused Israel of systematically targeting Gaza‘s healthcare infrastructure in its war operations.
Israel’s military, over the course of its yearlong war in Gaza against Hamas and other terrorist groups, has operated in and around various hospitals, accusing the terrorist groups of operating from within the hospitals. Hospitals are protected sites under international law, but they can lose that protection if used for military purposes.
The commission “finds that Israel has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system in Gaza,” the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel’s report found. The report was released on Thursday.
Investigators specifically investigated Israeli attacks on four hospitals in the Gaza Strip: the Nasr Medical Complex, Shifa, Awdah, and Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospitals.
“In relation to the attacks on Nasr, Shifa’, Awdah and Turkish hospitals, the Commission finds that, in view of the excessive number of civilian deaths and injuries, as well as the damage caused to and the destruction of the hospitals’ facilities, Israeli security forces failed to adhere to the principles of precaution, distinction and proportionality, constituting the war crimes of [willful] killing and attacks against protected objects,” the report found.
The commission did not find evidence that Hamas or any other terrorist group was in either the Awdah or the Turkish Hospital at the times they were attacked by Israeli forces. The commission experts were able to confirm the presence of a tunnel and shaft under the Shifa hospital, but could not verify they were used for military purposes, and they verified claims that armed terrorists entered the hospital with Israeli security forces vehicles on Oct. 7, 2023 — the day of the Hamas terrorist attack in southern Israel that prompted the war.
Israel, in February, released a video of what it said was a 10-kilometer-long tunnel from the Turkish hospital to Israa University.
The two sides engaged in a two-week-long siege at the Shifa hospital in March that the committee said was a violation of international humanitarian law from both Israeli forces and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) by disregarding the special protections offered to medical facilities.
“Israel must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction of healthcare facilities in Gaza,” said Navi Pillay, chairwoman of the commission. “By targeting healthcare facilities, Israel is targeting the right to health itself with significant long-term detrimental effects on the civilian population. Children, in particular, have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system.”
The panel also found evidence that thousands of Palestinians detained by Israeli forces had been subjected to “widespread and systematic abuse, physical and psychological violence, and sexual and gender-based violence.”
“The appalling acts of abuse committed against Palestinian detainees require accountability and reparations for the victims,” said Pillay. “The lack of accountability for actions ordered by senior Israeli authorities and carried out by individual members of Israeli security forces and the increasing acceptance of violence against Palestinians have allowed such conduct to continue uninterrupted, becoming systematic and institutionalized.”
The commission also accused Hamas and other terrorist groups of holding Israeli hostages and of “intentionally” mistreating them to “inflict physical pain and severe mental suffering,” including “physical violence, abuse, sexual violence, forced isolation, limited access to hygiene facilities, water and food, threats and humiliation.”
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The war began when Hamas carried out its Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack. That morning, thousands of Hamas terrorists overpowered the fence at the border and poured into southern Israel. They killed roughly 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians, and kidnapped about 250 others. Hamas is still holding roughly 100 of the hostages.
The commission also accused Hamas of “rape and sexual violence” and said “inflicting mental suffering on the families of victims constitutes torture.”