Israel has denounced as “biased” and “anti-Israeli” a report by a special UN committee according to which the methods of warfare employed by Israel in the Gaza Strip “correspond to the characteristics of genocide”. This report “is a dismaying example of the transformation of the UN into an organization used as a pawn by terrorists,” according to a statement from the Israeli Foreign Ministry shared overnight from Saturday to Sunday by its spokesperson, Oren Marmorstein , on X.
The document, which is due to be presented to the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday, was drafted by a special UN committee. The latter was created in 1968 and tasked with investigating Israeli practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, conquered the previous year by Israel (West Bank and Gaza Strip).
“Through its siege of Gaza, its obstruction of humanitarian aid, its targeted attacks and killing of civilians and aid workers, despite repeated calls from the UN, binding orders from the International Court of Justice and resolutions of the Security Council, Israel intentionally causes death, starvation and serious injury,” the committee said in a statement Thursday.
These are “false assertions”, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which highlights that the war waged for more than a year by Israel against Hamas only aims to “dismantle the terrorist installations” of the Islamist movement. Palestinian. As it often does, the ministry affirms that it is the Islamist movement which “uses civilians as human shields” and not Israel which targets “the population of Gaza”. “Israel remains fully committed to facilitating the continued delivery of aid,” added the statement, which suggests that the UN has failed in its task of distributing international aid to Gazans.
Humanitarian organizations, including those reporting to the United Nations, regularly claim to encounter significant blockages, particularly administrative ones, to operate in the besieged Palestinian territory and in the grip of a humanitarian crisis. The United States has already “unequivocally” disapproved of the conclusions of the UN report, deeming its accusations “unfounded”.
The war was sparked by the unprecedented attack carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023 in southern Israel, from the Gaza Strip. It led to the death of 1,206 people on the Israeli side, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official figures and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in Gaza.
The Israeli response in Gaza left 43,846 dead, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas Ministry of Health, deemed reliable by the UN.
