A United Nations inquiry has concluded that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during the Gaza conflict, with Israel’s actions also constituting crimes against humanity due to the substantial loss of civilian life, the UN said on Wednesday.
The report comes from two separate inquiries by the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI), focusing on the October 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s subsequent military response. These reports document over 1,200 Israelis killed and 250 taken hostage following the initial attacks, and Palestinian estimates of more than 37,000 killed in the ongoing military retaliation in Gaza.
Israel has consistently rejected cooperation with the COI, which it accuses of harboring an anti-Israel bias, a claim that has led to the prevention of investigators’ access to both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
“The COI has once again proven that its actions are all in the service of a narrow-led political agenda against Israel,” Meirav Eilon Shahar, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, said, dismissing the findings.
The U.N. reports detail violations including torture, murder, and inhumane treatment by both parties, with specific accusations against Israel for using starvation as a method of warfare. The reports allege that Israel failed to provide essential supplies like food and water to Gaza’s residents and blocked others from doing so.
“The immense numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza and widespread destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure were the inevitable results of a strategy undertaken with the intent to cause maximum damage,” the COI stated, describing some of Israel’s documented offences, such as murder, as crimes against humanity.
According to the COI, its findings are based on interviews with victims and witnesses, hundreds of submissions, satellite imagery, and medical reports.
In addition, the U.N. findings describe incidents of mass killings and sexual violence, with the longer report on Gaza criticizing the use of high-capacity bombs in populated areas and accusing Israel of gender persecution against Palestinian men and boys, involving severe public humiliation.
The U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva is scheduled to discuss these findings next week. The COI, led by former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay, was set up in 2021 with an open-ended mandate, criticized by Israel and several of its allies.
