UN Human Rights Council waged “an intentional and direct attack on the civilian population”

Switzerland June 19, 2024 (QJ)-The Israeli military’s “deliberate” use of heavy weapons in the Gaza Strip has been an “intentional and direct attack on the civilian population”, a new report by a United Nations-backed independent commission has found.

Navi Pillay, chairperson of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said on Wednesday that Israel has committed crimes against humanity, forced starvation, extermination, murder, and inhuman treatment of Palestinians. She also said Palestinian groups of war crimes.

Pillay told the UN Human Rights Council, that the Israeli military operating in Gaza “forcibly transferred almost the entire population into a small enclosure that is unsafe and uninhabitable” and used heavy weapons in densely populated areas in “an intentional and direct attack on the civilian population”.

The commission concluded that specific forms of sexual and gender-based violence constituted part of the Israeli forces’ operating procedures.