‘Relentless’ Israeli Attacks on Gaza Medical Workers Are War Crime, U.N. Panel Says

The report, which does not have the force of law, found that the Israeli military has engaged in deliberate assaults on hospitals and other health care providers.

United Nations investigators on Thursday accused Israel of engaging in “relentless and deliberate attacks” on health care facilities, medical workers and wounded civilians in the Gaza Strip and said the actions amounted to war crimes and extermination, a crime against humanity.

A U.N. report said the Israelis had imposed“collective punishment” on Palestinians in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attacks Hamas militants led on Israel a year ago from Gaza. The Israeli siege that followed, it said, has prevented hospitals from receiving food, fuel, water and medical supplies, and has also limited the number of patients allowed to leave Gaza for treatment.

“Israel must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction of health care facilities in Gaza,” Navi Pillay, head of the commission that conducted the report said in a statement.

Ms. Pillay, the former U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s health care system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, rejected the accusations.

“This U.N. report is detached from reality and includes baseless claims about Israel,” Mr. Danon said in a statement. He said the commission should focus its investigation on Hamas’s crimes on Oct. 7 and on the hostages taken that day who are still being held in Gaza.

The U.N. findings, which do not have the force of law, were released by a three-person panel called the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The U.N. Human Rights Council established the commission in May 2021 to investigate alleged violations of international law in Israel and Palestinian territories.

In its 24-page report, the commission said, “Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, wounded, arrested, detained, mistreated and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles, constituting the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination.”

The report also said that Israel’s treatment of Palestinian detainees held in military camps and detention facilities, including thousands of children, amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity. It cited accusations of rape and sexual violence, and said that arbitrarily detained Palestinians were subjected to widespread abuse.

Israel did not cooperate with the commission for the report, and investigators accused the Israelis of obstructing their inquiry by denying them access to Israel and Palestinian territories.

In the past, Israel has accused the commission of being biased against it, but relations between the Israelis and the U.N. have deteriorated even further over the past year of war. U.N. officials have sharply condemned Israel for its conduct of the military assault. Last week, when Israel held a commemoration service for the first Oct. 7 anniversary at U.N. headquarters in New York, it did not invite Secretary General António Guterres or any other U.N. officials.

The same commission issued an earlier report in June that was critical of both Hamas and Israel, saying that they had each engaged in war crimes. It pointed to the Oct. 7 attacks themselves, as well as the abuse of Israelis being held hostage in Gaza and of Palestinian detainees being held by Israel.

On Thursday, the commission reiterated some of those findings. It said that Palestinian militants had committed war crimes by taking and mistreating hostages, both civilians and soldiers. The hostages, it said, were subject to physical and psychological abuse, sexual violence, forced isolation and limited access to hygiene facilities, water and food.

The report also singled out for attention the death of a 6-year-old Palestinian girl that captured global headlines.

The child, Hind Rajab, was killed in January after her family tried to escape Gaza City and Israeli soldiers opened fired on their car, Palestinian emergency officials said. The rest of her family was killed, the officials said, and Hind and two paramedics trying to save her were killed during a rescue attempt.

The investigators said that the Israeli army’s 162nd Division was responsible for the deaths. Those, too, it said, constituted a war crime.

Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting.

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