Hamas Welcomes UN Report Accusing Israel of “Genocidal Acts” in Gaza, While Israel Rejects Findings

Occupied Palestine (Quds News Network)- Hamas stated on Thursday that a UN report accusing Israel of “genocidal acts” in Gaza showed that Israel had committed “genocide and humanitarian” violations in the Palestinian territory during its assault. Meanwhile, Israel dismissed the investigation as “false and absurd.”

“The UN’s investigation report on Israel’s genocidal acts against the Palestinian people confirms what has happened on the ground: genocide and violations of all humanitarian and legal standards,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem told AFP.

“The atrocities committed by the occupation (Israel) are too horrific to be fully captured in this report, underscoring the urgent need to expedite the prosecution of its leaders for these crimes and ensure their swift trial at the International Criminal Court.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday condemned as “false and absurd” the UN investigation.

“The anti-Israeli circus known as the UN Human Rights Council has long been exposed as an anti-Semitic, corrupt, terror-supporting, and irrelevant body,” Netanyahu said in a statement issued by his office.

The UN report said that Israel has carried out “genocidal acts” against Palestinians by systematically destroying women’s healthcare facilities during its war on Gaza and using sexual violence as a war strategy.

The Geneva-based Independent International Commission of Inquiry said in the new report on Thursday that Israel “intentionally attacked and destroyed” Gaza’s main fertility centre while simultaneously blocking medicine for pregnancies, deliveries and neonatal care from entering the enclave.

In its report, the commission found that Israeli authorities “have destroyed … the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare”, it said in a statement.

It added that this amounted to “two categories of genocidal acts” during Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

For its part, “Israel categorically rejects the unfounded allegations”, its mission in Geneva noted in a statement.

The report said maternity hospitals and wards had been systematically destroyed in Gaza, along with the Al-Basma IVF Centre, the territory’s main in-vitro fertility clinic.

It said Al-Basma was intentionally shelled in December 2023, destroying about 4,000 embryos at a clinic that served 2,000-3,000 patients a month.

The commission found no credible evidence that the building was used for military purposes.
It said the destruction “was a measure intended to prevent births among Palestinians in Gaza, which is a genocidal act”.

The report came after the commission conducted public hearings in Geneva on Tuesday and Wednesday, hearing from victims and witnesses of sexual violence.

It concluded that Israel had targeted civilian women and girls directly, “acts that constitute the crime against humanity of murder and the war crime of wilful killing”.

The commission added that forced public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment including threats of rape, as well as sexual assault, comprise part of the Israeli forces’ “standard operating procedures” towards Palestinians.

The report found that sexual and gender-based violence is being perpetrated across the Occupied Palestinian Territory as a “strategy of war for Israel to dominate and destroy the Palestinian people.”

South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel’s actions in Gaza at the International Court of Justice.