Middle East Crisis: U.N. Commission Accuses Both Israel and Palestinian Groups of War Crimes (2024)

A U.N. commission lays out a legal analysis of actions in the conflict.

The report said that Hamas’s military wing and six other Palestinian armed groups — aided in some instances by Palestinian civilians — killed and tortured people during the Oct. 7 assault on Israel in which more than 800 civilians were among the more than 1,200 killed. An additional 252 people, including 36 children, were taken hostage, the report said.

“Many abductions were carried out with significant physical, mental and sexual violence and degrading and humiliating treatment, including in some cases parading the abductees,” the report said. “Women and women’s bodies were used as victory trophies by male perpetrators.”

Hamas has rejected all accusations that its forces engaged in sexual violence against Israeli women, the commission noted.

The commission also cited significant evidence of the desecration of corpses, including sexualized desecration, decapitations, lacerations, burning and the severing of body parts.

But Israel, during its monthslong campaign in Gaza to oust Hamas, has also committed war crimes, the commission said, like the use of starvation as a weapon of war through a total siege of Gaza.

It said Israel’s use of heavy weapons in densely populated areas amounted to a direct attack on the civilian population and had the essential elements of a crime against humanity, disregarding the necessity of distinguishing between combatants and civilians and causing a disproportionately high number of civilian casualties, particularly among women and children.

The conflict had killed or maimed tens of thousands of Palestinian children, a scale and a rate of casualties that were “unparalleled across conflicts in recent decades,” the commission said.

Other crimes against humanity committed by Israel in Gaza, the commission said, included “extermination, murder, gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys, forcible transfer of the population, torture, and inhuman and cruel treatment.”

The panel said Israeli forces used sexual and gender-based violence, including forced nudity and sexual humiliation, as “an operating procedure” against Palestinians in the course of forced evacuations and detentions. “Both male and female victims were subjected to such sexual violence,” the report said, “but men and boys were targeted in particular ways.”

“The treatment of men and boys was intentionally sexualized as an act of retaliation for the attack,” it added, referring to Oct. 7.

In a statement responding to the report, Israel’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva denounced what it called “systematic anti-Israeli discrimination.” It said the commission had disregarded Hamas’s use of human shields and “outrageously and repugnantly” attempted to draw a false equivalence between Hamas and the Israeli military in relation to sexual violence.

The commission — which includes Chris Sidoti, an Australian expert on human rights law, and Miloon Kothari, an Indian expert on human rights and social policy — said Israel had refused to cooperate with its investigation and denied the group access to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Israel also did not respond to six requests for information, the panel said.

The group based its findings on interviews with survivors and witnesses conducted remotely and in person in visits to Turkey and Egypt. It also drew on satellite imagery, forensic medical records and open source data, including photographs and video shot by Israeli troops and shared on social media.

The commission said it had identified the people most responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity, including senior members of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups and senior members of Israel’s political and military leadership, including members of its war cabinet. The commission said it would continue its investigations focusing on those with individual criminal responsibility and command or superior responsibility.

Hezbollah launches a rocket barrage after a commander is killed in an Israeli strike.

The Israeli military said in a statement on Wednesday that it had struck a Hezbollah command and control center, killing Mr. Abdallah and three other Hezbollah fighters. It called Mr. Abdallah one of Hezbollah’s top commanders in southern Lebanon.

As sirens sounded across northern Israel on Wednesday, Israeli army radio said that around 150 rockets had been launched from Lebanon in an apparent response to the Israeli strike.

Hezbollah claimed attacks on a string of military bases, including on Mount Meron, an area housing a military radar station that is roughly five miles south of the border. Hezbollah also claimed to have struck an arms factory belonging to Plasan, a manufacturer of armored vehicles used by the Israeli military.

There were no immediate reports of casualties from the rocket barrages, according to the Israeli military. It said in a statement that a number of the rockets had been intercepted, but that several had hit the ground and started fires.

Israeli firefighters were working to extinguish the blazes, a week after another Hezbollah rocket attack set off wildfires that prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to issue a threat of “very intense action” along the Lebanese border.

The Israeli military said it had responded on Wednesday by striking a number of launch sites across the border. Lebanon’s state-run news agency reported heavy Israeli airstrikes and bombardment across the country’s south.

Hezbollah, a powerful Lebanese militia and political movement backed by Iran, and Israel have bombarded each other across the border for much of the past eight months, with more than 150,000 people on both sides of the boundary forced to flee their homes. But the intensity of the attacks has increased this month amid threats by Israeli officials at the highest levels to pursue further military action.

Israel has been targeting Hezbollah commanders with the aim of pushing the group north of the Litani River in Lebanon, hoping to prevent cross-border attacks and to eventually allow Israeli civilians displaced by the fighting to return to their homes. Some experts have expressed skepticism about whether the targeted killings can accomplish this aim.

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.

— Euan Ward reporting from Beirut, Lebanon

Hamas offers a counterproposal in cease-fire talks, but the two sides are still far apart.

The Hamas counterproposal came as Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in the Middle East, meeting with top officials in Israel, Egypt and Jordan in an effort to advance the U.N.-backed proposal. Mr. Blinken flew to Qatar on Wednesday for meetings with officials there. Qatar and Egypt have acted as intermediaries between Israel and Hamas, which do not communicate directly with each other.

John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said on Tuesday that the U.S. had received Hamas’s response and was “evaluating it.” A senior U.S. official said Mr. Blinken had dispatched two aides to meet in Jordan with the head of Egyptian intelligence to review the Hamas counterproposal.

Another official with knowledge of the talks, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said the Hamas response proposed firm timetables for not only a short-term truce but a permanent one, and for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

This differs from the three-phase deal Israel proposed, that the Security Council endorsed on Monday and that President Biden has been pushing. That plan calls for an immediate cease-fire in the first phase as negotiators hammer out a plan for a permanent end to fighting in the second phase. If talks on a permanent end to hostilities take longer than six weeks, the temporary truce would be extended, according to the original proposal.

Israel has said previously that it will not agree to a deal that doesn’t allow it to eradicate Hamas or would force what it considers a premature end to the war, and that the proposal on the table enables it to achieve all its war aims, including the destruction of Hamas’s governing and military capabilities.

On Tuesday, a second Israeli official said that Israel could not support the U.N. Security Council resolution because it includes an “unwavering commitment to the vision of the two-state solution” in which an independent Palestinian state is created alongside Israel, and of unifying Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.

The United States supports the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, but Israel does not, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has effectively ruled out the return of the Palestinian Authority, which administers part of the West Bank, to Gaza.

Erica L. Green and Michael Crowley contributed reporting.

Gazans express hope and skepticism over the Security Council’s cease-fire resolution.

“We don’t want bombardment and humiliation anymore,” he said.

But he said he was still worried that the cease-fire would not come into effect, blaming Hamas and Israel for prolonging the war while Gazans suffered.

“They have been killing us slowly and wasting time,” he said.

The resolution adopted by the Security Council on Monday called for an immediate cease-fire and negotiations to reach a permanent end to the fighting; if those talks take longer than six weeks, the temporary truce would be extended. Both Israel and Hamas emphasized on Tuesday that they were open to the plan, even as it remained unclear whether either would formally embrace it.

After eight months of war, some Palestinians questioned how meaningful the new resolution would be. The Security Council agreed in March to one calling for an immediate cease-fire, with the United States abstaining. That broke a five-month impasse during which the United States vetoed three calls for a halt to the fighting. But the March resolution provided little immediate momentum for a deal.

Though the resolution that passed Monday may put pressure on Hamas and Israel, the United Nations is not itself involved in the cease-fire talks and cannot force the two sides to agree to a deal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said he will not accept any deal that ends the war before Hamas is destroyed.

“We have been waiting for a resolution like this,” Amjad Fayez Shtawi, a Palestinian from Gaza City who has been displaced multiple times, told the Reuters news agency from his shelter in Khan Younis. Yearning to return to normal daily life rather than constantly hunting for safety and necessities, he said resolution should be “immediately implemented, without procrastination, because this is a humanitarian demand.”

And Yaser Shaban, a 57-year-old father of four from Gaza City, said: “I’m not optimistic at all about the United Nations resolution,” adding, “I lost count of U.N. resolutions about Palestine that Israel has ignored, so why will this one be special?”

Mr. Shaban said he was worried that there were no guarantees that the proposed agreement could even end the war.

“If this war stops now without a final compromise, who can assure us that it will not resume in the future?” he said.

Pressure on Hamas to agree to a cease-fire proposal puts a spotlight on its leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar.

Hamas could be “looking after one guy,” Mr. Blinken said, referring to Mr. Sinwar.

Mr. Sinwar was an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed and around 240 taken hostage. American and Israeli officials who spent months assessing his motivations say that Mr. Sinwar knew the incursion would provoke an Israeli military response that would kill many civilians, but he reasoned that was a price worth paying to upend the status quo with Israel.

After Hamas agreed to a brief cease-fire late last year, during which more than 100 hostages in Gaza and many more Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons were exchanged, Mr. Sinwar has held out against any further cease-fire deals. More than 36,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the eight months of war, and around 80,000 people have been injured, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which says that the majority of the dead are women, children and older people.

Mr. Sinwar’s position is not the only question mark in the negotiations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel also has not said in public that he accepted the proposal the Security Council has endorsed and is under pressure from his far-right coalition partners not to end the war until Hamas is destroyed. Mr. Blinken said on Tuesday that Mr. Netanyahu had “reaffirmed” his commitment to the plan in private talks in Jerusalem.

U.S. officials said last month that Mr. Sinwar was most likely living in tunnels beneath Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza that has been devastated by Israeli airstrikes and fighting. Hamas has constructed a network of tunnels beneath Gaza to shield the group from Israeli surveillance and attack.

Israeli officials have said that killing Mr. Sinwar is a top priority, no matter how long it takes; he has not been seen in public since Oct. 7. He has also not released audio and video messages.

That public silence has made it difficult to determine his thinking and the extent to which he retains control of Hamas, some of whose political leaders are based in Qatar. But Israeli and American officials say Mr. Sinwar remains central to the group’s decision making.

The American and Israeli intelligence agencies that have assessed Mr. Sinwar’s motivations, according to people briefed on the intelligence, have concluded that he is primarily motivated by a desire to take revenge on Israel and to weaken it. The well-being of the Palestinian people or the establishment of a Palestinian state, the intelligence analysts say, appears to be secondary.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Mr. Sinwar had resisted pressure to agree to a deal in recent months, calculating that a continuation of the war would work to his political advantage even at the cost of rising casualties among Palestinian civilians.

The article cited dozens of messages reviewed by the Journal that it said Mr. Sinwar had transmitted to cease-fire negotiators, Hamas compatriots outside Gaza and others. It was not possible to authenticate the messages independently.

“We have the Israelis right where we want them,” Mr. Sinwar said in one of the messages, identified as a recent one to Hamas officials who were seeking to broker an agreement with Qatari and Egyptian officials.

In another message cited by The Journal, Mr. Sinwar referred to a past war in which a weaker force prevailed over a more powerful adversary: an uprising in Algeria, which secured Algeria’s independence in 1962 at the cost of at least 400,000 Algerian and 35,000 French lives. That message called the losses “necessary sacrifices.”

The Journal report quoted what it said was a Sinwar letter, dated April 11, to the overall political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, after three of Mr. Haniyeh’s adult sons were killed by an Israeli airstrike, in which he said that their deaths and those of other Palestinians would “infuse life into the veins of this nation.”

Mr. Sinwar was imprisoned for murdering Palestinians whom he accused of apostasy or collaborating with Israel, according to Israeli court records from 1989. He was released in 2011, along with more than 1,000 other Palestinians, in exchange for one Israeli soldier captured by Hamas. Six years later, Mr. Sinwar was elected leader of Hamas in Gaza.