The UN commission of inquiry investigating the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing conflict in Gaza has accused both Palestinian armed groups and Israel of committing war crimes and said Israel’s acts of hostilities included crimes against humanity.
The three-member commission, led by former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, released its report on Wednesday, providing the most detailed U.N. investigation to date into the events of Oct. 7 and since. The report itself does not include any penalties, but it does provide a legal analysis of actions in the Gaza conflict that are likely to be considered in the International Court of Justice or other international criminal proceedings. Israel did not cooperate with the investigation and protested the commission’s assessment of its actions, the commission said.
The report said that in the October 7 Israeli attack, the military wing of Hamas and six other Palestinian militant groups, with the support of Palestinian civilians, killed and tortured people, leaving more than 1,200 people dead, more than 800 of them civilians, and taking 252 hostages, including 36 children, the report said.
“Many of the abductions were accompanied by severe physical, mental and sexual violence, humiliating and degrading treatment, and in some cases the abducted were paraded,” the report said. “Women and their bodies were used by the male perpetrators as victory trophies.”
The committee also looked at allegations by journalists and Israeli officials that Palestinian militants had committed rapes, but said it was “unable to independently verify such allegations” because Israel did not cooperate with investigations. The report cited “lack of access to victims, witnesses and crime scenes, and obstruction of investigations by Israeli authorities.”
The committee noted that Hamas denies all accusations that it has committed sexual violence against Israeli women.
The commission also cited significant evidence of the desecration of the bodies, including sexual desecration, decapitation, lamentation, burning and mutilation of body parts.
But Israel has also committed war crimes, including imposing a total blockade on Gaza and using starvation as a weapon of war during its months-long military operation to expel Hamas, the commission said.
The report said Israel’s use of heavy weapons in populated areas amounted to direct attacks on civilians, disregarded the need to distinguish between combatants and civilians, and caused disproportionate civilian casualties, particularly among women and children, resulting in the essential elements of a crime against humanity.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian children have been killed or seriously injured in the conflict, whose scale and casualty rates were “unprecedented in conflicts in recent decades,” the commission said.
The commission said other crimes against humanity committed by Israel in Gaza include “extermination, murder, sexual persecution targeted at Palestinian men and boys, forced displacement of the population, torture and inhuman and cruel treatment.”
The commission said Israeli forces used sexual and gender-based violence, including forced nudity and sexual humiliation, as “operational procedure” in the process of forcibly displacing and detaining Palestinians. “Both male and female victims were subjected to such sexual violence,” the report said, “however, men and boys were particularly targeted.”
“The treatment of the men and boys was deliberately sexualised in retaliation for the attacks,” it added, referring to October 7.
In a statement responding to the report, the Israeli mission to the United Nations in Geneva condemned “systematic anti-Israel discrimination” and said the commission ignored Hamas’s use of human shields and sought to “outrageously and repulsively” equate Hamas with the Israeli military regarding sexual violence.
The committee, which includes Australian human rights law expert Chris Sidoti and Indian human rights and social policy expert Mirun Kothari, said Israel had refused to cooperate with its investigations and denied the group access to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. Israel also failed to respond to six requests for information, the committee said.
The group based its findings on visits to Turkey and Egypt and remote and in-person interviews with survivors and witnesses, as well as open-source data such as satellite imagery, forensic records, and photos and videos taken by the Israeli military and shared on social media.
The committee said it had identified those most responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including senior members of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, as well as senior members of Israel’s political and military leadership, including members of the War Cabinet. The committee said it would continue its investigation, focusing on individual criminal responsibility and those with command or superior responsibility.
