JERUSALEM – Israel has dismissed as biased a UN inquiry that found it committed crimes against humanity, including that of “extermination,” in its war against Hamas in Gaza.
The report, the first such in-depth investigation by UN experts into the Gaza war, also found that Israeli and Palestinian armed groups had both committed war crimes.
Released Wednesday, the UN’s Independent Commission of Inquiry found Israel “has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity” and other international law violations.
The report noted “a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population in Gaza”.
Israel’s foreign ministry said the commission is “biased and tainted by a distinct anti-Israeli agenda”.
The report “describes an alternate reality in which decades of terrorist attacks have been erased”, it said.
“There are no continuous missile attacks on Israeli citizens and there isn’t a democratic state defending itself against a terrorist assault.”
In its statement released late Wednesday the ministry added: “To add insult to injury, the report is full of false accusations and blood libels against IDF (Israeli army) soldiers.”
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Militants also seized 251 hostages, of whom 116 remain in Gaza, though the Israeli army says at least 41 of them are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in the Gaza Strip has left more than 37,000 people dead, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry.
The Commission of Inquiry was established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021 to investigate alleged international law violations in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The commission also found that members of Hamas and other armed groups participating in the October 7 attack “deliberately killed, injured, mistreated, took hostages and committed sexual and gender-based violence”.
“Hamas and Palestinian armed groups must immediately cease rocket attacks and release all hostages,” said Navi Pillay, a former UN rights chief and ex-International Criminal Court judge who chairs the three-person commission.
Hamas has not yet commented on the UN report.
Meanwhile, top US diplomat Antony Blinken said a truce and hostage release deal to end the Gaza war was still possible, wrapping up a Middle East tour in Qataer as deadly fighting rocked the Palestinian territory.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, rained rockets on northern Israel, a day after an Israeli strike killed one of its senior commanders.
Blinken, in Doha for the last stop of a tour to promote President Joe Biden’s Gaza ceasefire roadmap, said the United States would work with regional partners to “close the deal”.
Hamas submitted late Tuesday its response to mediators Qatar and Egypt, and Blinken said some of the proposed amendments “are workable and some are not”.
A senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, said it sought “a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal” of Israeli troops from Gaza, demands rejected by Israel.
The three-stage plan, endorsed by the UN Security Council and Arab powers, includes a six-week ceasefire, a hostage-prisoner exchange and Gaza’s internationally backed reconstruction.
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said “many” of Hamas’s demands were “minor and not unanticipated”, while “others differ more substantively from what was outlined in the UN Security Council resolution”.
Blinken said Israel was behind the plan, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government has far-right members strongly opposed to the deal, has yet to formally endorse it.
Netanyahu’s office said he was convening a “security assessment” on Wednesday “in light of the developments in the north and Hamas’s negative response on the issue of the hostage release”.
Blinken expressed hopes that gaps could be closed.
“We have to see… over the course of the coming days whether those gaps are bridgeable,” he said.
In a statement early Thursday, Hamas urged Blinken to put “direct pressure” on Israel.
“He continues to talk about Israel’s agreement of the latest (ceasefire) proposal, but we have not heard any Israeli official speak out on this,” Hamas said.
As the bloody Gaza war rages into its ninth month, deadly violence has intensified along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
An Israeli strike on Tuesday killed a Hezbollah commander described by a Lebanese military source as the Shiite Muslim group’s “most important” fighter killed in near-daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah since the Gaza war erupted.
On Wednesday, three waves of around 150 rockets and missiles filled the sky over northern Israel, according to the military, reporting fires but no casualties.
Hezbollah also claimed more than 10 other attacks on the Israeli military, including one with drones.
Senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine threatened to “increase the intensity, strength, quantity and quality of our attacks”.
Netanyahu warned last week that the army was “prepared for a very intense operation” to “restore security to the north”.
In Doha, Blinken said “the best way” to help end the Hezbollah-Israel violence was “a resolution of the conflict in Gaza and getting a ceasefire”.
The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages. Of these 116 remain in Gaza, although the army says 41 of them are dead.
Israel in response launched a military offensive on Gaza that has left at least 37,202 people dead, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry.