Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of committing “acts of genocide” by denying clean water to Palestinians in Gaza and called on the international community to impose specific sanctions.
In a new report Published on Thursday, the New York-based watchdog said that since October 2023, when Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza, Israeli authorities have “deliberately obstructed Palestinian access to adequate of water necessary to survive in the Gaza Strip”.
“What we found is that the Israeli government is intentionally killing Palestinians in Gaza by denying them the water they need to survive,” Lama Fakih, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, told a news conference.
The 184-page study described how the Israeli government cut off the water supply to Gaza from Israel, cut off the electricity needed to run water pumps, and blocked and restricted the fuel needed to make operate generators in the absence of electricity.
It also blocked UN agencies and humanitarian aid organizations from delivering water-related materials and other humanitarian aid.
Satellite images analyzed by the organization found extensive damage and destruction to water and sanitation infrastructure, including the “systematic and apparently deliberate demolition of the solar panels that power four of the six water treatment plants of Gaza by Israeli ground forces, as well as Israeli soldiers filming themselves demolishing a key water tank”.
As a result, Palestinians in Gaza had access to only a few liters of water a day in many areas, well below the 15 liter threshold for survival. A large number of the more than 2.3 million people living in Gaza were denied access to “even the minimum amount of water, which has contributed to widespread death and disease.”
This policy amounts to “acts of genocide” under the 1948 Genocide Convention, he concluded. “The Israeli authorities intentionally inflicted on the Palestinian population in Gaza ‘living conditions calculated to bring about their total or partial physical destruction’.”
Israel rejects the findings
Israel has repeatedly rejected any accusation of genocide, saying it has the right to defend itself after the Hamas-led attack from Gaza on October 7, 2023.
On Thursday, he rejected the HRW report, calling its findings “appalling lies.”
Proving the crime of genocide against Israeli officials before international courts also requires establishing intent to commit that crime.
The Genocide Convention, enacted after the mass murder of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, defines the crime of genocide as “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.
The report cited statements by some senior Israeli officials that it said suggested they “want to destroy the Palestinians,” meaning that depriving them of water “may amount to the crime of genocide.”
He also argued that Israel violated provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January, as part of a case presented by South Africa claiming that Israel is violating the Genocide Convention.
The court required Israel to allow the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance to demonstrate that it has no genocidal intent.
In light of its findings, HRW called on the international community to issue “targeted sanctions, the suspension of arms transfers and military assistance, and the review of bilateral trade and political agreements” to pressure Israel to comply with the provisional measures of the ICJ.
The report follows another Amnesty International study released earlier this month which also concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued last month arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israel’s war has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, displaced most of the population and reduced much of the coastal enclave to ruins.
