HRW: Denial of water in Gaza by Israel, an act of genocide

2024-12-19 09:39:48, Kosova & Bota CNA

Human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday that Israel has killed thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by denying them clean water.

This, HRW added, constitutes acts of genocide and extermination.

"This policy, brought about as part of the mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, implies that the Israeli authorities have committed a crime against humanity, extermination, which is ongoing. This policy also constitutes a 'crime of genocide' under the Genocide Convention from 1948," HRW said in a report.

Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of genocide, saying it respects international law and has the right to defend itself, after the attack Hamas carried out in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.

Hamas is declared a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.

In a reaction to X, Israel's Foreign Ministry wrote: "Truth is the opposite of HRW's lies."

"Since the beginning of the war, Israel has facilitated the continuous flow of water and humanitarian aid to Gaza, despite facing constant attacks by the terrorist organization Hamas," Israel's response said.

Although the report described the denial of water to civilians as an act of genocide, it emphasized that it is also necessary to determine the intent of Israeli officials to prove the crime of genocide against them. The report cited statements by several senior Israeli officials who it said suggested they "want to destroy the Palestinians", implying that denying them water "could constitute the crime of genocide".

"We have found that the Government of Israel is deliberately killing Palestinians in Gaza by denying them the water they need to survive," said HRW's Middle East director, Lama Fakih.

Israel responded by saying that it has ensured that the water infrastructure is functional. He said international partners have sent water tankers through Israeli crossings, including in the last week, and that Israel has facilitated the entry of more than 1.2 million tons of supplies into Gaza.

Human Rights Watch is the second major human rights group in a month to use the word genocide to describe Israel's actions in Gaza, after Amnesty International said in a report that Israel is committing genocide.

The 1948 Genocide Convention, adopted after the mass killing of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, defines the crime of genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group".

Human Rights Watch's 184-page report said the Israeli government cut off water supplies to Gaza, cut off electricity and restricted fuel supplies, rendering Gaza's water pipes and sewers unusable.

As a result, Palestinians in Gaza had access to only a few liters of water a day in many areas, far short of the threshold of 15 liters needed for survival, the group said.

Israel's war in Gaza has left more than 45,000 Palestinians dead, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

The Israeli army has said that it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence of this.

The war began when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, where they killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped around 250 others./ REL