By Serife Cetin and Diyar Guldogan
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (AA) - Israel's repression of Palestinians, undertaken as part of a policy to maintain the domination of Jewish Israelis over them, amounts to "the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution," Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday.
HRW released the World Report 2024 during a news conference at UN Headquarters in New York.
"In 2023, civilians were targeted, attacked and killed at a unprecedented scale in the recent history of Israel and Palestine," the report said.
Israeli air strikes "incessantly" pounded the Gaza Strip, hitting schools and hospitals and reducing large parts of neighborhoods to rubble, including in attacks that were "apparently unlawful," it added.
Stressing that Israeli forces "unlawfully used white phosphorous" in densely populated areas, the report said they ordered the evacuation of all people from northern Gaza and displaced 1.9 million people.
Israel has launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, which Tel Aviv said killed around 1,200 people.
At least 23,357 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and 59,410 injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.
- 'Move risks forced displacement, a war crime'
Israel’s order to evacuate northern Gaza did not take into account the needs of older people, people with disabilities and patients, many of whom are unable to leave, the report said, adding "the move risks forced displacement, a war crime."
Since Oct. 7, Israeli authorities sealed the crossings into Gaza, blocking the entry of people and goods, including residents in need of urgent medical care, from leaving Gaza via Erez, it said.
"Israeli authorities have regularly resorted to such measures, which target civilians and amount to unlawful collective punishment," it stressed.
Underlining that Israel’s repression of Palestinians in the West Bank intensified during 2023, especially after Oct. 7, the report said Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups' launch of thousands of "indiscriminate" rockets at Israeli communities are "war crimes."
"Many states condemned the Hamas-led October 7 attacks. Far fewer, though, condemned Israeli authorities’ grave abuses.
"The United States and other Western countries provided arms or military support to Israel, while other countries have provided military aid to Palestinian armed groups, which, in the face of ongoing grave abuses, risk making them complicit in war crimes," it said.
Stressing that US President Joe Biden and other US officials traveled to Israel several times to urge civilian protection and to lobby Israeli officials to allow aid into Gaza, the report said "the US had not conditioned its military support to Israel on abiding by those requests."
- Human rights system 'under threat'
Speaking at the news conference, HRW Executive Director Tirana Hassan said 2023 showed that the system to protect the human rights of people everywhere was "under threat."
Stating that every time governments overlook or reject universally accepted principles, Hassan said someone pays the price, adding: "We see this in Israel and Palestine."
She said many of the governments that condemned Hamas' war crimes have been reserved in responding to those by the Israeli government.
"These governments' unwillingness to call out Israeli government abuses follows from the refusal by the US and most European Union member countries to urge an end to the Israeli government's 16-year unlawful closure of Gaza and to recognize the ongoing crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians," Hassan added.
Turning to the case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Hassan welcomed the move by South Africa to bring Israel's military campaign against Gaza to the top UN court.
"If Israel does not comply with the measures or orders of the court, then it is up to the international community to ensure that they are leveraging whatever pressure that they can to encourage Israel to actually implement the measures," she said.
Hassan said it would go to the UN Security Council, but added that UN member states can exercise their support for the decisions of the court through political statements, sanctions and arms embargoes.
Turning to the violation of children's rights, Hassan said HRW believes that both Israel and Palestinian armed groups should be put on the "list of shame."
"These sorts of tools for accountability when it comes to children's rights and abuses against children in armed conflict, they depend on consistency.
"You cannot get off the list if you are friends with the Secretary-General (Antonio Guterres), or if you are funding a humanitarian operation," she added.