U.N. Report Accuses Both Israel and Palestinian Groups of War Crimes
A United Nations commission investigating the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent conflict in Gaza has accused both Palestinian armed groups and Israel of committing war crimes, and the panel said that Israel’s conduct of the war included crimes against humanity.
In a report released on Wednesday, the three-person commission — led by Navi Pillay, a former United Nations human rights chief — provided the most detailed U.N. examination yet of events on and since Oct. 7. The report does not itself carry any penalties, but it lays out a legal analysis of actions in the Gaza conflict that is likely to be weighed by the International Court of Justice and in other international criminal proceedings. Israel did not cooperate with the investigation and protested the panel’s assessment of its behavior, the panel said.
The report said that Hamas’s military wing and six other Palestinian armed groups — aided in some instances by Palestinian civilians — killed and tortured people during the Oct. 7 assault on Israel in which more than 800 civilians were among the more than 1,200 killed. An additional 252 people, including 36 children, were taken hostage, the report said.
“Many abductions were carried out with significant physical, mental and sexual violence and degrading and humiliating treatment, including in some cases parading the abductees,” the report said. “Women and women’s bodies were used as victory trophies by male perpetrators.”
The commission also reviewed allegations by journalists and the Israeli authorities that Palestinian militants had committed rape, but it said that it had “not been able to independently verify such allegations” because Israel had not cooperated with the inquiry. The report cited “a lack of access to victims, witnesses and crime sites and the obstruction of its investigations by the Israeli authorities.”
Hamas has rejected all accusations that its forces engaged in sexual violence against Israeli women, the commission noted.
