PARIS: Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” in the Gaza Strip in a report documenting the 14-month conflict published on Thursday.
The health ministry in Gaza said that at least 45,129 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed during more than 14 months of Israeli military attacks in the besieged territory.
The MSF report documents 41 attacks on MSF staff including air strikes on health facilities and direct fire on humanitarian convoys.
The NGO said it was forced to evacuate hospitals and health centres on 17 occasions.
“We are seeing clear signs of ethnic cleansing as Palestinians are forcibly displaced, trapped and bombed,” said Christopher Lockyear, MSF’s secretary general.
Israel has rejected accusations that its military campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide.
MSF’s report, entitled “Gaza: Life in a Death Trap”, said the siege of the Palestinian territory has drastically reduced humanitarian aid, with only 37 trucks authorised daily in October 2024, compared with 500 before the conflict.
The north of the territory, particularly the Jabalia camp, has been undergoing an “extremely violent” Israeli offensive since early October, MSF said.
The NGOs medical teams noted a rapid spread of disease in a population that had been 90 percent displaced and living in wretched conditions.
The organisation also denounced the blocking of medical evacuations, with Israel having authorised only 1.6 percent of requests between May and September 2024.
“What our medical teams have witnessed on the ground throughout this conflict is consistent with the descriptions provided by an increasing number of legal experts and organisations concluding that genocide is taking place in Gaza,” said Lockyear.
The report calls for an immediate ceasefire and the lifting of the siege to allow the massive delivery of humanitarian aid.
MSF also called on “states, particularly Israel’s closest allies, to end their unconditional support for Israel and fulfill their obligation to prevent genocide in Gaza”.
Acts of Genocide in Gaza
In a separate report published Thursday, New York-based Human Rights Watch accused Israel of committing “acts of genocide” in the Gaza Strip by deliberately restricting Palestinians’ access to water.
HRW said Israel has so far killed thousands of Palestinians by depriving them of water.
“This policy, inflicted as part of a mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, means Israeli authorities have committed the crime against humanity of extermination, which is ongoing,” the organization stated.
This policy also amounts to an ‘act of genocide’ under the Genocide Convention of 1948,” the HRW said.
“What we have found is that the Israeli government is intentionally killing Palestinians in Gaza by denying them the water that they need to survive,” Lama Fakih, Human Rights Watch Middle East director told a press conference.
In its response, Israel said it had ensured water infrastructure remained operational.
https://twitter.com/hrw/status/1869609986222968873
Contrary to Israel’s claims, Al Jazeera and several other Arab media outlets have reported Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) deliberately shooting at and killing Palestinians lined up for water.
According to Reuters, HRW is the second major rights group in a month to use the word genocide to describe the actions of Israel in Gaza, after Amnesty International issued a report that concluded Israel was committing genocide.
Both reports came just weeks after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. They deny the allegations.
Genocide Convention
The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines the crime of genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
