Human Rights Watch says Israel’s denial of water to Gaza is an act of genocide By Reuters
Written by Stephanie van den Berg
THE HAGUE – Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that Israel has killed thousands of Palestinians in Gaza by depriving them of clean water, which it says is legally equivalent to acts of genocide and genocide.
“This policy, carried out as part of the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza, means that the Israeli authorities have committed a crime against humanity of genocide, which is ongoing. This policy also amounts to an ‘act of murder’ under the 1948 Genocide Convention,” said Human Rights Watch in its report. .
Israel has also rejected any accusation of genocide, saying it respected international law and had the right to defend itself after a Hamas-led attack on the Gaza border on October 7, 2023 sparked the war.
In a statement to X, Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote: “The truth is the complete opposite of HRW’s lies.”
“Since the start of the war, Israel has continued the flow of water and humanitarian aid to Gaza, despite the relentless attacks by the terrorist organization Hamas,” the statement said.
Although the report described the water shortage as an act of genocide, it noted that proving the crimes of genocide by Israeli officials would also require establishing their intent. It cited statements by senior Israeli officials as suggesting they “want to annihilate the Palestinian people” and that water deprivation “could be tantamount to genocide”.
“What we have found is that the Israeli government is deliberately killing Palestinians in Gaza by depriving them of the water they need to survive,” said Lama Fakih, director of Human Rights Watch Middle East at a press conference.
In its response, Israel said it has confirmed that the water infrastructure remains operational. It said its international partners had sent water tankers to the Israeli crossings, including last week, and Israel had facilitated the entry of more than 1.2 million tons of aid into Gaza.
Human Rights Watch is the second major rights organization in less than a month to use the word genocide to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza, after Amnesty International released a report concluding that Israel is committing genocide.
Both reports came weeks after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former security chief on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. They deny these allegations.
The Genocide Convention of 1948, established after the mass killing of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines the crime of genocide as “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, ethnic or religious group”.
The 184-page report by Human Rights Watch said the Israeli government has stopped pumping water into Gaza and cut off electricity and banned fuel, meaning Gaza’s water and sanitation facilities cannot be used.
As a result, Palestinians in Gaza had access to only a few liters of water a day in many areas, well below the minimum 15 liters needed to survive, the group said.
Israel launched its air and ground war in Gaza after Hamas-led fighters attacked Israeli communities across the border 14 months ago, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli figures.
The Israeli campaign killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, displaced most of the 2.3 million people and reduced much of the coast to ruins.
