A team of independent experts commissioned by the United Nations' Human Rights Council has concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, issuing a report on Tuesday that calls on the international community to end the genocide and take steps to punish those responsible for it.
The deeply documented findings by the three-member team are the latest accusations of genocide against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government by rights advocates as Israeli carries on with its war against Hamas in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of people.
Israel rejected what it called a “distorted and false” report.
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The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, which was created four years ago, has repeatedly documented alleged human rights abuses and violations both in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023, attacks in Israel led by Hamas, and other Palestinian areas.
While neither the commission nor the 47-member-country council that it works for within the UN system can take action against a country, the findings could be used by prosecutors at the International Criminal Court or the UN's International Court of Justice.
The report also amounts to a final message from the team headed by former UN rights chief Navi Pillay.
All three of its members announced in July that they would resign, citing personal reasons and a need for change.
The team was commissioned by the Human Rights Council, the UN’s top human rights body, but it does not speak for the United Nations.
Israel has refused to cooperate with the commission and has accused it and HRC of anti-Israel bias.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration, a key Israeli ally, pulled the United States out of the council, which is the UN's top human rights body.
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After a painstaking legal analysis, the commission said Israel had committed four of the five “genocidal acts” defined under an international convention adopted in 1948 known colloquially as the “Genocide Convention,” three years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust.
“The Commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza,” said Pillay, the commission chair.
“It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention.”
Pillay, a former UN human rights chief, said “responsibility for the atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons” over the nearly two-year war.
Her commission concluded that Netanyahu, as well as Israeli President Isaac Herzog and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, had incited the commission of genocide.
It hasn't assessed whether other Israeli leaders had done so too.
Israel, which was founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has adamantly rejected genocide allegations against it as an antisemitic “blood libel".
Israel's Foreign Ministry issued an angry response, saying it “categorically rejects this distorted and false report".
"Three individuals serving as Hamas proxies, notorious for their openly antisemitic positions — and whose horrific statements about Jews have been condemned worldwide — released today another fake ‘report’ about Gaza,” it said.
Genocide accusations are especially sensitive in Israel, which was founded as a haven for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust and where memories of the Holocaust still play an important role in the country’s national identity.
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In coming to its conclusion of genocide, the commission said it pored over the conduct of Israeli security forces and “explicit statements” by Israeli civilian and military authorities, among other criteria.
In particular, the experts cited as factors the death toll, Israel's “total siege” of Gaza and blockade of humanitarian aid that has led to starvation, a policy of “systematically destroying” the health care system, and direct targeting of children.
The commission urged other countries to halt weapons transfers to Israel and block individuals or companies from actions that could contribute to genocide in Gaza.
“The international community cannot stay silent on the genocidal campaign launched by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza," said Pillay, who is a South African jurist.
"When clear signs and evidence of genocide emerge, the absence of action to stop it amounts to complicity.”
The current UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, has decried Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza and spoken out forcefully against alleged crimes, but has not accused Israel of carrying out genocide.
His office, alluding to international law, has argued that only an international court can make a final, formal determination of genocide.
Critics counter that could take years and insist that thousands of people, many of them civilians, are being systematically killed in Gaza in the meantime.
The International Court of Justice is hearing a genocide case filed by South Africa against Israel.
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Israel expands operations in Gaza City
The report was handed down even as the Israeli military announced that its expanded operation in Gaza City "to destroy Hamas' military infrastructure" has begun and warned residents to move south.
Israel's Arabic language spokesperson, Avichay Adree, announced the expansion of Israel's operation on X, after a night of heavy strikes against northern Gaza that killed at least 20 people.
Israel has been warning the famine-stricken Gaza City residents to evacuate for the past month ahead of the operation but many have said they are unable to evacuate due to overcrowding in Gaza's south and the high price of transport.
Earlier in the day, Defence Minister Israel Katz said that "Gaza is burning" as U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio left Israel for Qatar, where he planned to meet with officials there still incensed over Israel's strike last week that killed five Hamas members and a local security official.
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While Arab and Muslim nations denounced the strike at a summit on Monday, they stopped short of any major action targeting Israel, highlighting the challenge of diplomatically pressuring any change in Israel's conduct in the grinding Israel-Hamas war.
Rubio, speaking to journalists before his departure, suggested the offensive on Gaza City had begun.
"We think we have a very short window of time in which a deal can happen," Rubio said.
"We don't have months anymore, and we probably have days and maybe a few weeks so it's a key moment — an important moment."
"Our preference, our No. 1 choice, is that this ends through a negotiated settlement," he added, while acknowledging the dangers an intensified military campaign posed to Gaza.
"The only thing worse than a war is a protracted one that goes on forever and ever," Rubio said. "At some point, this has to end. At some point, Hamas has to be defanged, and we hope it can happen through a negotiation. But I think time, unfortunately, is running out."
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Intensity of strikes in Gaza City grows
After weeks of threatening an expansion of the Israeli military operation in Gaza City, Katz signalled it had begun.
"Gaza is burning," he said early on Tuesday morning. "The (Israel military) is striking with an iron fist at the terrorist infrastructure and soldiers are fighting heroically to create the conditions for the release of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas. We will not relent and we will not go back — until the completion of the mission."
The United Nations estimated on Monday that over 220,000 Palestinians have fled northern Gaza over the past month, after the Israeli military warned that all residents should leave Gaza City ahead of the operation. An estimated 1 million Palestinians were living in the region around Gaza City before the evacuation warnings.
At least 20 Palestinians killed in Gaza City
Palestinian residents reported heavy strikes across Gaza City on Tuesday morning.
The city's Shifa Hospital said it received the bodies of 20 people killed in a strike that hit multiple houses in a western neighbourhood, with another 90 wounded arriving at the facility in recent hours.
"A very tough night in Gaza," Dr Mohamed Abu Selmiyah, director of Shifa Hospital, told The Associated Press
"The bombing did not stop for a single moment," he said. "There are still bodies under the rubble."
The Israeli military did not respond to immediate requests for comment on the strikes but in the past has accused Hamas of building military infrastructure inside civilian areas, especially in Gaza City.
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Families of hostages beg Netanyahu to halt the operation
Overnight, families of the hostages still being held in Gaza gathered outside of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's residence, pleading with him to stop the Gaza City operation.
Some pitched tents and slept outside his home in protest.
"I have one interest — for this country to wake up and bring back my child along with 47 other hostages, both living and deceased, and to bring our soldiers home," Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is being held in Gaza, shouted outside Netanyahu's residence.
"If he stops at nothing and sends our precious, brave, heroic soldiers to fight while our hostages are being used as human shields — he is not a worthy prime minister," Zangauker.
Israel believes around 20 of the 48 hostages still held by the militants in Gaza, including Matan, are alive.
Both Netanyahu and Rubio said on Monday that the only way to end the conflict in Gaza is through the elimination of Hamas and the release of the hostages, setting aside calls for an interim ceasefire in favor of an immediate end to the conflict.
Hamas has said it will only free remaining hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
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