Star Metro - Amnesty accuses Israel of 'live-streamed genocide' against Gazans

The UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, warned Israel's blockade on aid had become a "silent killer" in Gaza, with children and the sick suffering the most.

In its annual report, Amnesty said Israel was acting with "specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".

Israel has repeatedly denied such accusations from rights groups and some states. Officials and the military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the latest allegations.

The Gaza war erupted after the Palestinian militant group Hamas's deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of Gaza and a ground offensive that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,365 dead.

"Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the report.

"States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools."

- 'Children starving' -

Gaza's civil defence agency reported Tuesday at least seven people killed in Israeli strikes, including four in a raid on tents housing displaced people near the Al-Iqleem area in southern Gaza.

"I just want to lay my head on a pillow and sleep. We don't want to be collecting remains (of body parts)," said Widad Fojo, who lost relatives in one strike.

Israel resumed its Gaza offensive on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire and insisting that military pressure was aimed at securing the release of hostages.

"We have changed the face of the Middle East... of course, we also have another important mission," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, referring to captives held in Gaza, said at a function to commemorate fallen soldiers on Tuesday.

"We will bring them back."

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had "documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks".

It said Israel's actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza's population, and "deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

UNRWA said children and the sick were suffering the most.

"Children in Gaza are going to bed starving. The ill and the sick are not able to get medical care because of shortages in supplies in hospitals and clinics," UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma said.

"Gaza has become a land of desperation... The siege on Gaza is a silent killer, a silent killer of children, of older people, of the most vulnerable in the community."

- Collective failure -

UNRWA also accused the Israeli military of abusing more than 50 of its staff when they were detained.

"Since the start of the war in October 2023, over 50 UNRWA staff among them teachers, doctors, social workers, have been detained and abused," UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X.

"They have been treated in the most shocking & inhumane way. They reported being beaten + used as human shields."

Israel has accused some UNRWA employees of involvement in the October 7 attack and has subsequently banned the agency from operating within its territory.

Amnesty said it was a collective failure by the international community in responding to the war in Gaza.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa, denounced "the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year" as well as "the world's complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it".

Meanwhile, the rights group also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of "apartheid".

"Israel's system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians," it said.

G.Boudreau--SMC