On Friday, the United Nations Human Rights Office published a report showing that nearly 70 percent of verified deaths in Gaza are of women and children, further underlining the reality that Israel is waging a genocide in Gaza.
The report declared, “The main victims of strikes on residential buildings were children, with the three categories of age mostly represented in the verified fatalities sequentially being the ones from 5 to 9 years old, from 10 to 14 years old, and from 0 to 4 years old, for both boys and girls.”
Due to the systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system, it is impossible to know the real death toll since Israel began its war of extermination on October 7, 2023. Gaza’s Health Ministry has confirmed 43,000 deaths from Israeli attacks, with countless more remaining uncounted and unburied. Earlier this year, The Lancet published an article estimating that the real death toll could be 186,000 or more: a figure that has no doubt grown to over 200,000.
The UN report was based, however, on deaths that the UN Human Rights Office could verify firsthand: 8,119 people. This included 2,036 women and 3,588 children.
In figures that are almost equally shocking, the vast majority of those killed, or 64 percent, were killed in attacks that led to 10 or more civilian deaths. This is the result of a systematic Israeli policy of dropping massive ordnance on densely populated neighborhoods and high-rise buildings, with the aim of killing as many people as possible.
This level of mass death has been made possible by the more than 14,000 2,000-pound bombs provided by the United States to Israel, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has used to systematically demolish more than 60 percent of the buildings in Gaza.
The UN report declares,
the IDF has systematically violated the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack— fundamental principles of international humanitarian law on the conduct of hostilities—in the course of its attacks in Gaza since 7 October 2023.
It adds,
the level of violations of international law was unprecedented, giving rise to concerns over the commission of war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes. The International Court of Justice, in its series of orders on provisional measures, underscored the international obligations of Israel to prevent, protect against and punish acts of genocide and associated prohibited conduct.
And it concludes,
Intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects, or in the knowledge the attack would cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated, are war crimes.
The report also compared the age breakdown between previous Israeli wars against Gaza and found a massive increase in the targeting of children in the present genocide. “Compared with the distributions of OHCHR-verified fatalities in previous escalations of hostilities, the strikes on residential buildings in Gaza since 7 October suggest a pattern of attacks inflicting casualties evenly as a proportion across the entire population, with high numbers of babies and young children, women, older persons, and families killed together in residential buildings, raising further concerns that the IDF has failed to strictly comply with fundamental principles of IHL [International humanitarian law].”
The UN report further warned that “starvation became a reality for Palestinians in early January 2024, especially in the north, with the most vulnerable, including infants and older persons, reportedly dying.”
In a separate report also published Friday, the Famine Review Committee warned that “the entire Gaza Strip” is facing “emergency” levels of food insecurity. It warned that famine is imminent in large parts of Gaza, where “famine thresholds may have already been crossed or else will be in the near future.”
These reports form the backdrop of the announcement made by the IDF that it no longer considers any people in northern Gaza civilians, in effect putting the whole area into a free-fire zone.
In a briefing this week, IDF Brigadier General Itzik Cohen declared, “there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes.”
He added that humanitarian supplies would no longer be allowed to enter the area as there are “no more civilians left” there.
In reality, tens of thousands of people remain in northern Gaza, subjected to relentless Israeli bombardment and a policy of deliberate starvation.
Last month, the Netanyahu government implemented the so-called “Generals’ Plan,” aimed at completing the depopulation of northern Gaza through ethnic cleansing and mass starvation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed this plan with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month, and Blinken emerged from their meeting with a blanket statement of support for Israel.
Now, emboldened by the election of the would-be fascist dictator Donald Trump, the Israeli military is openly declaring that it is deliberately starving the people of northern Gaza—a fact that the Netanyahu government had only previously asserted in leaks to the press.