New genocide finding against Israel as major Gaza City assault begins

Jerusalem/Cairo: Israel unleashed a long-threatened ground assault on Gaza City on Tuesday, declaring “Gaza is burning” as Palestinians there described the most intense bombardment they had faced in two years of war.

An Israel Defence Forces official said ground troops were moving deeper into the enclave’s main city, and that the number of soldiers would rise in coming days to confront up to 3000 Hamas combatants the IDF believes are still in the city.

“Gaza is burning,” Defence Minister Israel Katz posted on X. “The IDF strikes with an iron fist at the terrorist infrastructure and IDF soldiers are fighting bravely to create the conditions for the release of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas.”

In launching the assault, Israel’s government defied European leaders threatening sanctions and warnings from even some of Israel’s own military commanders that it could be a costly mistake.

US President Donald Trump sided with Israel, telling reporters at the White House that Hamas would have “hell to pay” if it used hostages as human shields during the assault.

In the latest expression of international alarm, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Israel called the assessment “scandalous” and “fake”.

Gaza health officials reported at least 50 people killed on Tuesday, most in Gaza City, as airstrikes swept across the city and tanks advanced.

Where a missile had destroyed two multi-storey residential buildings in the middle of the night, people clambered over an immense mound of dislocated concrete to pry out victims, footage obtained by Reuters showed. A woman cried as a small child’s body was pulled from the wreckage, hastily wrapped in a green blanket and carried away.

Abu Mohammed Hamed said several of his relatives had been wounded or killed, including a cousin whose body was trapped by a concrete block: “We don’t know how to take her out. We have been working on it since 3am”

Israel renewed its calls on civilians to leave, and long columns of Palestinians streamed towards the south and west in donkey carts, rickshaws, heavily laden vehicles or on foot.

“They are destroying residential towers, the pillars of the city, mosques, schools and roads,” Abu Tamer, a 70-year-old man making the gruelling journey south with his family, told Reuters in a text message. “They are wiping out our memories.”

Hours before the escalation, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Jerusalem that, while the United States wished for a diplomatic end to the war, “we have to be prepared for the possibility that’s not going to happen”.

But in Brussels, a spokesperson for the EU executive said it would agree on Wednesday to impose new sanctions on Israel, including suspending certain trade provisions.

Some residents were staying put, too poor to secure a tent and transport or because there was nowhere safe to go.

“It is like escaping from death towards death, so we are not leaving,” said Um Mohammad, a woman living in the suburb of Sabra, under aerial and ground fire for days.

The IDF said it estimated 40 per cent of people in Gaza City had left. Hamas said 350,000 had left their homes in the eastern parts of the city, heading to displacement shelters in its central or western areas, while another 175,000 people had fled the city altogether, heading south.

Much of Gaza City was laid to waste in the early weeks of the war in 2023, but around 1 million Palestinians had returned there to homes among the ruins. Forcing them out means confining most of Gaza’s population to overcrowded encampments along the coast further south lacking food, medical supplies and space.

Israeli military spokesperson Effie Defrin said the military was adjusting its humanitarian efforts in light of the evacuations and “there will not be a situation of starvation in Gaza”.

Three more Palestinians died of malnutrition and starvation in the past 24 hours, Gaza’s health ministry said on Tuesday, raising total hunger deaths to at least 428. Israel says the extent of hunger has been exaggerated.

New genocide finding against Israel

A team of independent experts commissioned by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council has concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

The UN report cited examples of the scale of the killings, aid blockages, forced displacement and the destruction of a fertility clinic to back up its genocide finding, adding its voice to rights groups and others that have reached the same conclusion.

“Genocide is occurring in Gaza,” said Navi Pillay, head of the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and a former International Criminal Court judge.

Israel rejected what it called a “distorted and false” report. “Israel categorically rejects the libellous rant published today by this commission of inquiry,” Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Daniel Meron, told journalists.

The commission’s 72-page legal analysis is the strongest UN finding to date, but the body is independent and does not officially speak for the United Nations. The UN has not yet used the term genocide, but is under mounting pressure to do so.

The 1948 UN Genocide Convention, adopted following the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such”. To count as genocide, at least one of five acts must have occurred.

The UN commission found that Israel had committed four of them: killing; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part; and imposing measures intended to prevent births.

It cited as evidence interviews with victims, witnesses, doctors, verified open-source documents and satellite imagery analysis compiled since the war began.

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.

Israel is fighting a genocide case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It rejects such accusations, citing its right to self-defence following the deadly October 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed 1200 people and resulted in 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures.

The subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 64,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, while a global hunger monitor says that part of it is suffering from famine.

Reuters, AP

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