GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that Israeli occupation authorities killed thousands of Palestinians in Gaza by intentionally depriving civilians there of adequate access to water, noting that this may amount to an act of genocide from a legal perspective.
Human Rights Watch said, in a report on X, “This policy, inflicted as part of a mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, means Israeli authorities have committed the crime against humanity of extermination, which is ongoing.”
“This policy also amounts to one of the five “acts of genocide” under the Genocide Convention of 1948. Genocidal intent may also be inferred from this policy, coupled with statements suggesting some Israeli officials wished to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, and therefore the policy may amount to the crime of genocide,” it added.
“What we found is that the Israeli government is deliberately killing Palestinians in Gaza by depriving them of access to water they need to survive,” Lama Fakih, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said at a news conference.
Human Rights Watch is the second, in a month, major human rights group to use the word genocide to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza, after Amnesty International which has recently released a report concluding that Israel is committing genocide.
Both reports came just weeks after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the former Israeli war minister, Yoav Gallant, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
