UN Laments, Doesn’t Act: ‘Israel’s’ Collective Punishment of Palestinians Amounts to War Crime

By Staff, Agencies 

The United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk warned that the “Israeli” entity’s collective punishment of Palestinian civilians in Strip “amounts to a war crime,” as Tel Aviv continues its deadly aggression in the besieged Palestinian enclave.

After a Wednesday visit to the Rafah crossing, the sole crossing point between Egypt and Gaza, Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said “Israeli” bombardments have killed, maimed and injured in particular women and children in Gaza.

“The collective punishment by ‘Israel’ of Palestinian civilians amounts also to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians,” he said, amid his five-day visit to the region.

“The latest death toll from the Gaza Ministry of Health is in excess of 10,500 people, including over 4,300 children and 2,800 women. All of this has an unbearable toll on civilians,” Turk further said, warning, “We have fallen off a precipice. This cannot continue.”

For weeks, “Israel” has been violently pounding almost all areas and facilities of the blockaded territory, including hospitals, schools and residential buildings, rejecting all calls for a ceasefire in the region.

The UN human rights chief Volker Turk said the blockade “seriously” risks the already dire humanitarian situation.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the UN human rights chief demanded respect for international human rights laws and international humanitarian laws, noting that “parties to the conflict have the obligation to take constant care to spare the civilian population and civilian objects.”

“Attacks against medical facilities, medical personnel and the wounded and sick are prohibited,” Turk stressed, warning that there is an “urgent humanitarian imperative to reach the population increasingly isolated” in Gaza.

According to officials in the Gaza Strip, the occupying regime’s aggression has so far destroyed 70 percent of the coastal sliver’s electricity grid.

“Blackouts have serious consequences on rescue workers struggling to find and rescue the victims of strikes, families trying to find out the status of their loved ones and to access emergency medical care, and for the situation on the ground to be monitored and documented,” Turk stressed.

The Rafah crossing, according to Turk, is a “lifeline” for 2.3 million inhabitants of the tightly-blockaded Gaza Strip. Although a trickle of aid trucks has been allowed in recently, they are just a fraction of the aid that used to be allowed.

“The lifeline has been unjustly, outrageously thin. In Rafah, I have witnessed the gates to a living nightmare,” the UN human rights chief said.

In this nightmare, “people have been suffocating, under persistent bombardment, mourning their families, struggling for water, for food, for electricity and fuel. My colleagues are among those trapped, and among those who have lost family members, suffering sleepless nights filled with agony, anguish and despair,” Turk added.

He also strongly called for a ceasefire to end the “Israeli” aggression.

On Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the war was turning the coastal sliver into “a graveyard for children.”