An independent United Nations commission said Tuesday that Israeli attacks on schools, religious and cultural sites in Gaza amount to war crimes and constitute an attempt to "obliterate" Palestinian life.
"Israel has obliterated Gaza's education system and destroyed over half of all religious and cultural sites in the Gaza Strip," the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in a report.
Israel rejected the commission led by South African judge Navi Pillay as "an inherently biased and politicized mechanism of the Human Rights Council" and said the report was "another attempt to promote its fictitious narrative of the Gaza war".
The three-member commission however accused Israeli forces of committing "war crimes, including directing attacks against civilians and carrying out wilful killing in attacks on educational facilities.
"In killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites, Israeli security forces committed the crime against humanity of extermination," the report said.
"While the destruction of cultural property, including educational facilities, was not in itself a genocidal act, evidence of such conduct may nevertheless infer genocidal intent to destroy a protected group."
Pillay said in a statement: "We are seeing more and more indications that Israel is carrying out a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza."
The commission said Israeli attacks "targeted religious sites that served as places of refuge, killing hundreds of people, including women and children".
- 'Genocide' warning -
The commission was set up by the UN to investigate violations of humanitarian and human rights law in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
In May, UN humanitarian relief chief Tom Fletcher urged UN Security Council members to take action "to prevent genocide" in Gaza. Israel has denied committing genocide.
The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs demanded that Israel lift its aid blockade on Gaza, where the UN says the population of more than two million people is at risk of famine.
The UN commission's report paid special attention to Gaza but also focused on Israeli attacks on civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories as a whole, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel itself.
It said Israel had "done little" to prevent or prosecute settlers in the occupied West Bank who "intentionally targeted educational facilities and students to terrorise (Palestinian) communities and force them to leave their homes".
The report said Israeli authorities had intimidated and, in some cases, detained Israeli and Palestinian teachers and students who "expressed concern or solidarity with the civilian population in Gaza".
- Call to Israel -
The panel urged the Israeli government to stop attacking cultural, religious and education institutions and "immediately end its unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory".
Israel has said that Hamas uses hospitals, schools and even former UN offices as a cover for its fighters.
Israel's UN mission in Geneva said: "The commission is ignoring Hamas's widespread embedment of military operations and weaponry within civilian infrastructure and Gaza's population for terror purposes. Hamas's own leadership has openly admitted to using the people of Gaza as human shields."
But the UN commission said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government should comply fully with provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice to "prevent" incitement to genocide and to let humanitarian aid into Gaza.
It also urged Hamas "to cease using civilian objects for military purposes".
The war was set off by a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
The health ministry in Gaza says at least 54,880 people, the majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel's military response. The UN considers the figures reliable.
The commission is to present its findings to the UN Commission on Human Rights on June 17.
