“Kids aren’t terrorists,” Chris Sidoti told the handful of journalists assembled in the quiet of the UN’s New York headquarters.
Thousands of kilometres from the conflict in Gaza he was documenting, Sidoti felt compelled to repeat it: “Kids aren’t terrorists.”
“On 7 October, 38 Israeli children were killed, one of them under the age of two years. Since then, at least … 13,319 children have been killed in Gaza, of whom 786 were under the age of one. In addition, 165 children have been killed in the West Bank,” he said.
“It’s a statistic that, to me, says everything.”
Sidoti, Australia’s former human rights commissioner, told Guardian Australia in a subsequent interview this week that he feared an already intolerable conflict would only worsen: “People are still being killed, in particular, kids are still being killed in very large numbers, and the likelihood is it will get worse before it gets better.”
Sidoti was in New York to present a report by the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. He is one of the commission’s three members.
He told the UN press briefing the ongoing bombardment of Gaza was sowing the seeds for generations of conflict, every day of violence making peace harder to achieve.
“When the current Israeli prime minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu talks about finishing off Hamas, I wonder about what the 1 million children in Gaza will be doing in 20 years’ time. The conflict in Gaza is an Israeli terrorism creation factory and there is no sign of it finishing.”
He said the spiralling cycle of violence could not be arrested by more violence.
“There is no end in sight. To help these kids, to help Israel, it’s got to stop. Then, there is a possibility, but until it stops, there is no chance.”
Sidoti said children could not go through more than a year of unrelenting war without it affecting the rest of their lives.
“That is certainly the case physically for kids who have lost arms or legs or both. And we’ve met them, we’ve met them in hospitals, we’ve interviewed them. For them, this is a lifelong result.
“But the kids who are traumatised by the loss of parents, siblings, aunties, uncles, grandparents, cousins – who have experienced now 13 months of severe food deprivation, leading to a situation that is now described as acute malnutrition – these kids … can’t go through what they have had to experience without this having a severe impact on them and their lives for ever.”
The commission’s third report, presented on 30 October, painted a bleak and deteriorating picture of hostilities in Gaza, which remained “under belligerent occupation by Israel”. It focused on three key findings.
It found Israel had implemented a concerted policy to destroy the healthcare system of Gaza.
“Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, wounded, arrested, detained, mistreated and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles, constituting the war crimes of wilful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination.”
Doctors told the commission they treated children with direct gunshot wounds, “indicating direct targeting of children”.
Second, the report found Israeli forces mistreated Palestinian hostages: “The commission received numerous reports of detainees being stripped, transported naked, blindfolded, handcuffed tightly enough to cause injury and swelling, kicked, beaten, sexually assaulted and subjected to religious slurs and death threats.”
Some detainees were “subjected to beatings, including with batons and wooden sticks, even while immobilised, and intimidation and attacks by dogs … detainees were routinely subjected to sexual abuse and harassment”.
And third, the report found Israeli hostages had been mistreated by Palestinian armed groups.
“The commission received credible information about some hostages being subjected to sexual and gender-based violence while in captivity, including sexualised torture and abuse against men and women when they were held in tunnels. One released female hostage reported that she had been raped in an apartment.”
The report found that while some released hostages stated they had not been mistreated, “the commission finds that the majority of hostages were subjected to mistreatment, and that some were subjected to physical violence”.
In a subsequent interview back in Australia, Sidoti said “in both cases, we found there was strong evidence of torture, of significant mistreatment, and a wide variety of human rights abuses that, in both cases, constituted war crimes”.
“The practices were clear and systematic on both sides.”
Sidoti, one of Australia’s most experienced human rights lawyers and advocates, said that over 13 months of conflict – with the exception of a brief ceasefire brought about by a security council resolution – the UN and other multinational bodies had failed, despite concerted efforts, to end hostilities.
On Thursday, Australia supported a United Nations resolution to recognise the “permanent sovereignty” of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a dramatic shift from its previous position.
Sidoti said when he was first appointed to the commission in 2021, he saw potential for peace in generational change in the leadership on both sides of the conflict. That hope, he said, had faded.
“This conflict started long before 7 October 2023, it’s been going on for 85 years. It’s a longstanding conflict that has consistently shown itself incapable of being resolved, because the parties are not willing to find a way to resolve it. There is even less sign of that now. I can’t see what the way ahead is.
“We just have to keep at our work – investigating, reporting, encouraging and enabling accountability – and know that at some point in the future, there will be accountability, that those who have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity will be brought to justice.
“A resolution requires a willingness from parties to sit down and solve this. But one thing this fighting has done over the last 13 months has been to cement the position of extremists on all sides, and even the outside.”
