Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of committing “acts of genocide” by denying clean water to Palestinians in Gaza, and called on the international community to impose targeted sanctions.
In a new 184-page report released on Thursday, the New York-based watchdog said that since October 2023 – when Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza – Israeli authorities have “deliberately obstructed Palestinians’ access to the adequate amount of water required for survival in the Gaza Strip”.
“What we have found is that the Israeli government is intentionally killing Palestinians in Gaza by denying them the water that they need to survive,” Lama Fakih, Human Rights Watch Middle East director told a news conference.
Bill Van Esveld, acting Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera that the organisation interviewed over 115 people and used satellite imagery as part of its investigation.
“We did a very thorough job and we found four key things that Israel has done to deliberately block [access to water] in Gaza,” he said.
First, pipelines bringing drinking water from Israel to Gaza were blocked. Israel then cut off the electricity supply needed to activate water pumps for reserves inside Gaza, so desalination plants, water wells and waste management plants stopped working.
Some of those facilities had solar panels to power them in case the electricity was cut off. “The Israeli military then went in and bulldozed every single one of them in four of Gaza’s six wastewater treatment facilities, leaving nothing to chance,” Van Esveld said.
“Finally, they prevented any attempts at repair from happening,” he said, by killing technical staff and preventing humanitarian aid agencies from bringing in water-related supplies.
“This is a comprehensive policy preventing people from getting any water,” Van Esveld concluded, and “a very clear finding of extermination”.
“What this means is that you’re deliberately inflicting conditions on a population that you know are going to kill a large number of those people.”
The organisation found Palestinians in Gaza had access to two to nine litres of water a day in many areas, far below the 15-litre threshold for survival, which contributes to the spread of diseases and death.
The report concluded that this policy amounts to “acts of genocide” under the criteria outlines in the Genocide Convention of 1948. “Israeli authorities intentionally inflicted on the Palestinian population in Gaza ‘conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,'” it said.
Israel rejects findings
Israel has repeatedly rejected any accusation of genocide, saying it has a right to defend itself after the Hamas-led attack from Gaza on October 7, 2023.
On Thursday, it rejected HRW’s report, calling its findings “appalling lies”.
Proving the crime of genocide against Israeli officials before international courts also requires establishing an intent to commit this crime.
The Genocide Convention, enacted following the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines the crime of genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
The report cited statements by some senior Israeli officials which it said suggested they “wish to destroy Palestinians” which means the deprivation of water “may amount to the crime of genocide”.
It also argued that Israel violated provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January, as part of a case brought by South Africa alleging that Israel is violating the Genocide Convention.
The court required Israel to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance to demonstrate it has no genocidal intent.
In light of its findings, HRW called on the international community to issue “targeted sanctions, suspension of arms transfers and military assistance, and review of bilateral trade and political agreements” to pressure Israel to comply with the ICJ’s provisional measures.
The report follows another study by Amnesty International issued earlier this month that also concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) last month issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Israel’s war has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, displaced most of the population and reduced much of the coastal enclave to ruins.
