Gaza war deaths exceed 44 thousand, over 13 thousand children

By Thaddeus Jones

The tragic death toll from the violence in Gaza has far exceeded 44,000, seventy percent of whom are women and children. Over 13 thousand children have died, close to 800 under the age one.

Over 1,700 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed since the war broke out last year on 7 October following the attacks by Hamas and other armed groups in southern Israel, and more than 100 Israelis are still held hostage in Gaza.

According to Australian human rights lawyer, Chris Sidoti, "the number of children killed is the greatest number of any conflict in this century" in addition to the many children "wounded and affected by deaths of parents, siblings, grandparents, loss of limbs, traumatizing experiences, multiple displacement from their homes...affecting a larger number of children than any modern warfare has experienced."

Mr. Sidoti is an international human rights attorney and a commissioner with the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. He has worked for decades in this field, including on a similar UN commission of inquiry dealing with Myanmar, as well as provided his expertise to the Australian Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace.

He spoke to Vatican News about his work in investigating and reporting the violence, looking at ways the international community can help bring a stop to it, and working for long-term peace guaranteeing the rights of Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace.

Interview with Chris Sidoti, a commissioner with the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.

In your current work on war in Gaza following the October 7 violence, tell us about your work on the Commission of Inquiry and human rights investigations...

Our Commission of Inquiry was established long before the current escalation of violence in Gaza from 7th of October. We were set up in 2021, which actually is two Gaza wars ago, although I refuse to think of these episodes as being individual wars. They are really episodes in a war that's been going on now for almost a century. Because we were set up in 2021, we were set up in response to the violence that occurred that year. There was another outbreak of violence in 2022, and then, of course, the current bout which started on the 7th of October 2023. Our mandate is to investigate and report, and also to encourage accountability. That accountability side is very important because it means that the results of our work feed into international courts and local courts exercising jurisdiction in relation to war crimes and crimes against humanity. So, (we focus) very much onto the international accountability angle and our responsibilities to cooperate with courts.

We report twice a year, in June to the UN Human Rights Council and in October to the UN General Assembly. Those two reports are our official reports each year, but we also produce other documents. As and when they are available, we release them dealing with different aspects of the human rights situation in Israel and Palestine. Since the 7th of October 2023, our focus of work over the last fourteen months has been exclusively on what happened on that day and subsequently.

In terms of your findings, can you tell us about or highlight some of what you have discovered?

Even before the events of the 7th of October, we were looking at the underlying root causes of the situation, and we were required specifically to do that by the Human Rights Council. So, our report to the General Assembly in 2022 examined the Israeli occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. And we came to the conclusion that the occupation was unlawful. That was our finding based on the facts as we gathered them and investigated them. We said to the General Assembly on that occasion that our findings were our considered views, but that the General Assembly should seek the most authoritative legal interpretation possible, and that was by means of an advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice. We were very pleased that the General Assembly acted almost immediately on that recommendation, made the referral to the International Court of Justice and that Court delivered its decision in July of this year. The Court, not surprisingly, came to the same conclusions in law as we had. And that is that the occupation was illegal. The settlements were illegal, are illegal. The Court ordered that Israel should end the occupation as rapidly as possible, cease settlement expansion immediately, and evacuate all existing settlements and settlers as rapidly as possible. These decisions of the Court were completely consistent with the opinion that we had expressed in 2022.

We were pleased that the Court relied almost entirely on our investigative work in its decision. This to us indicated that the Court was taking our work seriously and taking our conclusions seriously. In looking at the situation since 7 October, we reported in June this year to the Human Rights Council on the first part of our investigations, and that is what happened on 7 October and 8 October in southern Israel, and what happened between those dates and the end of 2023 in Gaza. So far as the events in southern Israel were concerned, we came to the conclusion that the armed Palestinian groups had committed war crimes, including the targeting of civilians, deliberate killing of civilians, taking of hostages, torture and mistreatment, and sexual violence.

In relation to events in Gaza from then till the end of 2023, we came to the conclusion that the Israeli forces had embarked upon an operational strategy that inevitably meant the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity on a mass scale. These were the inevitable consequences of the strategy of total destruction that the Israeli military forces implemented in their attacks on Gaza and in the fighting that has occurred in Gaza since then. And indeed, that's our view continuing into 2024, as expressed in our most recent report to the UN General Assembly. We found that there were war crimes, the deliberate targeting of civilians, again mistreatment amounting to torture in many instances, the arbitrary detention of thousands of Palestinian men and boys from Gaza, of sexual violence against men and boys in particular, but also against women. And we found that there was evidence to ground the finding of crimes against humanity, in particular in relation to the crime of extermination.

So, in both cases, both in southern Israel on 7 and 8 October and in Gaza subsequently, we found, and reasonably concluded on the basis of our investigations, that there were the most serious crimes under international law in relation to war crimes and crimes against humanity committed.

In our most report to the General Assembly, last month, October 2024, we looked at three issues. We looked first at the Israeli attacks on the healthcare care system in Gaza and came to the conclusion that the Israeli military forces had embarked upon a program of concerted intentional destruction of the healthcare care system in Gaza as a whole. And we made that conclusion on the basis of the evidence we gathered, the attacks, the comprehensive attacks on hospitals, health clinics and centers, other health care facilities, personnel working in hospitals and healthcare care, and ambulances. The conclusion we formed was that these attacks were concerted and intentional, and that they were designed to destroy the healthcare care system in Gaza.

The second issue we looked at was the treatment of Israeli hostages in Gaza. And again, we found that this constituted a war crime, that the Palestinian armed groups holding the hostages were inflicting in some cases torture, other forms of mistreatment, and in some cases sexual violence. Third, we found in relation to Palestinian detainees from Gaza held in Israeli detention centres and prisons that they too were subjected to torture, other forms of mistreatment, sexual violence, arbitrary detention, and that these constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.

So again, our findings have led to conclusions that the most serious crimes under international law are being committed both by the Palestinian armed groups and by the Israeli military authorities under the direction of the Israeli political authorities.

And you've also confirmed how children have been the primary victims of the war…

Thousands of children have been killed. In excess of thirteen thousand, but, in all probability, many thousands more than that. Seventy percent of the persons killed in Gaza have been women and children, only thirty percent have been adult males. So, seventy percent are civilians who cannot be suspected of terrorist activity, and a large proportion of the remaining thirty percent, adult males, must also be considered civilians and innocent victims of the violence that the Israeli military forces are inflicting.

The large number of children killed is particularly serious. It's been said by broader military researchers that the number of children killed is the greatest number of any conflict in this century. And certainly, the number of children wounded and affected by deaths of parents, siblings, grandparents, loss of limbs, traumatizing experiences, multiple displacement from their homes, that those effects on children are affecting a larger number of children than any modern warfare has experienced.

Apart from reactions and commentary we are hearing in the media in recent days, do you see any way out of what's happening?

There's a very clear way out. It's not the lack of a way out that is holding up peace. It's the lack of any political commitment to implement it. The way out has been apparent since 1947, that is, some 80 years ago now. The way out was contained in the first UN General Assembly resolution dealing with what was then the British-Palestinian mandate. And the way out in that resolution 181 of 1947 was the coexistence of two states, one Jewish and one Palestinian, side by side with defined borders in peace and security. Now that has been known, as I say, for eighty years now. But throughout the period since then, there has been a determination to thwart the way out on the part of the leaders both of Israel and of the major Palestinian groups. Now at various times, one side or the other has been more willing to talk about a settlement along those lines. But at no time has there been a thorough commitment, a determination on the part of the leaders of both sides to settle this long-standing dispute. This conflict has become a conflict where the Israeli military overwhelms Palestinian civilians, kills large numbers in their thousands, destroys property while the Israeli leadership is totally opposed to any form of permanent settlement. And that's been made crystal clear by the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, just last month when it overwhelmingly passed a resolution rejecting the two-state solution, the approach adopted by the General Assembly in 1947. So, it's not the way forward is unclear or unknown or complicated. It's simply the fact that the political will does not exist to resolve this long-standing violence with a settlement that is acceptable both to the Palestinians and to the Israelis.

Is there anything you've seen that even gives you a glimmer of hope here?

I find it very hard to be hopeful at the moment. In the face of the intransigence of both the most extreme Palestinian leadership and the most extreme Israeli leadership, it seems that the situation is even darker than it's been in the past. As I said, there is a way forward. The way forward is well known and very clear, but I do not see any evidence of political will, particularly on the part of the Israeli leadership, and that's the most relevant at the moment, to resolve this longstanding and continuing violence. And until that political will exists, until there is a determination to walk the path of peace, peace will not be possible.