Press Release- Hemaya Center for Human Rights, Gaza
21 October 2023
For the fifteenth day in a row, the Israeli occupation continues its blatant aggression against civilians and commits two massacres every hour.
For the fifteenth day in a row, the Israeli occupation forces continue their barbaric and indiscriminate aggression against civilians in the Gaza Strip amid shameful international silence, which as of this morning has caused human losses estimated at approximately:
- 4,160 martyrs, including 18 journalists, 46 paramedics and medical staff, 16 UN employees,
- 13,200 injured,
- more than 1,400 missing under the rubble.
The percentage of children and women out of the total number of victims reached about 70%, and the rate of massacres committed during the past 24 hours is one massacre against a safe family every half an hour.
Regarding the initial losses in infrastructure and civilian objects, the occupation destroyed about 600 residential homes, and tens of thousands of residential units.
It also destroyed 17 mosques and churches, and targeted 7 hospitals directly and indirectly, causing them to be out of service, and destroyed 23 ambulances. It damaged approximately 160 schools, including UNRWA schools, and damaged 33 UNRWA facilities, including shelter schools.
The occupation army also targeted bakeries, markets, roads, infrastructure, agricultural lands, residential towers, civil society centers and institutions, and 62 government and service headquarters. These numbers are still preliminary, and the disaster is still unfolding.
The center notes that the occupation army used massive firepower during its aggression and committed multiple types of crimes in its aggression, most notably the systematic, deliberate and direct targeting of residential homes, including the use of internationally banned weapons such as white phosphorus, and used a policy of annihilating entire neighborhoods with the help of fire belts, so that no safe place was left and everyone was within a ring of danger.
In the same plan to target the civilian population, the occupation army imposed a deadly military siege intending to annihilate the population of the Gaza Strip, cutting off the supplies of electricity, water, and fuel, and preventing the entry of humanitarian aid, food, and medicine, despite multiple international occasions and demands.
The military occupation also practiced a systematic plan to forcibly transfer the civilian population from their lands.
Hemaya Center stresses that waging war with weapons and military ammunition against civilians and civilian objects, committing atrocities and mutilation against them, and depriving them of food supplies and humanitarian aid due to a military siege and displacing the population of the occupied territories constitute crimes against humanity, especially since they are committed as collective punishment on a large scale and in a systematic manner.
Hemaya Center reaffirms that the participation of the United States of America in military and intelligence support, participation in meetings and decisions of the war on Gaza, and providing political cover for it makes American leaders complicit in these crimes and atrocities under international humanitarian law.
Hemaya Center states once again that the war on Gaza reveals the failure of the international system to curb any aggression, especially if this aggression is supported by a permanent member state, and this requires amending the United Nations Charter in terms of the mechanism for objecting to and voting on draft resolutions.
Hemaya Center continues to express its astonishment at the silence of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, in contrast to his rapid movements on the Ukrainian file, and this expresses one of two things: Either the Public Prosecutor colluded, or he was subjected to political influence that made him lose his integrity and impartiality, and in both cases he deserves to be removed.
In light of the above, the Center emphasizes that there are terrible crimes being documented that have not been committed since World War II, and therefore it renews its demands for the following:
1. Calls on all Arab and Islamic countries and member states of the United Nations General Assembly to make a serious diplomatic effort to stop these crimes, including expelling the ambassadors and diplomats of the Israeli occupation state.
2. The Security Council calls for an urgent and extraordinary meeting to be held while depriving the United States of America of the right to vote in accordance with the United Nations Charter, on the grounds that it is participating in the aggression and is not entitled to vote on draft resolutions.
3. Calls on the United Nations General Assembly to hold an extraordinary meeting under the format of United for Peace in order to take an immediate ceasefire decision, which the UN Security Council failed to take.
4. Demands that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court obeys the voice of his conscience, responds to the voices of child and women victims, frees himself from any international pressure, and takes bold decisions, including issuing arrest warrants for the leaders of the war cabinet and immediately investigating the ongoing war.
5. In light of the inability of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, the Center calls on the Assembly of Member States of the International Criminal Court to hold an extraordinary meeting, dismiss the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and appoint a new Prosecutor General.
Protection Center for Human Rights
October 21, 2023 AD