Human Right Watch Calls Israel's Action Deliberately Eliminating Access To Water In Gaza A Genocide

Children in Gaza queue for clean water. (Twitter/@UNRWA)

JAKARTA - Human Rights Watch in a report released Thursday said Israel's actions deliberately eliminate access to Gaza Strip residents to adequate water since 2023 could be a crime against humanity in the form of destruction and genocide, as it could cause thousands of deaths.

In a 179-page report entitled "The Destruction and Action of Genocide: Israel by intentionally Drowning Water from Palestinians in Gaza", Human Rights Watch found Israeli authorities had deliberately seized the access of Palestinians in Gaza to clean water for drinking and sanitation needed for survival.

The report said Israeli authorities and forces cut off and then limited the supply of air to Gaza; making most of Gaza's water and sanitation infrastructure unable to be used by cutting off electricity and limiting fuel; intentionally destroying and damaging water and sanitation infrastructure as well as water repair materials; to blocking the entry of important water supplies.

"Water is very important to human life, but for more than a year the Israeli government has deliberately not provided Palestinians in Gaza with the minimum necessities they need to survive," Human Rights Watch Executive Director Tirana Hassan said, quoted from WAFA December 19.

"This is not just negligence, this is a planned confiscation policy that has caused the death of thousands of people from dehydration and a disease that is nothing but a crime against humanity in the form of genocide, and genocide," he explained.

Further explained, Human Rights Watch interviewed 66 Palestinians from Gaza, 4 employees of the Gaza Coastal Water Agency (CMWU), 31 health care professionals and 15 people working with United Nations agencies and international aid organizations in Gaza.

Human Rights Watch also analyzed satellite, photo, and video images taken between the beginning of the conflict in October 2023 and September 2024, as well as data collected and estimates made by doctors, epidemiologists, humanitarian aid organizations and water and sanitation experts.

Human Rights Watch concluded that Israeli authorities deliberately created living conditions intended to cause the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza as a whole or in part.

This policy, carried out as part of the mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, means Israeli authorities have committed crimes against humanity in the form of annihilation, which is still ongoing, the report said.

"This policy is also one of five "genocide measures" based on the 1948 Genocide Convention," the report read.

He added that the intention of genocide could also be inferred from this policy, as well as statements stating that some Israeli officials wanted to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, therefore it could be a genocide crime.