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HRC - Press Conference: Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory - 19 June 2024
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Press Conferences , Edited News | HRC
Independent rights probe highlights Israeli army’s ‘dislocation and destruction’ tactics in Gaza
STORY: Commission of Inquiry - Occupied Palestinian Territories
SOURCE: UNTV CH
LENGTH: 2’39”
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
ASPECT RATIO: 16:9
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
DATELINE: 19 JUNE 2024 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
SHOTLIST
1. Exterior medium-wide, UN Geneva flag alley.
2. Wide, elevated camera shot of podium speakers and journalists.
3. SOUNDBITE (English) – Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem and Israel: “People from the north of Gaza move south and suddenly they get attacked in the south. We read all those contrary instructions as pointing to an attitude of not caring for their lives, destruction and dislocation.”
4. Medium-wide of the Press room with journalists.
5. SOUNDBITE (English) – Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem and Israel: “We adhere to the law; you cannot kill civilians, you have to protect them. With this occupation, based on all the information we gathered, it's pretty stark to us: there's a very clear intention of forcible dislocation of people just to force them out.”
6. Medium, speakers seated at podium.
7. SOUNDBITE (English) – Chris Sidoti, Member of the Commission of Inquiry: “I don't know whether it's one of the most moral armies in the world or not… But what I do have expertise in and what I do have authority to do is make assessments of criminal conduct. And we've done that in relation to the recent events and you can see that in the report. And the only conclusion you can draw is that the Israeli army is one of the most criminal armies in the world.”
8. Medium-wide, journalists and TV video journalists with cameras.
9. SOUNDBITE (English) – Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem and Israel: “Thousands of people are telling us that had it not been for the help of powerful countries, Israel would not have been able to carry out this perpetual occupation.”
10. Medium-wide, press room showing rows of seats, journalists and podium.
11. SOUNDBITE (English) – Chris Sidoti, Member of the Commission of Inquiry: “There are hostages that have been released. We would like very much to talk to them when it's appropriate to do so, taking into account the physical and psychological conditions. I mean, our first rule in evidence collecting is do no harm. So, at an appropriate time for them, we want to talk to them. We want to find out what happened.”
12. Medium, journalists listening, taking notes in the Press room.
13. SOUNDBITE (English) – Chris Sidoti, Member of the Commission of Inquiry: “This has happened time and time and time again. And this is the worst ever. This is the highest death toll ever in this protracted period of warfare. And there must be accountability for every specific act of criminality. But if we're going to stop it in the future, we also have to address the question of the context in which it has occurred.”
14. Close, cameraman at work.
15. Wide, journalists and TV video journalists to rear.
16. Close, journalist taking notes.
17. Medium, journalists in press room.
High-level independent human rights investigators reiterated serious concerns on Wednesday about the legality of the Israeli army's conduct in Gaza and pushed back at claims that their inquiry has done too little to highlight the ongoing ordeal of hostages captured by Palestinian militants.
“People from the north of Gaza move south and suddenly they get attacked in the south. We read all those contrary instructions as pointing to an attitude of not caring for their lives, destruction and dislocation,” said Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem and Israel.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council after presenting the Commission’s report on the initial months of the conflict, Ms. Pillay insisted that in accordance with the laws of war: “You cannot kill civilians, you have to protect them. With this occupation, based on all the information we gathered, it's pretty stark to us. There’s a very clear intention of forcible dislocation of people just to force them out.”
‘Third party’ support
Asked about the role of “third party” countries in both the large-scale bombing and the occupation of Gaza, Ms. Pillay replied that “again and again, thousands of people are telling us that had it not been for the help of powerful countries, Israel would not have been able to carry out this perpetual occupation”.
And in response to the discrepancy between the panel’s findings that war crimes have likely been committed by the Israeli Defense Forces and the current government’s representations of its soldiers as among the most "morally responsible" in the world, Ms. Pillay said that she remained extremely concerned about the widespread killing and destruction of public buildings including hospitals and one university “razed to the ground”.
“I don't know whether it's one of the most moral armies in the world or not, but what I do have expertise in and what I do have authority to do is make assessments of criminal conduct,” said fellow Commissioner Chris Sidoti. “And we've done that in relation to the recent events and you can see that in the report. And the only conclusion you can draw is that the Israeli army is one of the most criminal armies in the world.”
Massive human cost
Since Hamas-led terror attacks on multiple sites in southern Israel on 7 October claimed some 1,250 lives and left more than 250 captured as hostages, Mr. Sidoti noted that “thousands of children, women and men had been killed and injured - Palestinians, Israelis and citizens of other States”.
Responding to allegations that the Commission of Inquiry had done too little to investigate allegations of serious sexual abuse against hostages, Ms. Pillay highlighted the lack of cooperation and access by the Israeli authorities to victims of the 7 October attacks.
“They are denying the victims on the ground there from getting these voices, the authentic voices heard,” the independent rights investigator insisted, comments echoed by fellow Commissioner Mr. Sidoti: “There are hostages that have been released. We would like very much to talk to them when it's appropriate to do so, taking into account the physical and psychological conditions. I mean, our first rule in evidence-collecting is do no harm. So, at an appropriate time for them, we want to talk to them. We want to find out what happened.”
Hostage horror
Earlier in the Human Rights Council, the Commission asserted that the Israeli authorities had been responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity and that Hamas militants had also carried out war crimes of intentionally directing attacks against civilians and “patterns” of sexual abuse, primarily against Israeli women.
A representative from Israel who also spoke at the Council introduced herself as the mother of 23-year-old Romi Gonen, whose car carrying three other passengers was shot at by Hamas fighters who captured her on 7 October.
“As the only survivor, she was brutally dragged by her long, beautiful hair from the car, along the road. I was a witness to this reality while speaking with her on the phone, hearing her helplessness and frustration…That was 257 days ago, and 119 hostages were still being held incommunicado in the Gaza Strip to this day.”
Accountability principle
The Commission of Inquiry's search for transparency is standard procedure in human rights investigations and rooted in a desire to address the causes of unresolved conflicts - like the one in Gaza and the wider Middle East – and pursue accountability for the sake of the victims, the Commissioners explained.
“We've got to understand why this has occurred if we are interested in stopping it from happening again and that that that to me is the key point here,” Mr. Sidoti said. “This has happened time and time and time again. And this is the worst ever. This is the highest death toll ever in this protracted period of warfare…there must be accountability for every specific act of criminality. But if we're going to stop it in the future, we also have to address the question of the context in which it has occurred.”
About the Commission of Inquiry
The Commission of Inquiry was established by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and abuses of international human rights law leading up and since 13 April 2021.
Its members are not UN staff and do not draw a salary.
ends
Teleprompter
OK.
Good afternoon everyone and thank you very much for joining us here at this press conference with the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including E Jerusalem and Israel.
We're pleased to have with us here today the Chair of the Commission, Miss Navi Pele in the Centre, as well as fellow Commissioner Chris Sidoti, who wanted to take the this opportunity to speak with you about the findings of their latest report.
As you may know, the Commission of Inquiry was established by the Human Rights Council in 2021 and their latest report, as well as two additional detailed reports were published last week on 12 June.
And this morning here at the the Palli de Nacion, the Commission has officially presented its findings to the Human Rights Council during an interactive dialogue with Member States, which will continue this afternoon.
So with that, we can begin.
Commissioner Pillai will give some opening remarks, followed by Commissioner Sidoti and then over to you for your questions.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you for being here.
As Todd said, we just presented our report to the Human Rights Council's 56th session.
This is the body we report to, but we also report to the General Assembly in New York, which we will do in October.
Since 7th October, our Commission has carried out two parallel investigations, first into attacks Bahamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Israel on 7th and 8th of October, and 2nd into Israeli military operations and attacks in Gaza between 7th October and 31st December.
And the report that we presented today summarises the findings of our investigation.
But because the investigation itself is so vast and so detailed, we accompanied the summary by two conference room papers that set out the details.
And I do encourage you to look at those between you and me.
I could see that some of the intervenors in the interactive dialogue in the room had clearly not looked at the details because there was some criticism that we had not investigated sexual violence sufficiently.
What I like to emphasise is that our report represents the United Nations first in depth investigation of the events that took place on and since 7th October 23.
It was based on interviews with victims and witnesses conducted remotely and during a mission to Turkey and Egypt.
It's based on thousands of open source items which we had verified through advanced forensic analysis with the help of the UN wide experts and various departments.
So really a collaborative effort.
We received hundreds of submissions.
So I always emphasise there is such interest out there in people reaching out to us, especially since we are being denied access into Israel to see victims and families who have a right to have their voices and stories recorded at the United Nations.
So I welcome the hundreds of submissions that we are receiving.
When we make a call for submissions, we rely on satellite imagery and forensic medical reports.
Israel has obstructed the Commission's investigations and prevented its access not only to Israel and Gaza, but to the occupied Palestinian territory.
So it's true that our work in the collection, in the investigation, collection and safeguarding of evidence has been Hanford.
It's not what we would like to do, which is go and talk, go to the ground and talk to witnesses ourselves.
In the eight months since 7th October, 10s of thousands of children, women and men have been killed and injured.
Palestinians, Israelis and citizens of other states, thousands of Palestinians have been detained and are being held incommunicado, and 120 Israeli hostages are still held in Gaza.
So the enormity of this tragedy does overwhelm us.
We are deeply disturbed by the immense human suffering and we call for an immediate cessation of hostilities.
We also call for all Member States to support ongoing accountability processes.
We welcome the statements made by several countries in support of our report and the mandate, calling for a ceasefire and calling for accountability for violations and crimes.
We were dismayed by statements questioning our mandates once again and calling into question our findings.
But both Kirsty Doughty and I still have an opportunity to respond to some of these interventions.
So we are here then with the press before we can complete our work in the Council.
Thank you, Todd.
Thank.
You, Chris, did you have any remarks?
I would like just to say a few personal things before we start rather than canvassing the report.
And nothing has referred to the fact that the enormity of this tragedy overwhelms us.
And and it does profoundly.
It's completely understandable how deeply traumatic the events on and since the 7th of October have been for Jewish people in Israel and the diaspora around the world and for Palestinian people and the Palestinian diaspora.
For Palestinians, they've experienced 70 or 80 years of dispossession, occupation, human rights violation, and this has now come.
On top of that.
For Jewish people, the experience of millennia of persecution is immediate and direct.
I'm neither Palestinian nor am I Jewish, and I have not had those experiences.
But I I try to understand how deeply traumatising what has occurred is, not only for those directly affected, but for all of those from the communities that have been affected.
This, this work has been overwhelming for us as international United Nations investigators.
As our chair has indicated, it has placed enormous stress on our staff.
It's been a difficult assignment to deal emotionally and empathetically with the overwhelming nature of the events.
Not just the statistics, although they themselves, just reading them lead to a sense of of despair, but also the personal stories.
We have had opportunities to speak directly to people who were directly affected by what has happened and it's their stories that are the most telling and their stories that we need to hear the most.
Significantly, our report barely scratches the surface.
Our reports, there are three of them, almost 200 pages of them, and we barely scratch the surface of what has happened since the 7th of October.
And as Navi has indicated, we will continue that work.
These are the first instalments of, regrettably, a story that is not yet finished.
There are more violations that are committed every single day, and so our work is not finished and our further reports will continue to deal with it.
But I think that in much of the debate about geostrategy and international politics and dysfunctional United Nations agencies, organs like the Security Council and the limitations of courts, we often lose sight of the intensely human dimension of what has occurred.
And I certainly want to refer to that and have that in the forefront of our minds as we have these discussions today.
Thanks.
Thank you, Commissioner Sidoti.
Thank you, Commissioner Pillai.
And now we can open the floor to questions.
We'll take those from the room.
To start on the on the right, we have Reuters.
If you could please identify yourself in the media outlet you work for.
Good afternoon, Emma Farge from Reuters.
Congratulations on your report, which has been praised for how comprehensive it is.
No matter what side of the conflict you're on.
I wanted to ask about your hopes and expectations for what happens next.
Miss Pele, last time we spoke you, you mentioned that you were having conversations with the ICC.
I was wondering if you could characterise the nature of those discussions and have you had any indication that they'll use this evidence?
Thanks very much.
Sure, please.
First, let me say my our mutual respect of admiration for Reuters.
So we do rely on on on your reporting as well.
Thank you.
You know, I'm, I'm particularly concerned about issues that do not receive focus such as 8000 + 8500 people being held in detention, just picked up, held incommunicado.
I grew, I grew up in apartheid South Africa.
That's what I did as defence lawyer the and and and brought out the issue of torture that happens in incommunicado indefinite detention and of course my husband was also detained.
So there is a personal experience there.
So I agree with Chris that we are independent information gatherers.
We put this out there by and we are want to be very fair, address all issues, but we fully appreciate the impact on victims in any conflict.
So that's the importance of this work.
However, my own experience in in apartheid South Africa and the fact that we ended it with quite a bit of litigation in in the apartheid courts is what fills me with hope.
So I want to emphasise that that would be my message to all those suffering in the present conflict to be hopeful.
It's difficult for them to digest that when for all close to 70 years they've been under occupation.
What I'm hopeful and it's true.
I was at the ICC yesterday, ICJ yesterday in another capacity and and so fulfilled in hope that for the very first time the General Assembly has asked the International Court of Justice for it's opinion on whether the occupation itself is unlawful, whether it occupation is the root cause of the conflict, because that's what we're hearing from people on the ground wherever we speak.
So something that had not happened in about 70 years has now happened because of the recommendations made by this Commission and all.
You know, Chris and I are sitting here, but really credit should go to the team that works in extraordinary hours to get this information out.
So that's one aspect that the ICJ is presently deliberating on, whether the occupation itself is unlawful.
And secondly, what are the responsibilities of states that support this unlawful activity?
With the ICC?
We welcome our own efforts in trying to reach out to the prosecutor.
It took a number of efforts, I assure you we didn't get a give up.
But I think eventually when he saw us, he realised the value that we can provide in that we have.
We are the only UN body with the investigative mandate.
In fact, when we go back into the Human Rights Council, I'm going to say to the members of the Human Rights Council what an important thing they did by giving us this expanded mandate, which means although there's so much calls for investigation and set up a Commission of inquiry, we are, we were already there.
People appreciated that.
And when we made a request for information, the information pours into us.
We have the full cooperation inside the United Nations, as I said in my report.
So with forensic investigation, satellite tracking, we, we, we really have reliable information.
So just to conclude, we have a memorandum of understanding with the prosecutor of the ICC.
We've now furnished them with many, many tranches of information.
As of 28th May, the Commission has shared more than 7000 open source items with the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.
And this is information that has BeenVerified, you know, and I've learnt lots of new words to geolocated where it happens.
Yeah, we, we link one video piece to another great effort and we've also shared more than 2000 open source items with the government of South Africa because that's the channel to bring it before the ICJ proceeding.
We will continue to furnish further information to them as we gather the information.
So thank you for your question.
I hope I've addressed it.
Thank you, Commissioner.
OK.
Another question from the 2nd row far left.
Thank you, Miss Pillay, for this briefing.
Stefan Bisa from the town newspaper, you did mention in your introduction that you didn't address it sufficiently, the sexual violence issue.
Could you elaborate, elaborate a little bit on that?
And my second question is.
You did talk about the.
Link between the your report and what could be done with the ICCICJ.
What specifically you know, in what terms could this report be very useful for the ICC and ICJ?
Thank you very much.
So Steven, I was quoting what the Ambassador of Israel and the Ambassador of Palestine said.
In the whole, they both seem to think we didn't investigate sufficiently the violations that they are aware of.
Well, our investigation must necessarily be Hanford when we're not allowed there.
And I put it like this, that by not giving us access to Gaza, Israel and Palestine, they are denying the victims on the ground there from getting their voices, their authentic voices heard.
So we will continue to pursue that.
I feel really bolstered by the fact that the International Court of Justice in the South Africa application as that as one of the key orders is to allow access to the UNS investigation team because everyone realises you have to have reliable information for courts to act upon it.
You know, as as United Nations **** Commissioner for Human Rights for six years, we we supported the commissions and I often felt that the important work was not being recognised.
So I was very pleased.
I'm now serving as ad hoc judge in the ICJ on the Myanmar matter and I could see the importance of the Myanmar report, the information they collected.
And based on that experience of mine, I am fairly certain that all parties, not only South Africa, but other parties who are joining in that application will be looking to our report.
And so I readily acknowledge that it's not what we had hoped to do.
We would would have done a much direr job.
Chris went to Turkey and Egypt and spoke with a number of victims.
So you see they are very willing to come to us.
It's much better if we could go to them.
And also to access those in detention, the hostages, their families.
We, we do want to report on the treatment of hostages and their health conditions.
Very, very important.
So that's it.
There's a complaint of not sufficient investigation.
We would like to address that.
And I think that our reports will be relied on, particularly by the International Criminal Court.
They need evidence.
And as you know, the authorities in Israel have declared as terrorist groups some of the NGOs there who had announced that they would be providing information and cooperating with the ICC.
So just for that statement, some of them have now been rendered out of action.
So just to say that, you know, with all security in place, we are engaged with people with information.
Thank you.
Thank you, Commissioner.
We'll take a question in the back on the right.
Please go ahead.
Yes, hi.
Thank you.
Anya Spitrou from AFP in Geneva.
I have a, could you speak up a little?
Bit yes do.
You hear me?
Yes.
If you could speak up a little bit.
OK, Yeah, all good.
So I'm I'm Espirito from AFP in Geneva.
I have a question.
The family of hostages are are.
Telling us that the.
Human rights of of the hostages in Gaza are on their view, are counting very little to the to the eyes of the UN.
They think that there is a double standard.
So I wanted to ask you.
What do you think of those accusations?
Thank you.
Perhaps I couldn't respond to that, not in relation to the UN, because I don't speak for the UN, but I can in relation to the Commission of Inquiry.
We've made it clear in this report that this is only the beginning.
And I I said that in my opening comments.
In the report we dealt with the treatment of Israeli hostages during the course of their abduction and taking to Gaza.
We have not at that.
We could not at that stage look beyond that.
But in in future reports, hopefully when we report to the General Assembly, but it will depend on how much information we have, we will be dealing with the treatment of all hostages, detainees, prisoners, both by the de facto authorities in Gaza and by the Israeli authorities in Israel.
Not only were we unable in this report to investigate the 124 hostages in Gaza, we were unable to investigate the condition of the 8 to 10,000 prisoners in Israeli prisons as well.
So that that is very much on our agenda.
But one thing I would emphasise in saying that is the importance of access to information.
We cannot report if we don't have the information.
There are hostages that have been released.
We would like very much to talk to them when it's appropriate to do so, taking into account their their physical and psychological conditions.
I mean our, our first rule in evidence collecting is do no harm.
So at an appropriate time for them, we want to talk to them.
We want to find out what happened and that's going to require the cooperation of the Israeli government.
And if, if we can't do it adequately, it will because it will be because we have been obstructed in our capacity to collect evidence.
So we want to do it.
We are collecting evidence already.
We are not ready yet to report.
We hope to be able to do so soon, but our ability to do so will depend upon the evidence we can collect.
Thank you.
Let's take one question online first from Lawrence Ciero from the Swiss News Agency.
Please go ahead.
Yeah, Thank you for taking my question.
If I read the report correctly, you mentioned the word genocide once when you talk about the hate speeches that might incite to to to genocide in the in future reports.
Do you?
Plan to.
Assess whether some of all of the 8 criterias for genocide are met in the current situation.
Or do you precisely consider that it's it's it's a decision as it is a decision that has to be made by the court.
It's going to be only the the work.
Of.
ICJ and ICC, thank you.
I think both of us would like to say something about this.
Yeah.
You know, that's a very good question, Lauren, because as the judge on the Rwanda tribunal who delivered the world's first judgement on genocide, I tended to always say you cannot label something genocide until a court finds it so.
But since then, you know, since I'm no longer sitting as a judge there, I realised that how then are you going to track events leading up to genocide, indications of genocide, plausible indications of genocide.
We are now strengthened because the there is the provisional order decision by the ICJI think that empowers strengthens us to do look in terms of genocide.
Many, many people are concerned about this.
They do consider genocide as the most serious offence and why aren't we dealing with.
I would also say that I have some constraints in the fact that our mandate comes from the Human Rights Council and they have not put genocide into our mandate.
But but as I say, I've I've since changed my mind.
I'll work closely with our team to follow whether the elements of genocide are being shown here in this conflict.
And I'd like to answer by just referring to the investigative methodology.
I mean, when, when you conduct an investigation like this, you don't start out by saying I plan to deal with genocide or I plan to deal with war crimes.
The, the starting point is the collection of facts, evidence, and then on the basis of that evidence forming conclusions as to what occurred and then on the basis of those conclusions applying the relevant law and coming to a legal analysis and decision.
So we don't plan to do anything in relation to that.
We plan to look at issues, but if the issue of genocide is an issue that needs to be addressed because of the facts that we find, then we'll have to consider whether we do it or not.
And I put that that last qualification on it because it is before the court at the moment.
And we, we're also quite conscious of the fact that only three months ago the Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories in her annual report dealt extensively with the issue of genocide.
And when there are more issues than we can possibly deal with arising from what has happened over the last eight months, there's not much point in US delving intensively into questions that other UN independent mechanisms have looked at.
We, we have not dealt with so many issues or yet.
So my, my answer would be we don't plan that way.
We will collect evidence, we will make factual findings.
We will decide what the applicable law is to be considered in the context of them.
And if that takes us to genocide and the and the discussion of genocide, then we'll discuss it.
Thank you.
All right, let's take a question from the back of the room.
Please go ahead.
Thank you.
Musa Haci Al Mayori TVI have a question about the role of third party parties in this tragedy.
The parties that supply Israel with the weapons like the big bumps, 2000 LB.
They, the Commission spoke about that this morning.
How you see this role?
There's something mentioned in your report about that.
Thank you.
We have included that in our first report to the General Assembly, where that was October 23, where we identified as the root cause of the conflict.
That's part of our mandate, identify what's the root cause of the mandate.
And we just based on all the evidence we gathered and the, the law that we analyse, international law said the root cause is the occupation because it's been there in perpetuity and it must be, in our view, it's unlawful.
And we also said an opinion should be sought from the International Court of Justice on the legality, lawfulness of the occupation.
And secondly, the responsibility of states who support that endeavour.
So I'm happy that our recommendation has been turned into Aga resolution and now before the ICJ.
So we'll be very much aware that again and again, thousands of people are telling us that had it not been for the help of powerful countries, Israel would not have been able to carry out this perpetual occupation as aggressively as it has.
And I'll just add one thing, and that is to refer to a decision taken by the Human Rights Council in March.
The Council has specifically asked us, authorised us to look at the question of arms transfer to Israel and to report on that at the June session of the Council next year, provided we have the resources to do so.
We will be doing that.
I, I should indicate too, though it wasn't necessary to have that specific resolution.
Our, our existing terms of reference, we're wide enough to cover this as well as broader issues as Navi has said it about third party, third state obligations.
But our existing mandate could have covered arms transfers to Israel and it also covers arms transfers to Palestinian armed groups.
But we've been specifically asked by the Council to look at this question and report next June and we will be endeavouring to do so.
Thank you.
Let's take a question now from The New York Times.
Yeah, thank you.
You don't address in this report the number of deaths of journalists and medical workers.
And I'm wondering if you have reached or you've made any determination on those issues yet or when if you're going to sort of come and deal with that in in, in future reports.
A second question is, does the scale of destruction and the number of civilian casualties provides you with a sufficient legal basis to make a determination about crimes against humanity?
Because when we're talking about the bombing, we've heard from Israel that it only targets military targets and people engaged directly in hostilities.
And we're trying to reconcile that statement and Israel's constant representation of the IDF as the most moral army in the world with the counterclaims that, you know, this is an indiscriminate bombardment creating unnecessary civilian casualties.
Thank you.
Yeah, no, thank you for that question.
We've, of course, deeply concerned about journalists, medical staff.
At least 273 aid workers were killed, including 197 UN staff.
So we're gathering the statistics.
We did deal in some detail with the killing of Shereen Akhla with forensic in our last report.
You know, we, we, we have, we're sitting with so much information.
The team is gathering this information.
But we stuck with this word limit that the UN fixes, Yeah, of 10,000 words.
I assure you that we care about those issues.
We we have the statistics and we will definitely address them.
19 hospitals out of service, 17 hospitals partially functional.
I'm we also concerned about universities because at one time I spent a week in one of those universities at Al Haq in Palestine, and now that's raised to the ground, University's raised to the ground.
So thank you for drawing our attention to that.
We're not going to leave it.
It's how to fit this in into our big teams, but it definitely falls there.
We will be doing that.
These statistics on the number of killed are crucial for us and for the ICC to determine the element of widespread and systematic if you want to reach a conclusion that crimes against humanity have been violated.
We said that in Rwanda tribunal, the very first decision.
Now the Rome Statute actually says you have to look whether there was a policy decision taken as well to establish that it was widespread and systematic.
Statistics then count, even though we said in the ICTR decision that a single ****** could, could constitute genocide, depending on the context and the intention is the special intent fulfilled on the evidence.
The special intention is to destroy in whole or in part a particular group.
That's genocide, crimes against humanity.
It has to be widespread and systematic.
The information, the details we have on the numbers that are killed Hampi, to me they appear to fit the definition of widespread and systematic that has been found by international courts so far.
So we we think our information gathering is of crucial importance not only for us to determine what crimes have been committed, but the information will be relied on by the two international courts who are who are receiving information from.
I may not have mentioned that we also sharing information with the government of South Africa.
So it goes before the ICJ and we can do that.
The UN practise, you may or may not know is you don't share any information.
You keep that very close book here, be very discreet about it.
But we have a mandate that orders us to share the information with judicial institutions, with the institutions that are working on on judicial investigations, prosecutions and so on.
Two quick points on on the question of journalists, I should add to what Navi has said.
We we have a long list, in fact we have a very long list of issues that we've not yet been able to cover and the killings of journalists is one of those.
And, and a question associated with that is whether there is evidence that journalists are being deliberately targeted for killing.
We discussed that issue already, as Navi has said, in relation to the killing of Shereen Aboukle, But that that is something that we may look at, but we haven't yet had a, a firm decision as to what the issues are that we'll be considering in the October reports.
You you mentioned and the, the, the Israeli army is the most moral army in the world.
I mean this, this is something that is said repeatedly by the the current Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu.
On one recent occasion, he walked it back a bit and he said one of the most moral armies in the world.
Now, I, I, I don't have the expertise and I don't have the authority to make assessments of morality.
Netanyahu may, but, but I don't.
So, you know, I don't know whether it's one of the most moral armies in the world or not, but but what I do have expertise in and what I do have an authority to do is make assessments of criminal conduct.
And we've done that in relation to the recent events.
And you can see that in the report.
And the only conclusion you can draw is that the Israeli army is one of the most criminal armies in the world.
But I'll leave morality to Netanyahu to determine.
Thank you, commissioner.
Let's go next to Associated Press Jamie Kitten, please go ahead.
Thank you, Todd, and thank you, Mr Dorothy and Madame Pele.
Israeli authorities, if you miss kind of a lose to what you're just talking about.
Israeli authorities of course been critical of your work and you've already mentioned the lack of cooperation from their government.
I think we can all recognise the difficulty that you face as investigators and your staff.
What, if any, communication have you had with or do you expect with the Israeli government in light of this lack of commemoration?
And then if I could just add in another question, you mentioned that ICJ may be looking into whether the occupation is the root cause of this conflict.
Would you be able to say, based on the information that you've unearthed for this report, that at least for this specific part of the conflict, because there of course, have been a number of conflicts between Palestinians and God and and Israelis over the earth.
This specific conflict was initiated by Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas.
The argument from Palestinians is that they've suffered so long they have to react.
With your back against the wall, you have to react.
The commission's task is different.
We've been mandated to see who's to see if there's any violations of international law.
So you cannot commit an unlawful act and and injure and **** civilians, all that are by cake hostages.
So we're very clear that those were violations and they're committing crimes and they must be prosecuted.
But that is the argument that most people think is right.
And and, you know, especially in my country fighting against apartheid, yes.
So Mandela, Nelson Mandela was classified as a terrorist, including by United States until he was freed.
And they had to quickly lift that terrorist tag so he could join the ticker parade in in on New York streets.
And everybody embraced him overnight as a freedom fighter.
So one person's freedom fighter could be another terrorist.
But you know, we adhere to the law.
You cannot **** civilians.
You have to protect them with this occupation.
Based on all the information we're gathering, it's pretty stark to us.
There's a very clear intention of forcible dislocation of people just to force them out.
And we read the those instructions.
People from the north of Gaza move South and suddenly they get attacked in the South.
We read all those contrary instructions as pointing to an attitude of not caring for the lives, destruction and dislocation.
That's what I would say there, that this particular conflict, yes, has brought out sharply the issue of occupation itself as the root cause.
Chris.
I'd like to focus on your phrase specific act.
International Criminal law is based upon accountability for specific acts.
So each war crime is a specific act.
Each crime against humanity has to be widespread or systematic, but it is made-up of specific acts and so criminal responsibility is based on specific acts.
But trying to say that starting and finishing is based on a specific act is an impossible task.
The secretary general famously said last October that that.
What had occurred on the 7th of October did not occur in a vacuum.
And and that's that's something that in our report, we have tried to to understand.
This is a war that's been going on for almost a century.
There has never been a time of complete peace during that century.
There has only been variations in the level of violence.
What we have seen from the 7th of October is an increase in the level of violence, a more intensive period of hostilities, and we have to understand that context to understand the specific acts that have occurred.
But understanding is not justification.
Understanding doesn't mean that the Commission of a war crime or the Commission of a crime of against humanity is under any circumstances justifiable.
But we've got to understand why this has occurred if we are interested in stopping it from happening again.
And that that that to me is the key point here.
This has happened time and time and time again, and this is the worst ever.
This is the highest death toll ever in this protracted period of warfare.
And there must be accountability for every specific act of criminality.
But if we're going to stop it in the future, we also have to address the question of the context in which it has occurred.
Sorry, Jamie, I didn't answer your question about yeah, how many times we've communicated with Israel.
Yes, many, many times.
They don't respond, so I can't say they declined to see us.
No, they simply do not respond.
But they've made many statements saying they will not cooperate with this Commission that we biassed and so on.
But we've addressed these communications in the most respectful way, the most recent being our communication to them to comply with the order, the specific order issued by the ICJ to allow the COI access into Israel.
And I thought that that would be taken seriously.
This is an order of court.
In fact, we're busy thinking now, what next?
When there's an order of the ICJ that's not being complied with, who do we take it to?
So no answer to our most recent communication.
And can I finish, though, with a note of hope today?
This morning we saw the first occasion on which the Government of Israel engaged with this Commission in the Human Rights Council, the first occasion where Israel has been represented in the Council at a time of the Commission's reporting and responded to the Commission's report.
And for me, that indicates a very significant development that is still to be tested, but a development in in hoping that the Government of Israel will engage with us.
The fact that the person who represented the State of Israel was the mother of a hostage is also extremely important.
You know, that's, that was the first time we've had an opportunity to talk and hear directly face to face from one of the family members of hostages.
And that's what we wanted.
We wanted to and, and we hope desperately that we can have further contact with Ms Gunan and members of the family and hostages who have been released.
We have asked repeatedly for that.
We have called for it in public statements.
The only thing standing between that occurring and us being able to gather the evidence is the obstruction coming from the state of Israel.
So I hope today we have seen a positive development and that this is a sign of a willingness, a, a, a greater level of willingness on the part of the state of Israel to engage with our investigations.
Thank you.
We, I think we had another question from Reuters, if I'm allowed to follow up.
Yes, please.
Given how resource intensive your work is, I imagine it is given the length of the reports and and the number of footnotes and geolocations and so on.
I'm just wondering, have you found yourself coming up against any obstacles with funding given the situation right now with the UN And are you, if not, are you concerned about that going forward?
Thank you.
You know I should let press answer that see where he could wrench out the whole part of his answer.
So we have now had our mandates extended 2 important additions 1 is investigator the settler violence identify the perpetrators with a view to prosecution and the other is the transfer of arms military.
You know, that second matter is already before the International Court of Justice brought by South Africa and Venezuela, Yeah, against Germany.
So those two matters are before them.
These are expensive mandates and we are absolutely struggling for funds.
Anybody hearing the small number of staff we are and the expense extensive reports we produced would be really amazed.
And and you know, I personally am concerned about how far we pushing colleagues in the office, for instance, watching the video material, just watching some of it affected me deeply.
So how much worse for them as they do this day in and out.
We do need the support of member States and the media to ensure that a serious Commission such as this is properly funded.
You know, sometimes Commission can be set up for failure if it's not properly funded.
You know, I've been asked a similar question like this in my own country in South Africa.
I assure you people were very surprised when they heard that the commissioners don't get paid.
You know, we volunteer to do this because in South Africa it's a rather attractive, well paid job to be a commissioner.
Chris.
I just agree.
OK.
Thank you.
Do we have any more questions from the room?
OK, Nick, please go ahead.
Yeah, I just wonder if you could elaborate a little bit on what is the information that you shared with the government of South Africa?
What is the scope and detail of that?
That and also in the findings of your summary report, you say you've identified senior figures in Hamas and in the Israeli military government who you consider responsible for violations.
I wonder if that is information that you are also sharing with other judicial bodies.
Thank you.
So firstly, we only shared with South African material concerning Gaza because that's the essence of their application.
We, we served, shared as much as we could, but with all the protection issues in place, we have to protect witnesses, identity.
So although we are in a position to share names not only with South Africa, but if the ICC requests that and they follow all the measures we put in place to protect identity of witnesses, we could do that.
But this far, we haven't.
I'd look at our legal adviser there who knows more about this.
We have not shared names yet.
Yes.
So she agrees with me.
We haven't, but it may.
Welcome to that.
You know, there are all kinds of reasons why you don't name people until they indicted.
It happens in every national judicial system as well.
You have to.
They have rights, the right presumption of innocence.
We have to guard against all that.
But we could, when the time comes, and we're ready to do so, share names with the precautions in place, Chris.
I, I just had a, a brief note relating to the, the different nature of the processes in the ICC and the ICJ.
I mean the International Criminal Court deals with individual criminal accountability and the prosecutor is the investigator, has an investigative wing.
The material we provide to the ICC is supplementary to their own investigations and most of them, I think at this stage all the material we have provided is open source material.
We have absolutely fantastic expertise in digital forensic analysis and it seems the ICC doesn't.
And so it's that kind of material, these thousands of pieces of evidence that Navi referred to.
And that's essentially what we're sharing as well with South Africa under a request from from South Africa.
It's not identifying material about individuals.
The International Court of Justice is not concerned with individual criminal accountability.
It deals with state responsibility in, in this case under the Genocide Convention.
It does not have its own independent investigative wing.
It relies on the parties to a case to produce evidence in a quasi adversarial style.
If, if the government of Israel is the defendant asked us for this information, we would provide it.
It's not identifying information.
It doesn't place people at risk.
But the authority for us under our mandate from the Human Rights Council is to facilitate mechanisms of international accountability and national accountability too, under universal jurisdiction that are undertaken by properly constituted courts and tribunals.
So if the courts and tribunals are properly constituted, independent, operate in accordance with the rule of law, all that kind of stuff, we have authority to share information, but the information that we share is open source information which largely they are incapable of collecting and analysing themselves.
And so it's a very important supplement.
Thank you.
Commissioner, do we have any more questions from the OK one in the back?
Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you.
Just a a quick clarification, I just wanted.
To to ask you if.
You have already asked or if you will ask the Israeli authorities to, to meet with families of hostages or former hostages that.
Are now free.
I, I didn't I'm not sure if I will understood if you have already asked or not.
Thank you.
That responds to my point.
So I'll just indicate the answer is, is yes.
We have asked repeatedly to be able to visit Israel.
We have asked for cooperation from the Israeli authorities for them to provide any evidence that they have.
They could provide witness statements to us as well.
We want any form of assistance that we can get.
The most important is the ability to go there and to meet witnesses and to interview them.
But to give you one example of the opposite occurring, we reached out to medical staff who had been involved in dealing with both the injured people and bodies after 7 of October and wanted to be able to speak with them, to hear from them what they, what they did and what they saw.
And the Israeli government issued a directive that they were not to speak with us or have any contact with us.
So, so far from having cooperation, what we have encountered is obstruction.
OK, thank you.
If there are no more questions from the room and we don't, I don't see any online that brings this press conference to a close.
Thank you all for joining us and have a good day.