Daily Times

Lawmakers and human rights (HR) activists told the international community on Friday that damning war crimes were enough evidence to impose economic and defence sanctions on Israel for unleashing the reign of terror against innocent Palestinians.

Talking to APP, Special Assistant on Human Rights Mushaal Hussein Mullick said that war crimes and genocide were taking place in the Palestinian territory, regretting that nobody was punishing Israel for its crimes. She said the perpetrators of war crimes should be prosecuted. Mushaal said the entire Muslim Ummah is aggrieved and concerned over the deteriorating situation in the Middle East. She said reports suggest that about one hundred Palestinian children are being butchered by the Israeli state on daily basis. Demanding immediate ceasefire, the Special Assistant demanded the international community that humanitarian aid should be provided to the Palestinians.

She said the international human rights organisations should also be allowed access to the Palestinian territory to assess the ground situation. Mushaal Mullick said the people of Pakistan and Kashmir stand by their Palestinian brothers and sisters. She said that the importance, amid the painful situation is of preserving the lives of all civilians. It also demanded an end to the military escalation by lifting of the siege on the Gaza Strip, and contributing urgently to the entry of relief and humanitarian aid for civilians.

Former lawmaker, senator Sehar Kamran strongly condemned the Israeli indiscriminate attacks, oppression and killings of innocent civilians, adding Israeli bombing on hospitals and civilian population is enough evidence to impose war crimes on Israel. She urged the international community to take strict defence action against Israeli barbarianism and demanded economic and defence sanctions on Israel. Kamran strongly condemned horrific crimes committed by the Israeli military against the Palestinians, adding genocide of Palestinians by Israeli forces is intolerable for the whole Musim world. Israel and its military forces, the occupying power, bears full responsibility for the fate of civilians in the Gaza Strip, while the real tragedy they are subjected to under bombardment, siege, and starvation, without electricity, food, or clean water, are being forced to abandon their homes, she underscored.

She denounced Israel for its policy of indiscriminate collective punishment that it applies in a flagrant violation of both international law and international humanitarian law, as well as its legal responsibilities as an occupying power, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. The Amnesty International (AI) in its recent documented report on Friday submitted unlawful Israeli attacks, including indiscriminate attacks, which caused mass civilian casualties and must be investigated as war crimes as Israeli forces continue to intensify their organised genocide-assault on the occupied Gaza Strip. The organization spoke to survivors and eyewitnesses, analysed satellite imagery, and verified photos and videos to investigate air bombardments carried out by Israeli forces between 7 and 12 October, which caused horrific destruction, and in some cases wiped out entire families.

Here the organisation presents an in-depth analysis of its findings in five of these unlawful attacks. In each of these cases, Israeli attacks violated international humanitarian law, including by failing to take feasible precautions to spare civilians, or by carrying out indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives, or by carrying out attacks that may have been directed against civilian objects, it reveals.

Since Oct 7, Israeli forces have launched thousands of air bombardments in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 3,793 people, mostly civilians, including more than 1,500 children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. Approximately 12,500 have been injured and more than 1,000 bodies are still trapped beneath the rubble, Amnesty quotes in its report. In Israel, more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, have been killed and some 3,300 others were injured, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health after armed groups from the Gaza Strip launched an unprecedented attack against Israel on Oct 7, Amnesty International said.

They fired indiscriminate rockets and sent fighters into southern Israel who committed war crimes including deliberately killing civilians and hostage-taking. The Israeli military says that fighters also took more than 200 civilian hostages and military captives back to the Gaza Strip. Likewise, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in an extraordinary meeting in Jeddah on Wednesday termed the attack on the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, strongly rejecting the Israeli claims that it was not behind the bombing.

The extraordinary meeting of the OIC Executive Committee was held in Jaeddah on Wednesday, the same day when US President Biden was in Israel for showing solidarity with the Jewish state, and his country vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have condemned the Israeli atrocities. To rub the salt on the Palestinians wounds, Biden endorsed Israeli claims that its forces did not bomb the hospital. But the OIC meeting co-chaired by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia challenged the Israeli and US version and squarely blamed Tel Aviv for the brutal attack. Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani represented Pakistan at the urgent open-ended OIC meeting of the Executive Committee, while strongly condemning the Israeli atrocities. Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity, he said.