GENEVA, September 16. /TASS/. Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to experts from the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.

The Commission found that Israeli authorities and security forces "committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," namely: murder, causing serious physical or psychological harm, deliberately establishing living conditions designed to bring about the complete or partial destruction of the Palestinian people, and imposing measures intended to prevent births, according to a press release accompanying the Commission's report.

It also concluded that Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and ex-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant incited genocide, and that Israeli authorities failed to take action to punish them for doing so.

Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission, stressed that the international community "cannot stay silent on the genocidal campaign launched by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza." "When clear signs and evidence of genocide emerge, the absence of action to stop it amounts to complicity," Pillay pointed out.

The Commission was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021 to investigate alleged violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law predating the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in May 2021. Its mandate, carried out by three experts, was later expanded to examine the root causes of regional instability and the prolongation of the conflict.