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JERUSALEM: Israel on Tuesday said it “categorically rejects” a probe by UN investigators which determined that Israel has since October 2023 been committing “genocide” in Gaza.
“Israel categorically rejects this distorted and false report and calls for the immediate abolition of this Commission of Inquiry,” a statement from the foreign ministry said.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI), which does not speak on behalf of the world body, found that “genocide is occurring in Gaza and is continuing to occur,” commission chief Navi Pillay said.
The investigators concluded that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with President Isaac Herzog and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, have “incited the commission of genocide” in the Palestinian territory.
The Israeli foreign ministry accused the authors of the report of “serving as Hamas proxies,” saying they were “notorious for their openly antisemitic positions.”
“The report relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods, laundered and repeated by others,” it added.
The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations also categorically rejected the findings of a Commission of Inquiry that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza as a “libelous rant.”
The report, which also found that top Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu incited genocidal acts, is “scandalous” and “fake,” Daniel Meron said in Geneva.
The commission concluded that Israeli authorities and forces had since October 2023 committed “four of the five genocidal acts” listed in the 1948 Genocide Convention.
These are “killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”
Nearly 65,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.
The vast majority of Gazans have been displaced at least once, with tens of thousands more fleeing again as Israel ramps up efforts to seize control of Gaza City, where the UN has declared a full-blown famine.
The war was triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

JERUSALEM: After a night of heavy airstrikes, the Israeli military announced Tuesday that its expanded operation in Gaza City “to destroy Hamas’ military infrastructure” has begun and warned residents to move south.

Israel’s Arabic language spokesperson Avichay Adree announced the expansion of Israel’s operation on X, after a night of heavy strikes against northern Gaza that killed at least 20 people.

Israel has been warning the famine-stricken Gaza City residents to evacuate for the past month ahead of the operation but many have said they are unable to evacuate due to overcrowding in Gaza’s south and the high price of transport.

Earlier in the day, Defense Minister Israel Katz said that “Gaza is burning” as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio left Israel for Qatar, where he planned to meet with officials there still incensed over Israel’s strike last week that killed five Hamas members and a local security official.

While Arab and Muslim nations denounced the strike at a summit Monday, they stopped short of any major action targeting Israel, highlighting the challenge of diplomatically pressuring any change in Israel’s conduct in the grinding Israel-Hamas war.

Rubio, speaking to journalists before his departure, suggested the offensive on Gaza City had begun.

“We think we have a very short window of time in which a deal can happen,” Rubio said. “We don’t have months anymore, and we probably have days and maybe a few weeks so it’s a key moment – an important moment.”

“Our preference, our No. 1 choice, is that this ends through a negotiated settlement," he added, while acknowledging the dangers an intensified military campaign posed to Gaza.

“The only thing worse than a war is a protracted one that goes on forever and ever,” Rubio said. “At some point, this has to end. At some point, Hamas has to be defanged, and we hope it can happen through a negotiation. But I think time, unfortunately, is running out.”

Intensity of strikes in Gaza City grows

After weeks of threatening an expansion of the Israeli military operation in Gaza City, Katz signaled it had begun.

“Gaza is burning,” he said early on Tuesday morning. "The (Israel military) is striking with an iron fist at the terrorist infrastructure and soldiers are fighting heroically to create the conditions for the release of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas. We will not relent and we will not go back – until the completion of the mission.”

The United Nations estimated on Monday that over 220,000 Palestinians have fled northern Gaza over the past month, after the Israeli military warned that all residents should leave Gaza City ahead of the operation. An estimated 1 million Palestinians were living in the region around Gaza City before the evacuation warnings.

At least 20 Palestinians killed in Gaza City

Palestinian residents reported heavy strikes across Gaza City on Tuesday morning.

The city’s Shifa Hospital said it received the bodies of 20 people killed in a strike that hit multiple houses in a western neighborhood, with another 90 wounded arriving at the facility in recent hours.

“A very tough night in Gaza,” Dr. Mohamed Abu Selmiyah, director of Shifa Hospital, said.

“The bombing did not stop for a single moment,” he said. “There are still bodies under the rubble.”

The Israeli military did not respond to immediate requests for comment on the strikes but in the past has accused Hamas of building military infrastructure inside civilian areas, especially in Gaza City.

Families of hostages beg Netanyahu to halt the operation

Overnight, families of the hostages still being held in Gaza gathered outside of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence, pleading with him to stop the Gaza City operation.

Some pitched tents and slept outside his home in protest.

“I have one interest – for this country to wake up and bring back my child along with 47 other hostages, both living and deceased, and to bring our soldiers home," Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is being held in Gaza, shouted outside Netanyahu’s residence.

“If he stops at nothing and sends our precious, brave, heroic soldiers to fight while our hostages are being used as human shields – he is not a worthy prime minister,” Zangauker.

Israel believes around 20 of the 48 hostages still held by the militants in Gaza, including Matan, are alive.

Both Netanyahu and Rubio said on Monday that the only way to end the conflict in Gaza is through the elimination of Hamas and the release of the hostages, setting aside calls for an interim ceasefire in favor of an immediate end to the conflict.

Hamas has said it will only free remaining hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Most of the hostages have since been released in ceasefires brokered in part by Qatar or other deals.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,871 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t say how many were civilians or combatants. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals, says women and children make up around half the dead.