Beyza Binnur Dönmez
04 January 2024•Update: 05 January 2024
GENEVA
The international community "must pressure" Israel to end its “genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip” and reveal the whereabouts of detainees, a human rights monitor said on Thursday.
In a statement, the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that it has received numerous reports of Palestinians being subjected to "torture, abuse and extrajudicial executions."
The group said that an investigation reportedly opened by Israeli military police last Sunday into the alleged killing of a Palestinian prisoner by an Israeli soldier who was supposed to be guarding him "is not an isolated case."
The monitor said that it has received multiple testimonies regarding the Israeli army's “killing of dozens of Palestinian detainees” and “extrajudicial executions, mainly in the Gaza strip.”
Several Palestinians have been "tortured to death" in Israeli army detention camps, it added.
The human rights monitor also said that it received hundreds of reports regarding Palestinians going missing in Gaza.
"It is suspected that these people were taken into custody directly from their homes or from shelter centres during raids by Israeli forces, following Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza; dozens of them have been subjected to arbitrary and extrajudicial executions," it said.
These executions, the group said, are part of a pattern of "widespread killings and field executions" carried out by the Israeli army during military operations and raids on homes and shelters.
Red Cross 'could be involved in covering up' Israel's crimes
The Euro-Med recalled the incident in which Israeli forces handed over dozens of bodies to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) without any information on their identities or details of their detention.
According to the rights monitor, some of these bodies belonged to Palestinians who were detained by the Israeli army due to physical evidence of severe torture.
"Euro-Med Monitor called on the International Committee of the Red Cross to assume its responsibilities, stressing that—given the role the Committee is playing—it could be involved in covering up the horrific crimes being committed by the Israeli army," it said.
It also called on ICRC to lead an international campaign "to ensure that it is allowed to visit all Palestinian detainees in order to fulfil its obligations under the Geneva Conventions, which include looking for missing persons and informing relatives about their whereabouts, plus facilitating family communications and reunification."
It said that preliminary estimates suggest that more than 3,000 Palestinians, including 200 women and young girls, have been detained by Israeli forces.
It called for immediate action to end the “arbitrary detention and forced disappearance” of hundreds of Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip.
Israel launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Palestinian resistance group Hamas on Oct. 7.
At least 22,438 Palestinians have since been killed and 57,614 others injured, according to Gaza’s health authorities, while nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.
The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave's infrastructure damaged or destroyed, and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine.
