Attachments
Human Rights Council
Fifty sixth session
18 June–12 July 2024
Agenda item 2
Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development
Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel*
*The present report was submitted to the conference services for processing after the deadline so as to include the most recent information.
Summary
In this report, submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution S-30/1, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including East Jerusalem, and Israel examines violations of international human rights law (IHRL), international humanitarian law (IHL) and possible international crimes committed by all parties between 7 October and 31 December 2023.
Introduction and methodology
1. This report summarises the Commission’s factual and legal findings on attacks carried out on 7 October 2023 on civilian targets and military outposts in Israel including rocket and mortar attacks. It also summarises factual and legal findings on Israeli military operations and attacks in the OPT, principally the Gaza Strip, focusing on the period from 7 October to 31 December 2023, examining the imposition of a total siege, evacuation and displacement of civilians and attacks on residential buildings and refugee camps. This report also includes some incidents that took place after 31 December 2023 where they were egregious and deemed representative of a trend. Two conference room papers accompany this report, presenting the Commission's detailed findings on both situations. 1 This report is an overview of those papers and should be read in conjunction with them.
2. The Commission sent the Government of Israel six requests for information and access and one request for information to the State of Palestine. The State of Palestine provided extensive comments. No response was received from Israel.
3. The Commission began gathering information on the morning of October 7, as events unfolded on the ground, and applied the same methodology and standard of proof previously adopted for its investigations. 2 Thousands of open-source items have been collected to date and more than 350 items received following two open calls for submissions issued on 20 October and 1 December 2023.3 The open-source material was forensically collected in accordance with international standards on the preservation of web-based content and rules of admissibility of digital evidence. Where needed, the collected open-source material was verified primarily through comprehensive crossreferencing with a broad and varied collection of reputable sources and complemented by advanced forensic examination, including visual media authentication, geolocation and chronolocation analysis, metadata extraction and face recognition.
4. The Commission conducted remote interviews with victims and witnesses and consulted multiple sources of information. It conducted a mission to Türkiye and Egypt from 28 February to 8 March 2024 to gather first-hand accounts from survivors and witnesses. It met with more than 70 victims and witnesses, more than two thirds of them women.
5. The Commission faced several challenges in its investigation. In relation to Gaza, the Commission’s ability to reach out to victims and witnesses was limited, due to the continuing fighting on the ground and major communications disruption. In relation to Israel, Israeli officials repeatedly publicly announced Israel’s refusal to cooperate with the Commission’s investigation.4 Israeli officials reportedly barred medical professionals and others from being in contact with the Commission after it approached medical professionals in Israel in December 2023. 5
6. Both the 7 October attack in Israel and Israel’s subsequent military operation in Gaza must be seen in context. These events were preceded by decades of violence, unlawful occupation and Israel’s denial of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, manifested in continuous forced displacement, dispossession, exploitation of natural resources, blockade, settlement construction and expansion, and systematic discrimination and oppression of the Palestinian people.
II. Legal framework
7. The Commission laid out the applicable international legal framework in the OPT and in Israel in its four previous reports and in its terms of reference. The Commission noted the OPT, including East Jerusalem and Gaza, and the occupied Syrian Golan are currently under belligerent occupation by Israel, to which IHL applies concurrently with IHRL.