Groups should ‘suspend the transfer of arms to warring parties’ given risk of war crimes, Human Rights Watch says

Israel’s allies and supporters of Palestinian paramilitaries should suspend arms supplies to Israel and Gaza since continuing transfers could involve grave abuses of civilians on both sides, Human Rights Watch has said.

“Providing weapons that knowingly and significantly would contribute to unlawful attacks can make those providing them complicit in war crimes,” the human rights advocacy group argued in a statement published on its website.

HRW declared that “Israel and Palestinian armed groups have committed serious abuses amounting to war crimes during the current hostilities”. These, it said, began on October 7th with the raid into Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian armed factions which killed 1,400 and took hostage more than 200, according to Israel. These actions and the firing by Palestinian groups of thousands of rockets into Israeli communities amounted to war crimes, HRW said..

By cutting “electricity, fuel, food and water to Gaza’s population” of 2.2 million and severely curtailing humanitarian aid, Israel had committed “acts of collective punishment”, banned in international law, HRW reported.

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“Civilians are being punished and killed at a scale unprecedented in recent history in Israel and Palestine,” stated HRW chief advocacy officer Bruno Stagno. The Gaza health ministry has said more than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed.

HRW said Israel has indiscriminately used explosive weapons and white phosphorus shells in densely populated areas, “reducing entire [apartment] blocks and large parts of neighbourhoods to rubble.” White phosphorus is “an incendiary material that burns human flesh and can cause lifelong suffering.”

While conducting attacks on the whole of Gaza, Israel has ordered more than a million northern residents to evacuate to the south to escape military operations in the north. “This order risks mass forced displacement, a war crime,” HRW stated.

Leaders of Israel and Palestinian paramilitaries have “made statements indicating that serious abuses by their forces will continue”, HRW said. It quoted an Israeli government minister who said “‘there is no reason’ to provide humanitarian aid to the population until Israel forces ‘eliminate’ Hamas.” A Hamas military spokesman cited by HRW “threatened to broadcast ‘with sound and video [the] execution of one of our enemy’s civilian hostages’”.

HRW said “the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany should suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel so long as its forces commit widespread, serious abuses amounting to war crimes against Palestinian civilians with impunity”. It added that Iran and other governments should cease arming Palestinian armed groups which “systematically commit attacks amounting to war crimes against Israeli civilians.”

The HRW report also outlined how US president Joe Biden had requested $14.3 billion for fresh arms to Israel in addition to the $3.8 billion in US military aid Israel receives annually. It added that since 2015 Britain had licensed the sale of $539 million worth of arms to Israel, Canada had exported weapons worth $33 million in 2021 and Germany had licensed $916 million in arms sales to Israel between 2015-2019.

HRW said Hamas announced in January 2022 that Iran provided US$70 million in military assistance but “did not specify the period of time this support was provided”.

Mr Stagno asked, “How many more civilian lives must be lost, how much more must civilians suffer as a result of war crimes before countries supplying weapons to Israel and Palestinian armed groups pull the plug and avoid complicity in these atrocities?”