Israeli assaults on cultural websites in Palestinian territory quantity to struggle crimes and the crime in opposition to humanity of extermination, an impartial UN investigative physique has concluded in a report launched final week.
The UN Impartial Worldwide Fee of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory together with East Jerusalem and Israel examined assaults on cultural, non secular and academic websites in Gaza, different occupied Palestinian territory and Israel, discovering that within the majority of instances it investigated—every of which it lists—Israeli forces had dedicated struggle crimes.
The report paid particular consideration to heritage websites in Gaza, greater than half of which have been broken or destroyed. The report attributes this staggering statistic to Israel’s “wider marketing campaign of devastation of civilian targets and infrastructure”.
The report targeted on ten non secular and cultural websites in Gaza. These included the bombing of Saint Porphyrius Church, believed to be the third oldest church on this planet; the bombing, bulldozing and looting of Pasha Palace, a 14th-century Mamluk-era landmark and archaeological museum; the bombing of the seventh-century Nice Omari Mosque, the enclave’s largest mosque; and the seizure, burning, bulldozing, and looting of Al Mat’haf Museum, Gaza’s first archaeological museum, which is dwelling to an intensive non-public assortment. The Artwork Newspaper beforehand reported on assaults on all of those websites, which happened between October and December 2023.
Pasha Palace, a 14th-century Mamluk-era landmark and archaeological museum that was severely broken by an Israeli strike in 2024
Photograph: Fadel Al Utol
In its authorized evaluation, the fee concluded that Israeli forces “knew or ought to have identified the places and significance” of Gaza’s outstanding cultural websites and deliberate all navy operations to keep away from them. It additional finds that within the majority of instances investigated—notably these involving demolitions utilizing explosives and bulldozers—Israeli forces dedicated struggle crimes.
These embrace “deliberately directing assaults in opposition to buildings devoted to faith and historic monuments”; “deliberately launching assaults realizing they might trigger injury to civilian objects which might be extreme in relation to the concrete and direct general navy benefit anticipated”; “intensive destruction of property not justified by navy necessity”; and “destroying the enemy’s property with out justification that necessitates such destruction”.
Within the case of the Israeli assault on Saint Porphyrius Church in October 2023, which killed 19 folks, together with ladies and kids, the report discovered that though the incident doubtless resulted from “collateral injury as a consequence of a focusing on error,” it nonetheless constituted a struggle crime.
“In keeping with worldwide regulation, the destruction of cultural heritage is a criminal offense,” Jehad Yasin, the overall director on the Palestinian ministry of tourism and antiquities, tells The Artwork Newspaper. Emphasising the size of the destruction, he references a report printed by the ministry in February 2025, which recorded that 226 of Gaza’s 316 cultural websites had been broken or destroyed.
Yasin, who welcomes the report, says he hopes it is going to compel the worldwide neighborhood to take motion to cease the struggle and the Israeli occupation, and to do extra to guard cultural heritage in Gaza and the West Financial institution. “It is not solely Palestinian cultural heritage, it is a part of humanity’s cultural heritage. So, it is a duty for all to behave,” he says.
The Al Mat’haf Museum, on the coast in northern Gaza Metropolis, has been broken and looted
Photograph: Jawdat Khoudary
He provides that the scenario within the West Financial institution can be deteriorating quickly, and that his crew shouldn’t be permitted by Israel to entry many Palestinian websites.
Settlements on the West Financial institution
The committee additionally examined Israeli insurance policies and assaults within the West Financial institution, together with the institution of settlements in Palestinian World Heritage websites, archaeological excavations of Palestinian websites and their growth into vacationer sights, and proposed Israeli legal guidelines that may switch management of Palestinian cultural and archaeological websites to the Israeli antiquities authority. It discovered these actions to be illegal.
“That is the worst-case situation. That is what we have now been preventing in opposition to—to not get so far,” says Alon Arad, an archaeologist and chief govt officer of Emek Shaveh, an Israeli NGO that works to forestall the politicisation of archaeology within the Israeli-Palestinian context. He believes a sample of illegal choices, insurance policies, and actions—notably beneath Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s present authorities, which Emek Shaveh has documented over time—has led Israel so far.
Nonetheless, he says, all hope shouldn’t be misplaced. “There may be an choice to right our path. Israel ought to embrace the suggestions that the fee has introduced and return to following worldwide regulation—each the humanitarian regulation and legal guidelines relating to cultural properties,” he says. He provides that this may require halting all archaeological and growth tasks within the occupied Palestinian territory and ending the destruction in Gaza.
What does the report counsel ought to occur subsequent?
The highest of the fee’s listing of suggestions for the Israeli authorities is that it “instantly finish the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, stop all new settlement plans and actions, take away all settlers and settlements as quickly as doable in compliance with the [UN’s] Worldwide Courtroom of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion of July 2024 and take away all obstructions to the complete train of the Palestinian folks’s proper to self-determination.”
Israel’s prime minister had rejected the courtroom’s ruling. “The Jewish persons are not occupiers in their very own land—not in our everlasting capital Jerusalem, nor in our ancestral heritage of Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu stated in an announcement. “No determination of lies in The Hague will distort this historic reality, and equally, the legality of Israeli settlements in all elements of our homeland can’t be disputed.”
Among the many different suggestions are requires a right away finish to assaults focusing on cultural, non secular and schooling establishments, websites and personnel; an finish to using cultural and academic websites for navy functions; and the safety of cultural heritage, together with the return of seized artefacts to Palestinian authorities.
The fee additionally recommends that member states adjust to final yr’s ICJ ruling—wherein the courtroom stated Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories violates worldwide regulation—by ceasing “aiding or aiding in violations”, and by exploring “measures to make sure accountability for perpetrators of worldwide crimes, grave human rights violations and abuses in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory”.
Diana Buttu, a global regulation and humanitarian rights legal professional and former authorized adviser to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Palestinian negotiators, tells The Artwork Newspaper that “and not using a shadow of a doubt” the mix of this report, the ICJ ruling, and quite a few different reviews which have “documented Israel’s erasure of Palestinians and Palestinian cultural establishments”—and concluded that the occupation itself is against the law—makes member states’ continued gross sales of weapons and enterprise relations with Israel acts of complicity.
“We’re being suffocated beneath the load of those reviews. [The latest report is] begging for member states to do one thing. It is begging the world to truly do one thing. No one can faux that they did not know any longer,” she says.
The report additionally concluded that Israeli assaults have “successfully destroyed” Gaza’s schooling system and recognized various struggle crimes and the crime in opposition to humanity of extermination. Underneath Article 7(1)(b) of the Rome Statute of the Worldwide Legal Courtroom, extermination is outlined as a criminal offense in opposition to humanity when dedicated as a part of a widespread or systematic assault in opposition to a civilian inhabitants, with data of the assault. It consists of the intentional infliction of situations of life—such because the deprivation of entry to meals and medication—calculated to convey concerning the destruction of a part of a inhabitants.
The report discovered Israeli assaults on some non secular websites and faculties the place civilians had taken refuge amounted to acts per this definition.
Israel’s diplomatic mission dismissed the newest report as “an try to advertise its fictitious narrative of the Gaza struggle”, and proved that its members “care extra about bashing Israel than defending the folks of Gaza,” Reuters reported. Israel disengaged from the Human Rights Council in February, accusing it of bias.
The most recent report additionally documented two assaults in Israel by Palestinian armed teams in October 2023. On 7 October 2023, an artwork gallery in Kibbutz Be’eri was reportedly burned and destroyed, and on 23 October, a rocket hit a museum in Kibbutz Yad Mordechai.
The fee referred to as on the “de facto authorities in Gaza” to halt all indiscriminate firing of rockets, mortars and different munitions in the direction of civilian populations, stop using civilian objects for navy functions, and implement a transparent separation of navy actions from civilian property and areas, in accordance with worldwide humanitarian regulation.
In earlier reviews, the fee discovered that Palestinian “armed teams” dedicated struggle crimes, in addition to violations and abuses of worldwide humanitarian and human rights regulation on 7 October 2023 by killing and abducting Israeli youngsters, noting that the youngsters have been subjected to bodily and emotional mistreatment in the course of the assault and whereas held hostage in Gaza.
The UN fee will current its findings to the Human Rights Councils on 17 June.
