Tel Aviv: The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has condemned the decision of Israel to order a “full siege” of Gaza, and also pleaded with “states with influence” to defuse the situation, Al Jazeera reported.
Turk also condemned “horrifying mass killings by members of Palestinian armed groups” and said the militants’ abduction of hostages was also forbidden under international law.
He condemned Israel’s ban on food and water towards Gaza.
The violence has prompted international declarations of support for Israel, street protests in support of Palestinians, and appeals for an end to the fighting and protection of civilians.
In a statement, Volker Turk pleaded with states with influence to defuse the situation and stressed upholding international and humanitarian law.
“We are faced with an explosive powder keg situation. We know how this plays out, time and time again – the loss of Israeli and Palestinian lives and incalculable suffering inflicted on both communities,” Turk said.
“All parties must respect international humanitarian law. They must immediately cease attacks targeting civilians and attacks expected to cause disproportionate death and injury of civilians or damage to civilian objects,” Al Jazeera quoted Turk as saying.
He further added that sieges that hurt the lives of civilians are “prohibited under international humanitarian law”.
“The world cannot afford more polarisation. We need to find solutions guided by the full respect for international humanitarian law and international human rights law,” he added.
This comes after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that he has ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, Times of Israel reported.
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant said.
“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he added.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes hammered the Gaza Strip neighbourhood on Tuesday, reducing buildings to rubble and sending people scrambling to find safety in the tiny, sealed-off territory as Israel vowed a retaliation for Hamas’ surprise weekend attack that would “reverberate...for generations”.
Aid organisations pleaded for the creation of humanitarian corridors to get aid into Gaza, warning that hospitals overwhelmed with wounded were running out of supplies. Israel has stopped all access of food, fuel and medicines into Gaza, and the sole remaining access from Egypt shut down Tuesday after airstrikes hit near the border crossing.
The war began after Hamas militants stormed into Israel on Saturday, bringing gunbattles to its streets for the first time in decades. At least 1,600 lives have already been claimed on both sides, and perhaps hundreds more. Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza hold more than 150 soldiers and civilians hostage, according to Israel.
The conflict is only expected to escalate. Israel expanded the mobilisation of reservists to 360,000 on Tuesday, according to the country’s media. After days of fighting, Israel’s military said Tuesday morning that it had regained effective control over areas Hamas attacked in its south, and of the Gaza border.
A looming question is whether Israel will launch a ground offensive into Gaza - a 40 km-long (25 mile-long) strip of land wedged among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea that is home to 2.3 million people and has been governed by Hamas since 2007.
The Israeli military said it struck hundreds of targets overnight in Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood, an upscale district that is home to ministries of the Hamas-run government, as well as universities, media organisations and the offices of aid organisations.
After hours of nonstop attacks, residents left their homes at daybreak to find buildings torn in half by airstrikes or reduced to mounds of concrete and rebar. Cars were flattened and trees burned out on residential streets that had been transformed into moonscapes.
The devastation signalled what appeared to be a new Israeli tactic: warning civilians to leave certain areas and then hitting those areas with unprecedented intensity. On Tuesday afternoon, the military warned residents of another nearby neighbourhood to evacuate and move into the centre of Gaza City.
“There is no safe place in Gaza right now, you see decent people being killed every day,” Hasan Jabar, a Gaza journalist, said after three other Palestinian journalists were killed in the Rimal bombardment. “I am genuinely afraid for my life.”
The bombardments and Israel’s threats to topple Hamas sharpened questions about the group’s strategy and objectives. But it is unclear what options it has in the face of the ferocity of Israel’s retaliation and the potential of losing much of its government infrastructure.
Hours after Saturday’s incursion began, a senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri said the group had planned for all possibilities, including “all-out war,” and was ready to suffer “severe blows”.
Desperation has grown among Palestinians, many of whom see nothing to lose under unending Israeli control and increasing settlements in the West Bank, the blockade in Gaza and what they see as the world’s apathy.
Al-Arouri’s comments suggested Hamas expected the fight to spread to the West Bank and possibly for Lebanon’s Hezbollah to open a front in the north. But despite some eruptions of violence, neither has happened on a significant scale, especially amid a heavy Israeli lockdown on West Bank Palestinians.
In hopes of blunting the bombardment, Hamas has threatened to kill one Israeli civilian captive any time Israel targets civilians in their homes in Gaza “without prior warning”.
Israel, in turn, appears determined to crush Hamas no matter the cost.
Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, warned that “this war crime” would not be forgiven.
The militants’ attack stunned Israel with a death toll unseen since the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria - and those deaths happened over a longer period of time. It brought horrific scenes of Hamas militant gunning down civilians in their cars on the road, in streets of towns, and at a music festival attended by thousands in the desert near Gaza, while dragging men, women and children into captivity.
The Israeli military said more than 1,000 people have been killed in Israel. In Gaza and the West Bank, 704 people have been killed, according to authorities there; Israel says hundreds of Hamas fighters are among them. Thousands have been wounded on both sides.
The bodies of roughly 1,500 Hamas militants were found on Israeli territory, the military said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether those numbers overlapped with deaths previously reported by Palestinian authorities.
In Gaza, more than 187,000 people have fled their homes, the UN said, the most since a 2014 air and ground offensive by Israel uprooted about 400,000. The vast majority are sheltering in schools run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. Damage to three water and sanitation sites have cut off services to 400,000 people, the UN said.
On Monday, Israel announced a “complete siege” on the territory, halting deliveries of food, fuel, water, medicines, electricity and other supplies. That leaves the only access in and out through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
But that too was shut down Tuesday after Israeli strikes raised palls of smoke nearby. A day earlier, the Egyptian Red Crescent managed to get in one shipment of medical supplies.
Egyptian officials were talking with Israel and the US, pushing to set up humanitarian corridors in Gaza to deliver aid, an Egyptian official said.
There were negotiations with the Israelis to declare the area around the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza as a “no fire zone,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media.
The UN’s World Health Agency echoed the call for humanitarian corridors. It said that supplies it had pre-positioned for seven hospitals in Gaza have already run out amid the flood of wounded.
“With the number of casualties currently coming in, these hospitals are now running beyond their capacity,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jazarevic told reporters in Geneva. The head of the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said surgical equipment, antibiotics, fuel and other supplies were running out at two hospitals it runs in Gaza as well.
In a briefing Tuesday, army spokesperson Lt Col Richard Hecht suggested Palestinians should try to leave through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
The prospect of an exodus of Gazans into its territory has alarmed Egyptian officials. After Hecht’s comments, the Egyptian state-owned Al-Qahera news channel, which is close to security agencies, quoted an unnamed security official pushing back.
“The occupation is forcing Palestinians to choose between dying under bombardment or leaving their land,” the official was quoted as saying.