Human Rights Watch Accuses Israel of “Acts of Genocide” Against Palestinians in Gaza
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused Israel of “acts of genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza by depriving them of adequate water supplies. According to an extensive report, between October 2023 and September 2024, Israeli authorities deprived Palestinians of the minimum quantity of water required for survival in prolonged emergency situations, leading to thousands of deaths and the spread of numerous diseases.
The report found that most or all of the water Palestinians in Gaza have access to is not safe to drink, and that Israel’s actions amount to acts of genocide under the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). HRW stresses that the deprivation of water is leading to the slow deaths of Palestinians in Gaza, including newborn babies whose mothers can’t feed them due to malnourishment and dehydration.
Israel has denied the allegations, with a foreign ministry spokesperson calling the report “full of lies.” However, HRW says that the obstruction of water in Gaza is a deliberate act by Israeli authorities, citing Israel’s obstruction of humanitarian aid, restrictions on the flow of clean water, and “massive” damage to Gaza’s water infrastructure caused by Israeli strikes.
The crisis has fueled diseases in Gaza and caused deaths estimated in the thousands, HRW said. The scale of the devastation caused by a lack of water may likely never be fully understood, the organization warned, due to the decimation of Gaza’s health care system including disease tracking.
Polio, a highly contagious viral disease often caused by insufficient access to safe water and sanitation, is one example of this. WHO testing first discovered the polio virus in samples of sewage taken from overcrowded tents of people displaced by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza in July. On August 16, the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed a case of polio in a 10-month-old child – the first case in Gaza in 25 years.
Bacterial infections like diarrhea have become commonplace in the enclave due to the consumption of contaminated water. Describing the impact of being forced to drink from an unclean well, one man told HRW: “I was getting sick, my kids were vomiting and had diarrhea, and I had diarrhea…This was from the moment we started drinking the (dirty) water.”
The HRW report comes as an Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal remains elusive, although negotiations appear to have taken a more positive turn in recent days.