Israel is preventing UN investigators from communicating with witnesses and victims of the Hamas attack on October 7, according to former UN rights director Navi Pillay, who is leading a three-person investigation.
In May 2021, the United Nations Human Rights Council created an extraordinary Commission of Inquiry to investigate suspected violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
“I deplore the fact that people inside Israel who wish to speak to us are being denied that opportunity, because we cannot get access into Israel,” Pillay said in a statement.
The investigation briefed ambassadors at the United Nations in Geneva on its findings, stating that since October 7, it has concentrated on the Gaza conflict between Israel and Hamas.
“So far as the government of Israel is concerned, we have faced not merely a lack of cooperation but active obstruction of our efforts to receive evidence from Israeli witnesses and victims to the events that occurred in southern Israel,” according to Chris Sidoti, one of the three members of the inquiry’s panel of experts.
The Gaza war began on October 7 with Hamas’ offensive on Israel, which killed 1,170 persons, the majority of them were civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
The militants also grabbed approximately 250 hostages, of which Israel thinks that 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 who are assumed dead.
According to the health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, Israel’s retaliatory operation has killed at least 33,843 Palestinians, the majority of whom were women and children.
Appeal for witnesses
Pillay, an 82-year-old retired High Court judge from South Africa, stated that the panel was looking into alleged crimes perpetrated by Hamas as well as Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Sidoti, speaking via video link, stated that the investigation has found it difficult to obtain evidence from a significant number of witnesses.
“I use this opportunity to appeal again both to the government of Israel to cooperate, and to victims and witnesses to the events in southern Israel to contact the commission of inquiry so that we can hear what they have experienced,” the prime minister stated.
Sidoti further stated that the investigators began gathering digital evidence on October 7, some of which has since “disappeared from the internet”.
“If it had not been collected on that day, it would not have been able to be collected,” stated Australia’s former Human Rights Commissioner.
Pillay, who served as a judge on the International Criminal Court and led over the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, stated that the panel exchanged approximately 5,000 papers with the ICC in The Hague between October and December 2023.
The group will report its initial conclusions to the Human Rights Council in June.
In response to the briefing, Israel stated that UN representatives had visited Israel to meet with victims and survivors of the Hamas attacks.
In an AFP statement, the Israeli ambassador said: “The 1,200 people murdered, the women and girls raped, the hostages taken into Gaza, know too well that they will never get any justice or the dignified treatment they deserve from the Commission of Inquiry and its members, who have a track record of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements.”
Miloon Kothari, the commission’s third member, apologized in August 2022 for using the term “Jewish lobby,” which provoked accusations of anti-Semitism from Israel and requests for his resignation.