HRW accuses Israel of 'acts of genocide' over Gaza water access

NEW YORK

Human Rights Watch on Thursday accused Israel of committing "acts of genocide" in the Gaza Strip by damaging water infrastructure and cutting off supplies to civilians, calling on the international community to impose targeted sanctions.

In a new report focused specifically on water, the New York-based rights group said "Israeli authorities intentionally inflicted on the Palestinian population in Gaza 'conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,'" and that this amounted to "acts of genocide."

Israel, however, on Thursday said the HWS report was "full of lies."

"Human Rights Watch is once more spreading its blood libels in order to promote its anti-Israel propoganda... This report is full of lies that are appalling even when compared to HRW's already low standards," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The U.N. on Wednesday reported that Israel has facilitated less than one-third of planned humanitarian aid operations into the Gaza Strip in December.

Citing the Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters that Israeli authorities continue to deny U.N. aid operations to besieged parts of northern Gaza, including Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and areas of Jabalya.

Saying that most U.N. requests have been "denied outright" by Israel since its siege began 10 weeks ago, Dujarric said, "Across the strip, humanitarians continue to face severe access constraints as they try to reach huge numbers of people in need of food, water, shelter, essential and other essentials for them to survive."

"Throughout Gaza, we planned 339 aid movements that required coordination with the Israeli authorities between 1 and 16 December. They facilitated less than a third of those movements," he said.

He noted that "out of 96 such humanitarian movements planned for the first half of December, just 16 were facilitated by the Israeli authorities."