The footage coming from the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza proves that Israel aims to intentionally and systematically exterminate the Palestinian people, the Foreign Ministry said Monday.
The ministry’s statement, published after the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the hospital after two weeks, harshly criticized Israel for its war crimes in the blockaded Palestinian enclave.
“The crimes committed by the Israeli authorities over the past six months are among the greatest barbarities in human history,” the ministry said, adding that the international community is obliged to stop Israel, which ignores international law and poses a threat to peace and stability.
The ministry also said that the perpetrators of these crimes will stand trial and will be remembered as a disgrace to humanity.
The statement continued by saying that the recent U.N. Security Council resolution on the Gaza cease-fire and the additional measures announced by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) need to be implemented immediately.
The Israeli military has been criticized for recklessly endangering civilians and decimating a health sector already overwhelmed with war-wounded. Palestinians say Israeli troops forcibly evacuated homes near Al-Shifa in downtown Gaza City and forced hundreds of residents to march south.
Video footage circulating online showed heavily damaged and charred buildings, mounds of dirt that had been churned up by bulldozers and patients on stretchers in darkened corridors.
Nearly 32,800 Palestinians have since been killed and 75,300 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Israel has imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.
The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the U.N.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which on Thursday asked Israel to do more to prevent famine in Gaza.
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