This photo released on June 23, 2024 shows Israeli troopers operating in the Gaza Strip amid the devastating war.  (By AFP)

United Nations, June 25 (RHC)-- The UN human rights office has decried the Israeli regime’s “lawless behavior” in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank amid a genocidal war and incessant aggression by the regime.  The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued the condemnation in a statement from Geneva.

It singled out for criticism a recent Israeli raid against the al-Shati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, which killed at least 24 Palestinians.  Such “attacks appear to be disproportionate in that they would be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated,” the office said.

Nearly 37,600 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed and over 86,000 others sustained injuries in the Israeli war against the coastal sliver that began on October 7 following a retaliatory operation staged by the territory’s resistance groups.

The UN office also mentioned an incident in the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank, during which Israeli forces had tied an injured Palestinian man to the hood of an armored vehicle, apparently using him as a human shield.

The OHCHR condemned “continued and flagrant violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law binding on Israel as the occupying power.”  “Such actions constitute serious violations of Israel’s obligations under occupation law concerning protected persons and under international human rights law concerning individual rights to life and health, the absolute prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

The UN statement came following one by the European Union, which warned that the crisis in war-torn Gaza had reached “another breaking point.”  The bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič had released the statement on Sunday.

“The delivery of any meaningful humanitarian assistance inside Gaza has become almost impossible and the very fabric of civil society is unraveling,” they had said.

“Starving civilians are resorting to desperate measures to access the limited aid that trickles in.”

Concomitantly with the war, the Israeli regime has been enforcing a near-total siege on Gaza, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory into a trickle.