Tuesday, 16 September 2025
Tuesday, 16 September 2025
The Israeli military announced Tuesday that its expanded operation in Gaza City “to destroy Hamas' military infrastructure” has begun and warned that all residents should leave Gaza City.
The announcement by Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee followed defence minister Israel Kataz's statement “Gaza is burning” and further escalated the Israel-Hamas war as any potential ceasefire feels even further out of reach.
After weeks of threatening an expansion of the Israeli military operation in Gaza City, Katz signalled it had begun.
“Gaza is burning,” he said early on Tuesday. "The (Israel military) is striking with an iron fist at the terrorist infrastructure and soldiers are fighting heroically to create the conditions for the release of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas. We will not relent and we will not go back — until the completion of the mission.”
The United Nations estimated on Monday that over 220,000 Palestinians have fled northern Gaza over the past month.
An estimated 1 million Palestinians were living in the region around Gaza City.
Earlier on Tuesday, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry accused Israel of committing a genocide in Gaza and said that top Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had incited these acts. The report also compared the Gaza situation with the Rwanda genocide of 1994.
It cites examples of the scale of the killings, aid blockages, forced displacement and the destruction of a fertility clinic to back up its genocide finding, adding its voice to rights groups and others that have reached the same conclusion. The evidence includes interviews with victims, witnesses, doctors, verified open-source documents and satellite imagery analysis compiled since the war began.
"Genocide is occurring in Gaza," said Navi Pillay, head of the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and a former International Criminal Court judge.
"The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons who have orchestrated a genocidal campaign for almost two years now with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza."
The commission also concluded that statements by Netanyahu and other officials are "direct evidence of genocidal intent." It cites a letter he wrote to Israeli soldiers in November 2023 comparing the Gaza operation to what the commission describes as a "holy war of total annihilation" in the Hebrew Bible.
The report also names Israeli President Isaac Herzog and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
Pillay, who headed a U.N. tribunal for Rwanda where more than 1 million people were killed in 1994, said the situations were comparable. "When I look at the facts in the Rwandan genocide, it's very, very similar to this. You dehumanise your victims. They're animals, and so therefore, without conscience, you can kill them," she said.
Israel's diplomatic mission in Geneva accused the commission of having a political agenda against Israel.
The commission's 72-page legal analysis is the strongest U.N. finding to date but the body is independent and does not officially speak for the United Nations. The U.N. has not yet used the term genocide but is under mounting pressure to do so.
Israel is fighting a genocide case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It rejects such accusations, citing its right to self-defence following the deadly October 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people and resulted in 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
The subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 64,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, while a global hunger monitor says part of it is suffering from famine.
The 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention, adopted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such". To count as genocide, at least one of five acts must have occurred.
