Amnesty International said that it had monitored new evidence of Israel committing war crimes in Gaza, where civilians in schools and hospitals were directly bombed without warning, but it stressed that prosecuting Israel before international courts is difficult.

According to a member of the organization, Sami Abdel Moneim, he said yesterday that the organization concerned with defending human rights had received “calls for help from victims regarding the bombing of the shelters they were in without warning, which violates international laws and the rules of war.”

The organization said in a report issued yesterday that there is evidence that Israel committed “war crimes” in Gaza that resulted in the killing of 46 Palestinian civilians, stressing the need to investigate them.

It noted that it had documented, as part of its ongoing investigations into violations of the laws of war, two cases “that can be considered an example of Israeli practices in Gaza, in which Israeli raids killed 46 civilians, including 20 children.” The oldest victim was an 80-year-old woman, while the youngest victim was no more than three months old. “These two attacks must be investigated as war crimes.”

It explained that the two attacks, which took place on October 19 and 20, hit a church building where hundreds of displaced civilians had taken refuge in Gaza City, and a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Abdel Moneim said: “Unfortunately, Israel is not a signatory to the convention regulating the International Criminal Court, and therefore prosecuting it is difficult.”

He considered that Israel's history in wars "testifies that it has never respected the rules of engagement or the rules stipulated in international law, such as respecting places of worship, schools, hospitals, or places where civilians resort to preserve their lives."

But he stressed that “matters will not become clear, nor will they be fully documented, to submit a file against the occupation forces to international justice until after the ceasefire.”

Abdel Moneim also revealed that the organization has evidence that “Israel is causing the greatest amount of destruction and injury to children and women, to instill terror on the residents of Gaza, urging them to move and leave the areas in which they live, and forcibly displacing them.”

He added that during the recent Israeli forces raids on hospitals, “there was no confrontation between the army and Palestinians. On the contrary, most of those present were civilians, which refutes the Israeli army’s narrative that there is a war. On the contrary, what we observed is that Israel is fighting civilians.”

According to Abdel Moneim, “Failure to implement the rules of engagement regulating wars is the biggest attack used by Israel against the people of Gaza. Since the beginning of the war, no direct confrontation has been observed.”

Abdel Moneim stressed that “the role of human rights organizations ends by submitting reports and exposing violations that occur on the ground. There are bodies entrusted with working and making decisions after that, such as the offices of special rapporteurs at the United Nations.”

The Amnesty International report attributed to Erika Guevara Rosas, the organization’s director of global research, advocacy and policy activities, saying that Israel’s “deadly and unlawful attacks are part of a documented pattern of disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians, and demonstrate the devastating impact of the unprecedented Israeli military attack that has not leave any safe place in Gaza, regardless of where civilians live or seek shelter."

It urged the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to “take immediate concrete measures to accelerate the investigation into war crimes and other crimes under international law, which opened in 2021.”