(Cairo, October 18, 2023)
The Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR) strongly condemns and denounces the Israeli bombing of the Ahly Baptist Hospital in the Gaza Strip, which killed hundreds of Palestinian citizens and hundreds of children and women, who took the hospital as a shelter believing that it was a safe place.
Ms. Nehad Abuelkomsan, ECWR’s chairwoman, confirms that what Israel has been doing over the past few days is a crime against humanity, as Israel has violated all international conventions and treaties pertaining to wars and preventing attacks on civilians.
She also said ‘What Israel is doing is violating the Geneva Conventions, their additional protocols, and international humanitarian law. Even wars – If it is permissible to describe what Israel is doing as a war- have limits and rules, and attacking civilians, women and children is a war crime that requires punishment. War is not about bombing residential towers, hospitals, and civilian places, and exposing the lives of hundreds of civilians, women, and children to danger.’
According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article (6) defines Genocide as: ‘’For the purpose of this Statute, “genocide” means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part….’’
And Article (7) in the Rome Statute defines the ‘Crimes against humanity’ as ‘1. For the purpose of this Statute, “crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack: (a) Murder; (b) Extermination.’
‘For the purpose of paragraph 1: (a) “Attack directed against any civilian population” means a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts referred to in paragraph 1 against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack; (b) “Extermination” includes the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population;’
As for what Israel has been doing over the past ten days, cutting off basic means of life for the residents of Gaza and bombing civilian places and hospitals, it is a clear violation of all international conventions and treaties, which were drawn up with the aim of protecting civilians, women, and children, and it exposes Israel to international sanctions.
Mrs. Abuelkomsan calls for the international community, the United Nations, and the International Criminal Court to intervene immediately to stop this aggression against children, women and Palestinian civilians, and to force Israel to abide by conventions and treaties to protect civilians.
She also demands the necessity of holding accountable those who committed these crimes, which claimed the lives of hundreds of Palestinian civilians.
