The statement by OHCHR Sunday is the latest in a string of warnings from UN agencies about the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, where Israeli military operations have intensified in recent weeks following a year of bombardment that has killed more than 42,500 people and left swathes of the territory in ruins.
Since October 6, the Israeli military has made life in northern Gaza “impossible for Palestinians,” many of whom were already facing starvation and repeated displacement, OHCHR said.
“While the Israeli military has demanded that all civilians leave north Gaza, it has continued to relentlessly bomb and attack the area, especially in and around Jabalya Camp,” it said.
The manner of the Israeli hostilities, “may be causing the destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza’s northernmost governate through death and displacement”, OHCHR added.
“This is particularly the case around Jabalya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun.”
OHCHR noted provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice in January that stated Israel “must take all measures within its power” to prevent “genocide in relation to Palestinians in Gaza”.
The warning came after at least 87 people were killed and more than 40 injured in an Israeli strike on Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, according to the enclave’s ministry of health.
The UN’s special coordinator for the peace process in the Middle East, Tor Wennesland, said in a statement, “The nightmare in Gaza is intensifying. Horrifying scenes are unfolding in the northern Strip amidst conflict, relentless Israeli strikes and an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis.”
The UN official stressed that “civilians must be protected wherever they are”.
Israel launched its renewed military operation in northern Gaza after claiming it had seen signs of Hamas regrouping there, despite a year of heavy fighting and widespread bombardment there.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the north of the enclave face starvation, and the latest Israeli incursion has left hundreds dead, according to Gazan officials.
Israel has continued its offensive on Gaza following a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas last year, despite a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.
More than 42,600 people have since been killed, mostly women and children, and nearly 99,800 injured, according to local health authorities.
The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of Gaza amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.
Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said that in the Gaza Strip, “the collective shame of the century continues unabated and unstopped, in defiance of every norm of international law”.
Writing on X, Albanese stated that Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave have been abandoned and subjected to Israeli summary executions, mass forced displacements, and other egregious abuses.
Albanese called it “a disgraceful testament to our global failure to protect basic human rights”.
“The United Nations, once a believed beacon of hope and a force for peace, [is] crumbling under the weight of this shame – and the pressure of the inaction or complicity of its most powerful member states,” she added.
