The condemnation comes after Palestinian authorities reported finding hundreds of bodies in mass graves at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis this week after it was abandoned by Israeli troops.
Bodies were also reported at the Al-Shifa medical site following an Israeli special forces operation.
The Kingdom’s Foreign Ministry stressed that the failure of the international community to hold Israel accountable for violating international law will only result in more violations and the exacerbation of human tragedies and destruction.
It renewed the Kingdom’s demand that the international community assume its responsibility toward stopping Israeli attacks on civilians in the Gaza Strip and holding it accountable for the massacres that it has committed there.
UN rights chief Volker Turk said earlier on Tuesday he was “horrified” by the mass grave reports at Gaza hospitals.South African President Cyril Ramaphosa accused Israel of war crimes and acts “tantamount to genocide” in Gaza during a virtual meeting Tuesday of leaders of developing countries, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.
Ramaphosa also condemned Hamas for its attack on Israeli civilians that sparked the war in Gaza and said both sides were guilty of violating international law.
“The collective punishment of Palestinian civilians through the unlawful use of force by Israel is a war crime,” Ramaphosa said at the start of the meeting of leaders and top diplomats from the BRICS bloc of countries. “The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food and water to the residents of Gaza is tantamount to genocide.”
“In its attacks on civilians and by taking hostages, Hamas has also violated international law and must be held accountable for these actions,” Ramaphosa said.
Putin and Xi struck more cautious notes, calling for a cease-fire and the release of civilian hostages but not launching the same level of criticism of either side as Ramaphosa.
Also joining the meeting were leaders and officials from fellow BRICS members Brazil and India, and from Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, which are set to join the bloc in January.
Arab and Muslim leaders have condemned Israeli forces' "barbaric" actions in Gaza but declined to approve punitive economic and political steps against the country over its war crimes.
The outcome of a joint summit in the Saudi capital of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on Saturday highlighted regional divisions over how to respond to the war even as fears mount that it could draw in other countries.
The final declaration rejected Israeli claims that it is acting in "self-defence" and demanded that the United Nations Security Council adopt "a decisive and binding resolution" to halt Israel's "aggression".
It also called for an end to weapons sales to Israel and dismissed out of hand any future political resolution to the conflict that would keep Gaza separate from the occupied West Bank.
Saudi Arabia's Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who before the war was considering establishing formal diplomatic ties with Israel, told the summit he "holds the occupation (Israeli) authorities responsible for the crimes committed against the Palestinian people."
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, on his first trip to Saudi Arabia since the two countries mended ties in March, said Islamic nations should designate the Israeli army a "terrorist organisation" for its conduct in Gaza.
Türkiye's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said "It is a shame that Western countries, which always talk about human rights and freedoms, remain silent in the face of the ongoing massacres in Palestine".
Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, similarly decried "double standards" in the world's response to the war, saying Israel was getting a pass on violations of international law.
In a statement issued from Gaza, Hamas called on summit participants to expel Israeli ambassadors, form a legal commission to try "Israeli war criminals" and create a reconstruction fund for the territory.
Some countries, including Algeria and Lebanon, proposed responding to the devastation in Gaza by threatening to disrupt oil supplies to Israel and its allies as well as severing the economic and diplomatic ties that some Arab League nations have with Israel, the diplomats said.
However, at least three countries - including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which normalised ties with Israel in 2020 - rejected the proposal, according to the diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The lack of consensus was no big surprise, said Rabha Saif Allam, a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs at the Cairo Center for Strategic Studies.
Differences between Washington's Arab allies and countries closer to Iran "can't be erased overnight," Allam said.
Israel and its main backer the United States have so far rebuffed demands for a ceasefire, a position that drew heavy criticism on Saturday.
In its annual report published Thursday, New York-based Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of war crimes and says many governments were expressing "selective outrage" over atrocities committed in the conflict in Gaza.
The report analyses the human rights situation in nearly 100 countries over the past 12 months, describing 2023 as a "formidable year" for human rights suppression and wartime atrocities.
Israel has said Hamas-led militants tortured and killed 1,200 people in their cross-border attack on October 7, including dozens of women and children.
"The October 7 attacks by Hamas-led fighters on Israel were a terrifying assault on civilians… Many countries quickly and justifiably condemned these horrific acts," the HRW report says. "Israel's government responded by cutting water and electricity to Gaza's 2.3 million civilians and blocking the entry of all but a trickle of fuel, food, and humanitarian aid – a form of collective punishment that is a war crime. The Israeli military ordered more than a million people in Gaza to evacuate their homes and bombarded densely populated areas with heavy weapons, killing thousands of civilians."
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has said more than 23,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7 — an estimated 70% of them women and children.
Human Rights Watch says the response from Israel's Western allies amounted to "selective outrage." "Many of the governments that condemned Hamas' war crimes have been reserved in responding to those by the Israeli government," says the report.
Lama Fakih, the Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report, told VOA that the entire system of human rights is being undermined.
"What we are calling for is a principled commitment to upholding human rights, no matter who the perpetrator is and no matter who the victim is," Fakih said.
The report warns that governments, such as Russia and China, are seeking to "weaponize this weakened legitimacy to reshape the rules-based order to strip it of human rights values and undermine the system that could hold them to account for their countless abuses.
While meeting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Israel is doing its "…utmost, under extremely complicated circumstances on the ground, to make sure that there will be no unintended consequences and no civilian casualties."
"We are alerting, we are calling, we are showing, we are sending leaflets, we are using all the means that international law enables us to move out people, so that we can unravel this huge city of terror underneath, in people's homes, living rooms, bedrooms, mosques, and shops and schools," Herzog told reporters.
In recent weeks, Washington has increasingly urged Israel to make greater efforts to protect Palestinian civilians.
"We know that facing an enemy that embeds itself among civilians, who hides in and fires from schools, from hospitals makes this incredibly challenging. But the daily toll on civilians in Gaza, particularly on children, is far too high," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Tel Aviv.
In the days following its attack on southern Israel, Hamas denied it was targeting civilians.
"We abide to Islamic ethics and morals and we were never thinking to attack civilians. But I think it is open confrontation now… our fight is with the soldiers and settlers and against the occupation," Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad told Britain's Channel 4 News on October 7.
However, Israel has shown extensive evidence that Hamas militants deliberately tortured, raped and killed civilians, including women and children, in the October attack. More than 100 Israeli hostages are still being held by Hamas in Gaza
The report says 2023 was marked by "tremendous human suffering" in many parts of the world.
Russia's war on Ukraine continued to take a devastating toll. "Throughout the year, Russian forces committed war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine. They carried out indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks that killed and severely injured civilians and destroyed vital infrastructure and objects of cultural and historical significance," says the report.
The report also highlights the suffering caused by conflict in Sudan, where an internal power struggle "unleashed fighting that resulted in massive abuses against civilians, notably in the Darfur region."
The report says gross human rights abuses continue unabated in Myanmar, where the military junta continues its deadly campaign against ethnic minority groups.
In the Sahel region, Human Rights Watch says militant groups and counterterrorist forces regularly commit atrocities.
Additionally, the report highlights the persecution of women under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
HRW also accuses several countries, including India, Rwanda and China, of targeting their nationals living abroad — often political dissidents — or their families back home.
Human Rights Watch praises institutions that have stood up for human rights, such as the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over accusations that Moscow is forcibly transferring Ukrainian children to its territory.
It also highlights a September ruling by Brazil's Supreme Court upholding Indigenous peoples' rights to their traditional lands.
"These victories highlight the tremendous power of independent, rights-respecting and inclusive institutions and of civil society to challenge those who wield political power to serve the public interest and chart a rights-respecting path forward," says the report.
