Amnesty International released a report on 5 December saying there is “sufficient” evidence that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in its war on the Gaza Strip.
“Research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip,” the report said.
Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said the report gives evidence that Israel has committed acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention.
“These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” she said.
The report notes the situation in northern Gaza, where the besieged Palestinian population faces constant displacement and relentless attacks, as well as starvation and severe restriction of desperately needed aid.
It highlights that Israel has repeatedly ignored and disregarded countless international warnings and three legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate action to prevent genocidal actions in Gaza.
It also says the continued recurrence of Israel’s actions, public statements by Israeli officials, the number of casualties, and the amount of destruction since the war started all point to genocide.
“Taking into account the pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid, and unlawful military occupation in which these acts have been committed, we could find only one reasonable conclusion: Israel’s intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, whether in parallel with, or as a means to achieve, its military goal of destroying Hamas,” Callamard said.
The report added that international law strictly states that a perpetrator does not need to succeed in their actions to destroy the entirety of a certain group for genocide to have been committed.
Numerous statements by government officials revealing a clear intent to commit genocide have been compiled over the past year.
“Until we see hundreds of thousands fleeing Gaza, the IDF has not achieved its mission,” Israel’s Education Minister Yoav Kisch said in October last year. At least 100,000 Palestinians have now been expelled from northern Gaza as part of Israel’s unofficial implementation of the Generals’ Plan – which aims to kill or expel those remaining in the north of the strip. Northern Gaza has become uninhabitable.
Israel has subjected 90 percent of the Gaza Strip’s population to its forced evacuation orders – a clear war crime, according to a 154-page report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on 14 November.
Israeli troops forcibly displaced thousands of Palestinian civilians from the last shelters in Gaza’s northern city of Beit Lahia on 4 December.
Israel also continues to commit brutal massacres across the strip. At least 20 Palestinians were killed when Israeli airstrikes hit the Al-Mawasi ‘safe zone’ area west of Khan Yunis city in south Gaza on Wednesday.
Throughout the war, Israeli forces have filmed themselves committing war crimes and calling for the extermination of the people of Gaza.
