Amnesty report concludes that Israel’s actions against Palestinians in Gaza amount to genocide

A new Amnesty International report has found Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in its nearly 14-month campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 44,000 people and displaced most of the enclave’s population.

The reportAn op-ed published on Wednesday said the ongoing attack on Gaza reached the legal threshold of the crime of genocide after months of analysis by Amnesty of the incidents and statements by Israeli officials.

“Our research reveals that Israel has continued to commit acts of genocide for months, fully aware of the irreversible damage it has caused to Palestinians in Gaza,” Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Calamar said in a news release on Wednesday.

“It continued to do so despite countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and the legally binding decisions of the International Court of Justice, which require Israel to take immediate measures to ensure humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza.”

The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention established international law on genocide, defining it as “the deliberate attempt to destroy a national, ethnic, religious or racial group”.

Enforcing these laws has been a struggle. Other acts of genocide have occurred since the convention was established, but while it may be easy to label, it is not so easy to prove legally.

Israel, which has repeatedly denied any accusations of genocide, called the report “totally false” in a statement its Foreign Ministry posted on Thursday on X, formerly Twitter. It said Israel had respected international law and had the right to defend itself after the cross-border attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

Calamar said that while Israel maintains that its actions in Gaza are legal and can be justified by its military goal of eliminating Hamas, she said, “Genocidal intent can coexist with military goals and does not have to be Israel’s sole intent.”

The report states that there is no victim threshold to prove the international crime of genocide.

Palestinians face ‘slow and calculated death’: report

The UK-based human rights group said it had analyzed the overall pattern of Israeli action in Gaza between October 7 and early July 2023.

To determine intent, Amnesty said it reviewed more than 100 statements by Israeli government and military officials and others since the start of the war that “dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified genocide or other crimes against them.”

It also analyzes 15 airstrikes between the start of the war and April, which killed at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and wounded hundreds of others. It said it found no evidence that any of the strikes were aimed at military targets.

It said one of the strikes on April 20 destroyed the home of the Abdelal family in the southern city of Rafah, killing three generations of Palestinians, including 16 children, as they slept.

“The Israeli military offensive has killed and seriously injured tens of thousands of Palestinians, including thousands of children, many of them in direct or indiscriminate attacks, often destroying entire multi-generational families,” the report said.

Amnesty said Israel has forcibly relocated 90 percent of Gaza’s estimated 2.2 million residents, “many of them multiple times, to ever-shrinking, ever-changing pockets of land that lacked basic infrastructure, forcing people to live in conditions that exposed them to slow and calculated death.”

‘This is genocide. It has to stop now’

Israel launched an air and ground war in Gaza after Hamas-led militants attacked Israeli communities across the border 14 months ago, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli figures.

Gaza’s health ministry says more than 44,400 Palestinians have been killed and countless others injured in Israel’s military campaign since then. The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service estimates that the remains of 10,000 people could be trapped under the rubble, bringing the death toll to more than 50,000.

Palestinian and UN officials say there are no safe zones left in Gaza, a small, densely populated and heavily built-up coastal enclave. Most Gazans have been internally displaced, some as many as 10 times.

“Our damning findings should serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” Kalamar said in the report.

The US, which has provided significant military aid to Israel, said it believed Amnesty’s allegations were “baseless”.

Amnesty International Israel, a local affiliate that was not involved in the report, also disputed the genocide claim in a rare public display of dissent within the rights group, saying the report did not conclusively prove genocidal intent.

However, the local branch said that there are still suspicions that Israel has committed “extensive violations of international law” which “may amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing”.

But Amnesty International said its Israeli branch was “experiencing deep internal divisions”, with several resignations amid accusations that Palestinians had been silenced within the group. These allegations are “unacceptable and will be dealt with in Amnesty International’s democratic processes”. But the group defended its report as a whole.

There is no doubt that genocide is being committed: Amnesty

at hearings Earlier this year, at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where Israel is facing genocide charges brought by South Africa, the country’s lawyers rejected the charge. They argued that there was no genocidal intent in Israel’s conduct of the war, and genocide where the stated goal is the elimination of Hamas.

Presenting Amnesty’s report to journalists in The Hague, Kalamar said the conclusion was not made “lightly, politically or preferentially”.

“There is a genocide going on. There is no doubt, no doubt in our minds after six months of in-depth, focused research,” she told reporters.

Amnesty said it had concluded that Israel and the Israeli military had committed at least three of the five acts prohibited by the 1948 Genocide Convention, namely killing, inflicting grievous bodily or mental harm and deliberately creating living conditions designed to physically harm a protected group. for destruction. including destroying vital infrastructure and disrupting the delivery of food, medicine and other aid.

The actions were carried out with intent under the convention, according to Amnesty, which has reviewed more than 100 statements by Israeli officials.

The Israeli military accuses Hamas of planting fighters in populated areas for operational security, which Hamas denies, while accusing Israel of indiscriminate strikes.

The ICC continues to investigate the alleged crimes

Calamar said Amnesty had not sought to prove genocide, but after a collective review of the evidence and statements, she said that was the only possible conclusion.

“The claim that Israel’s war in Gaza is only aimed at crushing Hamas, not physically destroying the Palestinians as a national and ethnic group, that claim simply does not stand up to scrutiny,” she said.

Amnesty urged the International Criminal Court prosecutor issued last month arrest warrants Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza – to investigate possible genocide.

An arrest warrant was also issued for Hamas official Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, who the Israeli army said was killed in July. The ICC said it could not determine whether Dief was alive.

Amnesty has joined other major human rights groups in the past accusing Israel of the international crime of apartheidsaying that for decades it has systematically denied basic rights to Palestinians in the territories under its control. Israel has also denied the allegations.

The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that it was continuing its investigation into alleged crimes committed in the Palestinian territories and could not comment further.