A new Amnesty International report finds Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians during its nearly 14-month campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 44,000 people and displaced most of the enclave's population .
THE reportreleased Wednesday, said the ongoing attack on Gaza met the legal threshold for the crime of genocide after Amnesty spent months analyzing the incidents and statements by Israeli officials.
“Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza,” Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard said in a statement on Wednesday. .
“He has continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the dire humanitarian situation and legally binding decisions by the International Court of Justice ordering Israel to take immediate steps to enable the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. “
The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention created international laws criminalizing genocide, defining it as “the deliberate attempt to erase a national, ethnic, religious or racial group.”
Enforcing these laws has been a struggle. Other acts of genocide have followed since the convention was established – but while it may be easy to put a label on it, it is not so easy to prove it in law.
Israel, which has repeatedly rejected any allegations of genocide, called the information “completely false” in a statement released Thursday by its Foreign Ministry on X, formerly Twitter. He said Israel respected international law and had the right to defend itself following the Hamas cross-border attacks on October 7, 2023.
Callamard said that while Israel claims its actions in Gaza are legal and can be justified by its military objective of eradicating Hamas, she said: “Genocidal intent can coexist with military objectives and must not necessarily be the sole intention of Israel.
The report notes that there is no threshold of victims to prove the international crime of genocide.
Palestinians face 'slow, calculated death': report
The UK-based human rights organization said it analyzed the overall trend of Israel's conduct in Gaza between October 7, 2023 and early July.
To establish intent, Amnesty said it reviewed more than 100 statements made by Israeli government, military officials and others since the start of the war that “dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified acts of genocide or other crimes against them.
Amnesty International has accused the State of Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war in a new report, an allegation Israel has vehemently denied, saying it respected international law.
It also analyzed 15 airstrikes from the start of the war through April, which killed at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and injured hundreds more. He said he found no evidence that the strikes were directed against military targets.
One of the strikes destroyed the Abdelal family home in the southern city of Rafah on April 20, 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 in direct or indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire families spanning several generations,” the report said.
Amnesty said Israel has forcibly moved 90 percent of Gaza's population, or about 2.2 million residents, “many of them repeatedly, to increasingly narrow plots of land and constantly evolving, lacking basic infrastructure, forcing people to live in conditions that exposed them to risk.” a slow and calculated death.
“It’s genocide. This has to stop now'
Israel launched its air and ground war in Gaza after Hamas-led fighters 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 counts.
Gaza's health ministry says the Israeli military campaign has since killed more than 44,400 Palestinians and injured countless others. Palestinian civil emergency services estimate that the bodies of 10,000 people could be trapped under the rubble, bringing the death toll to more than 50,000.
Palestinian and U.N. officials say there are no longer any safe areas in Gaza, a tiny, densely populated and heavily built-up coastal territory. Most of Gaza's population has been internally displaced, some up to ten times.
“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” Callamard said in the report.
The United States, which has provided crucial military aid to Israel, said it believed Amnesty's allegations were “unfounded.”
Amnesty International Israel, a local branch of the organization that was not involved in the report, also disputed the genocide allegations in a rare public airing of internal dissent at the rights group, saying the report had not proven genocidal intent beyond a reasonable doubt.
However, the local branch said there were nonetheless suspicions that Israel had committed “widespread violations of international law” that “may constitute crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.”
But Amnesty International said its Israeli branch was “suffering deep internal divisions”, with a series of resignations amid accusations that Palestinians in the group had been silenced. These accusations are “unacceptable and will be addressed through Amnesty's international democratic processes.” But the group generally defended its report.
“There is no doubt” that genocide is being committed, says Amnesty
HAS audiences Earlier this year, at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where Israel faces charges of genocide brought by South Africa, the country's lawyers denied the accusations. They maintained that there was no genocidal intent or genocide in Israel's conduct of the war, whose stated goal is the eradication of Hamas.
Presenting the Amnesty report to journalists in The Hague, Callamard said the conclusion had not been taken “lightly, politically or preferentially”.
“A genocide is being committed. There is no doubt, no doubt in our minds after six months of thorough and focused research,” she told reporters.
A new report from US-based Human Rights Watch accuses the Israeli military of causing “massive” forced displacement to an extent that amounts to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Israeli government has not yet commented on this report.
Amnesty said it concluded that Israel and the Israeli military had committed at least three of the five acts prohibited by the 1948 Genocide Convention, namely murder, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting conditions of existence calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a protected group. including demolishing vital infrastructure and preventing the delivery of food, medicine and other aid.
These acts were committed with the intent required by the convention, according to Amnesty, which said it reviewed more than 100 statements from Israeli officials.
The Israeli army accuses Hamas of having planted militants in populated neighborhoods for operational cover, which Hamas denies, while accusing Israel of indiscriminate strikes.
ICC continues investigation into alleged crimes
Callamard said Amnesty had not sought to prove genocide, but after collectively reviewing the evidence and statements, it said it was the only possible conclusion.
“The claim that Israel's war in Gaza is aimed solely at dismantling Hamas and not at physically destroying the Palestinians as a national and ethnic group, that claim simply does not stand up to scrutiny,” he said. -she declared.
Amnesty urged the International Criminal Court prosecutor – who published last month arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister for war crimes and crimes against humanity directed against Palestinians in Gaza – to investigate alleged genocide.
An arrest warrant was also issued for Hamas official Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, who the Israeli military said was killed in July. The ICC said it could not determine whether Dief was alive or not.
Amnesty has already joined other major human rights groups in accusing Israel of the international crime of apartheidclaiming that for decades it has systematically denied the basic rights of 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 investigations into alleged crimes committed in the Palestinian territories and was unable to provide further comment.
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