Amnesty: ‘Israel’s’ War in Gaza is A Genocide

The 32-page report examining events in Gaza between October 2023 to July 2024, published on Thursday, found that “Israel” had “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity … unleashed hell” on the strip’s 2.3 million population, noting Hamas’ actions on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war, “do not justify genocide”.

“Israel” has “committed prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction” with the “specific intent to destroy Palestinians” in the territory, the report said.

It marks the first time Amnesty has talked of the crime of genocide during an ongoing conflict, and builds on a March report by the UN special rapporteur for Palestine that concluded “there are reasonable grounds to believe” “Israel” was committing genocide against Palestinians.

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call: this is genocide and it must stop now,” Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary general, said in a news conference on Wednesday.

Amnesty cited the deliberate obstruction of aid and power supplies together with “massive damage, destruction and displacement”, leading to the collapse of water, sanitation, food and healthcare systems, in what it called a “pattern of conduct” within the context of the occupation and blockade of Gaza.

“We did not necessarily start out thinking we would come to this conclusion. We knew there was a risk of genocide, as the international court of justice said,” Budour Hassan, Amnesty’s “Israel” and occupied Palestinian territories researcher, told the Guardian. “When you join the dots together, the totality of the evidence, it is not just violations of international law. This is something deeper.”

The main findings in the report are:

•              The unprecedented scale and magnitude of the military offensive, which has caused death and destruction at a speed and level unmatched in any other 21st-century conflict;

•              Intent to destroy, after considering and discounting arguments such as “Israeli” recklessness and callous disregard for civilian life in the pursuit of Hamas;

•              Killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm in repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, or deliberately indiscriminate attacks; and

•              Inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, such as destroying medical infrastructure, the obstruction of aid, and repeated use of arbitrary and sweeping “evacuation orders” for 90% of the population to unsuitable areas.

As an occupying power, “Israel” is legally obliged to provide for the needs of the occupied population, Kristine Beckerle, an adviser to Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa team, said on Wednesday. She described “Israel’s” May offensive on Rafah, until then the last place of relative safety in the strip, as a major turning point when it came to establishing intent.

“[Israel] had made Rafah the main aid point, and it knew civilians would go there. The ICJ ordered them to stop and they went ahead anyway,” she said. “Rafah was key.”

Amnesty has called on the UN to enforce a ceasefire, impose targeted sanctions on “Israeli” and top Hamas officials, and for western governments such as the US, the UK and Germany to stop providing security assistance and selling arms to “Israel”.

The rights group has also urged the international criminal court, which last month issued arrest warrants for the “Israeli” prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the former War minister Yoav Gallant, to add genocide to the list of war crimes it is investigating.

Finally, it called for the unconditional release of civilian hostages and for “Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups responsible for the crimes committed on 7 October to be held to account”.

The report, You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: “Israel’s” Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, is likely to be met with outrage in “Israel”.

In its conclusion, the report says that Amnesty “recognizes that there is resistance and hesitancy among many in finding genocidal intent when it comes to ‘Israel’s’ conduct in Gaza”, which has “impeded justice and accountability”.

“Amnesty International concedes that identifying genocide in armed conflict is complex and challenging, because of the multiple objectives that may exist simultaneously. Nonetheless, it is critical to recognize genocide, and to insist that war can never excuse it,” it states.

Amnesty said the report was based on fieldwork, interviews with 212 people, including victims, witnesses and healthcare workers in Gaza, analysis of extensive visual and digital evidence, and more than 100 statements from “Israeli” government and military actors it said amounted to “dehumanizing discourse”. It also used video and photo evidence of soldiers committing or celebrating war crimes.

Israel’s acts in Gaza were examined “in their totality, taking into account their recurrence and simultaneous occurrence, and both their immediate impact and their cumulative and mutually reinforcing consequences”, it said. Findings were shared “extensively” on multiple occasions with "Israeli" authorities, the group added, but were not met with responses.