Amnesty report concludes Israel's actions against Palestinians in Gaza constitute genocide
Israeli government rejects genocide accusations, calls report 'entirely false'
A new report from Amnesty International found that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in its nearly 14-month-long campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 44,000 people and displaced most of the enclave's population.
The report, published Wednesday, said the ongoing assault on Gaza met the legal threshold for the crime of genocide after Amnesty spent months analyzing incidents and statements of Israeli officials.
"Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza," Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard said in a news release on Wednesday.
"It continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance 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."
Applying these laws has been a struggle. Other genocidal acts have followed since the convention's creation — but while it may be easy to apply a label, it's not so easy to prove in law.
Israel, which has repeatedly rejected any allegation of genocide, called the report "entirely false" in a statement posted Thursday by its Foreign Affairs Ministry on X, formerly Twitter. It said Israel has respected international law and has a right to defend itself after the cross-border Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
Callamard said while Israel argues that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas, she said: "Genocidal intent can coexist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel's sole intent."
The report noted that there is no casualty threshold in proving the international crime of genocide.
Palestinians face 'slow and calculated death': report
The U.K.-based human rights group said it analyzed the overall pattern of Israel's conduct in Gaza between Oct. 7, 2023 and early July.
To establish intent, Amnesty said it reviewed over 100 statements by Israeli government and military officials and others since the start of the war that "dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified genocidal acts or other crimes against them."
It also analyzed 15 airstrikes from the start of the war until April that killed at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and wounded hundreds of other people. It said it found no evidence that any of the strikes were directed at military objectives.
It said 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, while they were sleeping.
"Israel's 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 wiping out entire multi-generational families," the report said.
Amnesty said Israel has forcibly displaced 90 per cent of Gaza's population of roughly 2.2 million, "many of them multiple times, into ever-shrinking, ever-changing pockets of land that lacked basic infrastructure, forcing people to live in conditions that exposed them to a slow and calculated death."
'This is genocide. It must 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 tallies.
Gaza's Health Ministry says that Israel's military campaign since then has killed more than 44,400 Palestinians and injured countless others. The Palestinian civil emergency service estimates that the bodies of 10,000 people may be trapped under the rubble, which would take the reported death toll to more than 50,000.
Palestinian and UN officials say there are no safe areas left in Gaza, a tiny, densely populated and heavily built-up coastal territory. Most of Gaza's population has been internally displaced, some as many as 10 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 believes Amnesty's allegations are "unfounded."
Amnesty International Israel, a local branch of the organization that was not involved in the report, also disputed the allegation of genocide in a rare public airing of internal dissent at the rights group, saying the report had not proved genocidal intent beyond a reasonable doubt.
However, the local branch said there were nevertheless suspicions that Israel had committed "widespread violations of international law" that "may amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing."
But Amnesty International said its Israeli branch is "undergoing deep internal divisions," with a series of resignations amid accusations that Palestinians in the group had been silenced. Those accusations are "unacceptable and will be handled through Amnesty's international democratic processes." But the group defended its report overall.
'No doubt' genocide being committed: Amnesty
At hearings earlier this year before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where Israel faces accusations of genocide brought by South Africa, lawyers for the country denied the charge. They argued that there was no genocidal intent and no genocide in Israel's conduct of the war, where the stated objective 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."
"There is a genocide being committed. There is no doubt, not one doubt in our mind after six months of in-depth, focused research," she told reporters.
Amnesty said it concluded that Israel and the Israeli military committed at least three of the five acts banned by the 1948 Genocide Convention, namely killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a protected group's physical destruction, including demolishing vital infrastructure, and preventing the delivery of food, medicine and other aid.
These acts were done with the intent required by the convention, according to Amnesty, which said it reviewed more than 100 statements from Israeli officials.
Israel's military accuses Hamas of planting militants within populated neighbourhoods for operational cover, which Hamas denies, while accusing Israel of indiscriminate strikes.
ICC continues investigation into alleged crimes
Callamard said Amnesty had not set out to prove genocide, but after reviewing the evidence and statements collectively, she said it was the only possible conclusion.
"The assertion that Israel's war in Gaza aims solely to dismantle Hamas and not to physically destroy Palestinians as a national and ethnic group, that assertion simply does not stand up to scrutiny," she said.
Amnesty urged the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court — which last month issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister for war crimes and crimes against humanity directed at 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 is said by the Israeli military to have been killed in July. The ICC noted it can't determine whether or not Dief is alive.
Amnesty has previously joined other major human rights groups in accusing Israel of the international crime of apartheid, saying that for decades it has systematically denied Palestinians basic rights in the territories under its control. Israel has also denied those allegations.
The office of the prosecutor said in a statement that it is continuing investigations into alleged crimes committed in the Palestinian territories and is unable to provide further comment.
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With files from Reuters, The Associated Press