“Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.”
Amnesty International has concluded in a new report that it has found “sufficient basis” to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
“Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
“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,” she added, following the release of the 296-page report on Thursday, titled ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza’.
“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,” said Callamard.
Nine Months Investigation
Amnesty said the report examines in detail Israel’s violations in Gaza over nine months between October 7, 2023, and early July 2024. A total of 21 people were interviewed, including Palestinian victims and witnesses, local authorities in Gaza, and healthcare workers, conducted fieldwork and analyzed an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery.
The report also analyzed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials as well as official Israeli bodies.
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On multiple occasions, the organization shared its findings with the Israeli authorities but had received no substantive response at the time of publication, said Amnesty.
“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,” said Callarmard. “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 (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza.”
‘Genocidal Statements’
Amnesty said that in order to establish Israel’s “specific intent to physically destroy Palestinians in Gaza,” as such, the organization analyzed the overall pattern of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
It also “reviewed dehumanizing and genocidal statements by Israeli government and military officials, particularly those at the highest levels, and considered the context of Israel’s system of apartheid, its inhumane blockade of Gaza and the unlawful 57-year-old military occupation of the Palestinian territory.”
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Before reaching its conclusion, Amnesty said it “examined Israel’s claims that its military lawfully targeted Hamas and other armed groups throughout Gaza, and that the resulting unprecedented destruction and denial of aid were the outcome of unlawful conduct by Hamas and other armed groups, such as locating fighters among the civilian population or the diversion of aid.
The organization “concluded these claims are not credible.”
It pointed out that many of the unlawful acts documented by the organization were preceded by officials urging their implementation.
Audiovisual ‘Evidence’
The organization “reviewed 102 statements that were issued by Israeli government and military officials and others between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2024 and dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified genocidal acts or other crimes against them.”
Of these, Amnesty identified 22 statements made by senior officials in charge of managing the offensive that “appeared to call for, or justify, genocidal acts, providing direct evidence of genocidal intent.”
“This language was frequently replicated, including by Israeli soldiers on the ground, as evidenced by audiovisual content verified by Amnesty International showing soldiers making calls to ‘erase’ Gaza or to make it uninhabitable, and celebrating the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities,” the investigation found.
Civilians Deliberately Targeted
Amnesty documented “the genocidal acts of killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm” to Palestinians in Gaza by reviewing the results of investigations it conducted into 15 airstrikes between October 7, 2023, and April 20, 2024, that killed at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and wounded hundreds of others.
It “found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective.”
In one cited case, on April 20, 2024, an Israeli air strike destroyed the Abdelal family house in the Al-Jneinah neighborhood in eastern Rafah, killing three generations of Palestinians, including 16 children, while they were sleeping.
“While these represent just a fraction of Israel’s aerial attacks, they are indicative of a broader pattern of repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects or deliberately indiscriminate attacks. The attacks were also conducted in ways designed to cause a very high number of fatalities and injuries among the civilian population,” said Amnesty.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 44,580 Palestinians have been killed, and 105,739 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7, 2023.
‘Devasting Impacts’
The report also documented how Israel “deliberately inflicted conditions of life on Palestinians in Gaza intended to lead, over time, to their destruction.”
“These conditions were imposed through three simultaneous patterns that repeatedly compounded the effect of each other’s devastating impacts,” said Amnesty.
These include “damage to and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure and other objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population; the repeated use of sweeping, arbitrary and confusing mass “evacuation” orders to forcibly displace almost all of Gaza’s population; and the denial and obstruction of the delivery of essential services, humanitarian assistance and other life-saving supplies into and within Gaza.”
Humanitarian Crisis
Amnesty noted that Israel’s total siege imposed on Gaza after October 7 last year, cutting off water and fuel “exacerbated an already existing humanitarian crisis.”
Israel “maintained a suffocating, unlawful blockade, tightly controlled access to energy sources, failed to facilitate meaningful humanitarian access within Gaza, and obstructed the import and delivery of life-saving goods and humanitarian aid,” particularly to areas north of Wadi Gaza.
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Amnesty said the situation, combined with the extensive damage to Gaza’s homes, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities and agricultural land, and mass forced displacement, “caused catastrophic levels of hunger and led to the spread of diseases at alarming rates.”
The impact, it said, was especially harsh on young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women, with anticipated long-term consequences for their health.
Repeated Evacuation Orders
The report also pointed out that Israel’s repeated evacuation orders “displaced nearly 1.9 million Palestinians – 90% of Gaza’s population – into ever-shrinking, unsafe pockets of land under inhumane conditions, some of them up to 10 times.”
These multiple waves of forced displacement, Amnesty said, “left many jobless and deeply traumatized, especially since some 70% of Gaza’s residents are refugees or descendants of refugees whose towns and villages were ethnically cleansed by Israel during the 1948 Nakba.”
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Amnesty also pointed out that despite conditions quickly becoming unfit for human life, “Israeli authorities refused to consider measures that would have protected displaced civilians and ensured their basic needs were met, showing that their actions were deliberate.”
They also refused to allow those displaced to return to their homes in northern Gaza or relocate temporarily to other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory or Israel, “continuing to deny many Palestinians their right to return under international law to areas they were displaced from in 1948.”
“They did so knowing that there was nowhere safe for Palestinians in Gaza to flee to,” said the organization.
Callamard lambasted the international community’s “to return to their homes in northern Gaza or relocate temporarily to other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory or Israel, continuing to deny many Palestinians their right to return under international law to areas they were displaced from in 1948.”
Call to World Bodies
In a call to the world’s leaders, Callamard said “Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to end this genocide, which was enabled by decades of impunity for Israel’s violations of international law.”
“States need to move beyond mere expressions of regret or dismay and take strong and sustained international action, however uncomfortable a finding of genocide may be for some of Israel’s allies,” she stressed.
She said the ICC’s arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued last month “offer real hope of long-overdue justice for victims.”
“States must demonstrate their respect for the court’s decision and for universal international law principles by arresting and handing over those wanted by the ICC,” Callamard emphasized.
She also called on the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC “to urgently consider adding genocide to the list of crimes it is investigating and for all states to use every legal avenue to bring perpetrators to justice.”
“No one should be allowed to commit genocide and remain unpunished,” Callamard stated.
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Featured image: Amnesty International has concluded in a new report that it has found “sufficient basis” to conclude that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. (Photo: Palestine Chronicle, via Amnesty International)
