Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians during its war against Hamas in Gaza.
The human rights group said Israel sought to deliberately destroy Palestinians by launching deadly attacks, demolishing vital infrastructure and preventing the delivery of food, medicine and other aid.
It said such actions met the legal threshold for the crime of genocide. It is the first time it has made such a determination during an active armed conflict.
In a report, Amnesty said Israel’s actions could not be justified by Hamas’ attack into Israel on 7 October last year which ignited the war, or on the presence of militants in civilian areas.
Amnesty said the US and other Israeli allies could be complicit in genocide and called on them to halt arms shipments.
“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said in the report.
Israel has consistently rejected any allegations of genocide.
It is challenging such allegations at the International Court of Justice and has rejected the International Criminal Court’s accusations Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister committed war crimes in Gaza.
“The deplorable and fanatical organisation Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Israel accused Hamas of carrying out a genocidal massacre in the attack that triggered the war and said it is defending itself in accordance with international law.
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Middle East correspondent
Genocide is the most serious crime under international law and has only been proven in a small number of cases.
The term “genocide” was first used in relation to the systematic murder of more than six million Jews during the Nazi holocaust, and was first recognised as a crime under international law in 1948.
Other examples of genocide include the Armenian massacre, Rwanda, Srebrenica and recently the mass killings of Yazidis by Islamic State.
China has been accused of genocide against the Uighurs, as has Myanmar for its treatment of the Rohingya people.
It is a complex legal concept but by definition genocide is the killing “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
This can include causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The law does not include political groups and so Israel’s desire to eliminate Hamas, for example, would not constitute an act of genocide.
To determine genocide, it must be demonstrated that there has been deliberate intent by the perpetrators which itself can be extremely hard to prove, especially so in the case of the Gaza War when access for independent investigators and journalists has been prevented.
The destruction of culture, or attempts to move a group, do not themselves constitute genocide.
Israel argues the Hamas attacks on 7 October were themselves an act of genocide and angrily rejects any comparison with their own actions in response.
The very idea Israel might be committing genocide sits very heavily on the psyche of all Israelis, a country that was founded off the back of the worst genocide in living memory.
Individual governments can make their own determinations of genocide, but the International Court of Justice is the globally recognised arbiter.
South Africa brought a case against Israel to the ICJ in late December 2023 which is still being heard. It can take many years for a case to be concluded.
Israel ‘has intended to commit genocide’
Amnesty accused Israel and the Israeli military of committing at least three of the five acts banned by the 1948 Geneva Convention, including killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of a protected group.
The acts were done with the intent required by the convention, according to Amnesty, which said it had reviewed over 100 statements from Israeli officials.
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Ms Callamard said while Amnesty had not set out to prove genocide, after reviewing the evidence and statements collectively the only conclusion was “Israel is intending and has intended to commit genocide”.
She added: “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.”
Hamas-led militants stormed southern Israel on 7 October 2023 and killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostage. Some 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza, with at least a third believed to be dead.
More than 44,500 people have been killed in Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. The ministry’s count does not differentiate between civilians and fighters, but it has said more than half of those killed are women and children.
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Amnesty urged the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate the alleged genocide.
