A human rights organization criticizes Israel for the forced displacement of the Gaza Strip. Almost 2 million inhabitants of the original 2.4 million were evicted from there.
Israel on Thursday denied allegations by the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) that Israeli military units are forcibly evicting residents of the Gaza Strip. According to HRW, the actions of the Israeli army constitute crimes against humanity and in some cases ethnic cleansing. The United States also criticized the accusations against Israel. TASR informs about it according to the reports of the AFP and Reuters agencies.
“The rhetoric of Human Rights Watch regarding Israel’s progress in the Gaza Strip is repeatedly false and detached from reality,” wrote on the X social network the spokesman of the Israeli Foreign Minister, Oren Marmorštajn.
The HWR organization said in its 172-page report published on Thursday that “forced displacement is deliberate and part of Israeli state policy and therefore constitutes a crime against humanity”.
Israel sees it as its right
However, Marmorštajn claims that Israel is only seeking to eliminate Hamas militants, and not the residents of the Palestinian enclave. He also accused the militants of using civilians as human shields and placing their “terrorist” infrastructure in residential areas. “Israel views any civilian damage as a tragedy, while Hamas considers any civilian damage a strategy. Israel will continue to act in accordance with the law armed conflict,” the spokesman declared.
The law of armed conflict prohibits the forcible displacement of the civilian population from occupied territory, unless it is necessary for the safety of civilians or for military reasons, Reuters notes. UN figures show that in October 2024, 1.9 million Palestinians were displaced by the year-long conflict in the Gaza Strip. Before the war, approximately 2.4 million people lived in this area.
US State Department Deputy Spokesman Vedant Patel said the United States does not agree with HRW’s accusation or with the findings of the UN committee, according to which Israel’s methods of war amount to “genocide”. Forced displacement of Palestinians would be a red line for the US, according to Patel, and incompatible with the principles that at the beginning of the war, Foreign Secretary Antony Blinken and other allies set out.
