Israel this committing and genocide in Gaza, the most serious of the crimes of the international legal order. That is the conclusion he has reached. Amnesty International after investigating the conduct of the Israeli military and its political leaders during the first nine months of the assault on the Gaza Strip, which is about to enter its 14th month without letting up. collective punishment against its population. To date more than 44,000 Palestinians have died in the offensive, which includes 17,500 childrenand 105,000 have been injured, according to the enclave’s health authorities. Amnesty not only claims to have found sufficient elements to conclude that “Israel has committed acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention”, but “were committed with the specific intention of destroy the Palestinian population of Gaza”.
Its opinion joins that of other human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch or the Lemkin Institute for the Prevention of Genocidewho had already reached that same conclusion. Like the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanesecountries like South Africawhich at the end of last year filed a genocide lawsuit against Israel before the International Court of Justice, the judicial body of the United Nations. As a precautionary measure, its magistrates ordered the Jewish State in May to “immediately stop its military offensive” considering that there are “plausible signs of genocide.” But Israel has ignored the order.
The same thing he has done with the arrest warrant issued by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court against his Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahuand the former head of Defense, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. These orders were also issued against leaders of Hamas for their responsibility in the October 7 attacks that set this latest conflagration in motion on October 7, 2023.
Violations of the Genocide Convention
In its report, Amnesty maintains that Israel has committed three of the five acts constituting genocide, defined by the treaty that has regulated it since 1951 as “the total or partial destruction of a group national, ethnic, racial or religious. Specifically, in “the killing of members of the Palestinian population of Gaza”; in “serious injuries to their physical or mental integrity”; and in their “submission to conditions of existence to bring about their physical destruction.” And remember that international jurisprudence, when defining the “partial destruction” of a group does not impose any threshold in numerical or percentage terms. It is enough for him that it constitutes a “substantial part of the group” in question, which he considers more than proven in this case, taking into account that almost 40% of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories lived in Gaza.
Regarding the “killing of the population” and the “serious injuries to their physical or mental integrity,” their investigation maintains that Israel has been launching “adirect attacks against civilians or civilian facilities” or “attacks deliberately indiscriminate”. Of the fifteen bombings that he was able to investigate, in none of them did he find evidence that they were directed against military objectives, contrary to what the Israeli authorities usually argue. And all of them were carried out with “large bombs”, such as the American “JDAM”, “to cause a very high number of deaths”. And while he acknowledges that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups endangered civilians by operating from residential areas, “their conduct does not exempt Israel from its obligations.”
Unprecedented destruction in the 21st century
The result of that “pattern of behavior” The figures reflect it. Of the more than 40,000 deaths recorded until the preparation of its report, almost 60% are children, women or elderly. Among the flood of wounded, some 22,500 will be dragged lifelong injuriesaccording to what he says, citing the World Health Organization. Another 1,200 have suffered amputations, although the real number would be closer to 5,000. And more than 2,000, serious burns.
Regarding the living conditions imposed by Israel in the Strip, the report provides an exhaustive summary of the catalog of horrors that have made Gaza an uninhabitable place. “Neither the magnitude nor the speed of the damage and destruction of homes and infrastructure of all sectors of economic activity has never been seen in any other conflict of the 21st century,” states the British organization. And there it stops in the famine caused by restrictions on the entry of food and water; the destruction of almost two thirds of the homes, according to various reports; the forced displacement (and repeated for many) of more than 90% of the population; the spread of diseases by “extreme overcrowding” or the destruction of sanitation; or “the effective collapse of the health system” for various “deliberate actions by Israeli forces.”
The Amnesty report also stops at the genocidal intent of Netanyahu’s military, the most complicated aspect to prove during a genocide case. To do so, it clings to both the countless statements in this regard by Israeli political and military leaders, as well as the pattern of behavior in Gaza that, according to its conclusions, is “indicative of genocidal intent.”
Despite the clarity of the Amnesty report or the multitude of authoritative voices that have spoken in the same direction, nothing seems to be going to change as long as Washington and Brussels continue to support the alleged war criminals at the head of the Israeli Government. For a few weeks now, its military has been in full campaign to empty northern Gaza of Palestinian population. A campaign denounced this week by the former Israeli Minister of Defense (2013-2013), Moshe Yaalon, who described her as a “ethnic cleansing operation” perpetrated by blow “war crimes”.
