Amnesty International (AI) presented a report this Wednesday in The Hague in which it claims to have found sufficient elements to conclude that Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza after October 7, 2023. That day, Hamas attacked Israeli territory, killed 1,200 people and kidnapped another 250. For the NGO, the greatest crime of the conflict that broke out then continues to be perpetrated in the Strip, which is why it calls to the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to include genocide among the crimes they investigate. It is the first time that Amnesty points this out in the context of an armed conflict, and also calls for collective action so that political leaders know “that it must end.”
In the last 14 months, consultants from the organization have collected testimonies and medical reports; They have taken photos on the ground and studied satellite images. Everything to prepare a legal analysis of the situation. They have done so in the context of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (1948), and the jurisprudence of courts such as those of the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. In this way, the NGO concludes that Israel has committed three acts prohibited by the Convention: massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, serious injury to their physical or mental integrity and intentional subjection of the population to conditions of existence that would lead to their physical destruction, total or partial. “After considering all of Israel’s military objectives in its fight against Hamas, we have verified that there is no other justification for the destruction perpetrated than the genocidal intention to eradicate and physically destroy the population,” said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of AI. , during the presentation of the report.
“We have eyes in Gaza that have worked under our standards of rigor and objectivity, and we do not give an opinion,” explained Erika Guevara Rosas, AI’s global director of research, advocacy and campaign, in an interview prior to the publication of the report. to this newspaper. “It is a legal analysis of the acts committed by Israel in light of the Convention.” Genocidal intent – very difficult to prove – is essential for this crime and Israel has at times relaxed pressure on the Palestinian people. He did it, for example, to allow vaccination against polio.
“It is evidence that Israel could have done things differently, and it did not,” said this human rights lawyer. Although it is complex to determine the existence of genocide in an armed conflict, with military objectives considered legitimate, “it is essential to insist that war can never justify it.” Hence, she describes AI’s analysis as “a legal blow to the State of Israel, which has used the historical suffering of its people to justify the commission of crimes.”
Thousands dead and displaced
AI experts have investigated, among other facts, 15 Israeli airstrikes carried out in a period of nine months between 2023 and 2024, which they consider to be directed against civilians or indiscriminate. “Of the 40,717 deaths that the Gaza Ministry of Health had recorded as of October 7, 2024, just under 69% were children, women and the elderly,” the report reads. The remaining 30% were men under 60 years of age, “of whom no independent source has been able to determine how many were combatants.” [de Hamás] and how many civilians.”
Over 300 pages, the NGO also describes that “90% of Gaza’s 2.2 million inhabitants have been subjected to forced displacement, in many cases multiple times.” Furthermore, provisional estimates from the World Bank, the European Union and the UN indicate that by January 2024, 84% of healthcare facilities and 57% of water supply infrastructure throughout Gaza had already been damaged or destroyed. Palestinians have been forced to concentrate in increasingly smaller areas without means, in fields, schools or health centers. Guevara Rosas emphasizes that “there it is proven how the intention of genocide is an act of intentionally subjecting the population to conditions of existence that can lead to their total or partial destruction.”
And to illustrate the “dehumanization of the Palestinian population” in the war in Gaza, experts have examined the use of “dehumanizing, racist and derogatory rhetoric against Palestinian people by the Israeli authorities” during the military offensive.
After October 7, “Israel’s illicit acts were frequently announced, promoted and encouraged by members of the war and security cabinets.” In 22 specific cases, Amnesty writes, “the destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza” was called for. Among those who did so include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. For both, the ICC has requested arrest warrants for their alleged responsibility in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Illegal occupation
The document denounces that the genocide takes place in a historical context of illegal occupation of the Palestinian territory by Israel, “as the ICJ declared in July and with the UN General Assembly giving Israel a period of 12 months to put an end to it,” continues the jurist. He says that the occupation has reached a degree of apartheid “where Palestinians are treated as a subgroup, and their human rights are not valued like those of Israeli citizens.” And it warns of the danger that “this genocide could give way to Israel annexing these territories illegally and contrary to all international agreements” that seek to “generate conditions for [la creación de] the two States.”
For his part, during his speech in The Hague, Callamard said that Israel has convinced its allies that it is legitimate to search for members of the fundamentalist militia among civilians: “The military objective of destroying Hamas cannot justify or allow the Gaza genocide. That Israel “only seeks Hamas and not destroy the Palestinians does not hold water,” he declared. AI has also denounced “the atrocities of Hamas and has documented its presence among civilians.” He has in turn called for the release of the Israeli hostages, describing the October 7 attack as “the deadliest ever perpetrated in the history of Israel in a single day.”
At this time, the NGO is finalizing an investigation into these crimes that it hopes to publish in the coming weeks. Guevara Rosas states: “For AI there is no hierarchy of crimes, but we have given priority to genocide because it is being committed and everything possible must be done to put an end to it.” “What we seek,” he asserts, is “to contribute to accountability and justice.”
During its investigations, AI has sought to compare the evidence collected with the Israeli authorities. There has been no response. “We raise our voice against the use of anti-Semitism to try to evade criticism of the actions of the State [de Israel]”Warns Guevara Rosas. In the West Bank, where he was last February, “the level of violence was very high, with territorial dispossession and more than 3,500 arrests since October 7, the vast majority in arbitrary situations.”
Both the jurist and the secretary general of AI underline the symbolism of presenting the report in The Hague, headquarters of both the UN International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Both have recalled the role that the international community must play in putting an end to “this genocide, which not only violates the life and dignity of the Palestinian people, but that of all peoples,” in the words of Guevara Rosas.
