Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for the “forced, massive and deliberate” displacement of almost the entire population of Gaza repeatedly and “without compelling military reason” since the current war began in October 2023, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published this Thursday. The text adds that the plans to permanently expel Palestinians from the Strip, expressed by some members of the Israeli Government, involve “ethnic cleansing.”
This humanitarian organization demands that the Jewish State be sanctioned and that it stop selling weapons – it cites the United States and Germany – which represent “a blank check for new atrocities.” In addition, it requests that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague investigate these orders by the Israeli army to displace hundreds of thousands of people – affecting 1.9 of the 2.3 million Gazans – and the refusal of the imposed return. “No one can deny the atrocious crimes that the Israeli army is committing against Palestinians in Gaza,” says Nadia Hardman, one of the report’s authors.
In addition, HRW adds, Israel also fails to comply with the laws governing war and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) by destroying infrastructure and buildings in “a large part of the territory.” In some cases they have done so to create corridors for the army or empty spaces that will prevent the population from returning to those places. The attacks also occur on the escape routes indicated by the army, which has also “intentionally” destroyed the infrastructure that the population needs to survive. Among them, hospitals, schools, water and energy infrastructure, bakeries or agricultural land.
“Israel has flagrantly violated its obligation to ensure that Palestinians can return to their homes, devastating virtually everything in its path over large areas,” Hardman denounces in the 154-page report, titled Hopeless, hungry and besieged: Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. To prepare it, 39 interviews with Gazans have been carried out, 184 orders for the expulsion of the population have been analyzed and satellite images, video and photographs have been studied. It also recalls that Israel was born as a State in 1948 and that, since then and protected by a “wall of impunity”, it prevents the right of return to the places from which 80% of the inhabitants of Gaza were expelled. They are refugees.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) is weighed by two laws that prohibit its activities approved in the Israeli Parliament at the end of October. There are even members of the Government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who do not hide that the goal is to expel the Palestinians from Gaza and settle Jewish settlers in the Strip. “Israeli authorities are likely planning to make permanent the violent and organized displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, who belong to another ethnic group, in the buffer zones and security corridors. These actions by the Israeli authorities constitute ethnic cleansing,” warns HRW.
The argument of the Israeli authorities that these forced movements of Palestinians have to be carried out because Hamas and other armed groups fight among civilians, but “Human Rights Watch research shows that this claim is largely false” . Israel, this NGO adds, does not assume its obligations as an “occupying power” and largely blocks the humanitarian aid necessary for civilians such as water, electricity and fuel. Additionally, “evacuation orders have been inconsistent, inaccurate, and often not communicated to civilians in sufficient time” or “at all,” the report states.
The military campaign that Israel has been maintaining for 13 months in Gaza has already claimed more than 43,600 lives. For five weeks, the army has maintained a fierce offensive in the northern area of the Palestinian enclave, with more than a thousand dead and hundreds of thousands displaced, according to the UN. This operation in the north is, according to HRW, the latest proof of the strategy applied by the occupation troops with this forced movement of the population.
The Israeli army has decided to investigate 16 of the attacks carried out by its troops with nearly 300 deaths in that northern area of the Strip due to possible cases of violation of international law, according to what the newspaper published this Thursday. Haaretz. An investigation that is being opened, the media adds, in the face of possible international lawsuits against military personnel of the Jewish State. At least a thousand people have died since October in that northern area of the Palestinian enclave, according to the United Nations. Most have lost their lives in Israeli attacks on residential buildings, temporary shelters or public facilities where they were sheltering, according to that newspaper.
The targets of these 16 attacks carried out between October 21 and November 2 were Jabalia (6), Beit Lahia (6), Shati (2), Beit Hanun (1) and Gaza City (1) with a total of at least 285 dead. The majority are residential buildings, in two cases the target of the bombings were UN schools that serve as refuge for the population.
The investigation will be carried out by a military organization dependent on the General Staff known as the FAA Mechanism (Mechanism for Fact-Finding Assessmentsin English), whose report is transferred to the Military Prosecutor’s Office, which decides whether to open criminal proceedings. But, according to previous cases, this process can last years and will only serve to “cover up illegal acts,” understand human rights organizations.
“The majority of them are closed without initiating a criminal investigation against those involved,” he adds. Haaretzwhich defines this military mechanism as an instrument to defend its troops in case of accusations of war crimes. By opening an investigation by the Israeli side, the possibility of it being carried out at the same time elsewhere is curbed. Only one case out of 664 opened in previous conflicts in Gaza ended in a formal accusation and it was for the theft in a house of the equivalent of about 600 euros by several soldiers, according to the Israeli NGO Yesh Din.
The largest of these attacks took place on October 29 against the five-story building of the Abu Nasser family in Beit Lahia, with a total of 94 dead, according to the Israeli newspaper. It describes scenes of numerous bodies shown in videos and often published on social networks, as the Israeli authorities continue to prevent journalists from accessing the Strip, where more than 120 reporters or media employees have died during these attacks, according to the Committee. to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Already last June, the UN accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity for its attacks in Gaza in reaction to the massacre led by Hamas on October 7, 2023 in which some 1,200 people and another 250 were murdered in Israeli territory. , between civilians and soldiers, were kidnapped, of which 101 remain in the Palestinian enclave, according to the authorities of the Jewish State.
International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and the Geneva Conventions consider intentional homicide, torture, deportation or illegal transfer or illegal confinement of persons, intentional attacks against the civilian population and against civilian objects that do not constitute war crimes. military objectives, or the murder of prisoners of war.
One of the fundamental principles in IHL is proportionality, which prohibits parties from responding to an attack with excessive violence. This is what Israel is being accused of, whose troops, according to accusations from humanitarian organizations and the UN, do not differentiate between civilians and combatants. Two other principles also apply, such as that of precaution, which calls for doing everything possible to avoid harm to civilians, and that of distinction, which requires clear discrimination between objectives. None of them are being fulfilled by the Israeli army: according to the UN, almost 70% of the more than 43,000 dead are women and minors.
If the courts of the place where the acts were committed are not capable of prosecuting them, it is in the hands of the International Criminal Court (ICC), based in The Hague (Netherlands). Individuals are considered responsible for these crimes. They can also be investigated and tried by any State, under the principle of universal jurisdiction. In the case of States, it corresponds to the International Court of Justice, also based in The Hague and dependent on the UN.
