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Children play in the rubble of destroyed buildings in Khan Yunis, Gaza. The photo was taken on December 1.
1 / 2Photo: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP/TT
Israel has committed and is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, claims Amnesty International in a new report.
This is by intentionally killing civilians, causing serious physical and psychological damage and forcing Palestinians to live in very difficult conditions, the organization writes.
Amnesty has investigated Israel’s actions following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The organization’s conclusion is that Israel has intended to wipe out Palestinians in Gaza and refers, among other things, to audited Israeli military operations, statements from Israeli representatives and what is described as “a suffocating, illegal blockade” and illegal military occupation of the Palestinian strip of land.
Israel’s evacuation orders have forced around 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents to flee. Many have fled repeatedly to smaller and smaller areas where basic infrastructure is lacking, and where people live in very difficult conditions.
“There is no clean water, no toilets, while the bombing never ends. You feel like a subhuman here,” says a 42-year-old father of three in the report about his time on the run in Dayr al-Balah.
“Too little and too late”
The material that has been examined also includes interviews with over 200 people in Gaza, analyzes of satellite images and video clips as well as reports from UN agencies, human rights groups and humanitarian organizations on the ground in Gaza. The report focuses on the first nine months of the war.
– Too often genocide is called by its right name only when it is over. It’s too little too late, you might say, and you always wonder why it hasn’t been caught sooner, says Budour Hassan, Amnesty International’s Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories investigator.
She is one of many who have contributed to the report, including through interviews with witnesses, survivors and victims in Gaza.
– The hope is that for once we do not fall behind and that no one in the future can claim that this is not true.
“Even worse case”
Analyzes of weapon fragments show that Israel has on several occasions used bombs that have an effect on large areas, including near hospitals in densely populated areas.
Amnesty calls on Israel to immediately put an end to the acts prohibited by the UN Genocide Convention and to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza. But the country still shows no signs of changing its way of acting, says Bodour Hassan.
– Unfortunately, in the last two months we have seen an intensification and deterioration. We have now seen even worse cases of the very patterns we have already documented.
FAKTAFN’s Genocide Convention
According to the UN Genocide Convention from 1948, genocide means “exterminating, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racially determined or religious people group”.
Genocide can be committed in five ways: by killing, by causing serious physical or psychological harm, by intentionally creating living conditions aimed at the extermination of the group, by preventing childbearing, and by forcibly removing children.
Source: United Nations
Read moreFACTS Ongoing court case in The Hague
In the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, since December 2023, a legal process has been going on in which South Africa accuses Israel of genocide, where no outcome has yet been reached.
The International Criminal Court (ICC), also in The Hague, just two weeks ago issued an arrest warrant against, among others, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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