In a landmark new report based on months of research, Amnesty International has concluded that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip.
The report published yesterday, “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza”, documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the Hamas-led October 7 attacks, Israel has unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity.
“Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them. Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.
“States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide. All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states, the UK and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.”
Israel official showed ‘clear intent’
Amnesty International’s report examines in detail Israel’s violations in Gaza over nine months between 7 October 2023 and early July 2024.
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The organisation interviewed 212 people, including Palestinian victims and witnesses, local authorities in Gaza, healthcare workers, conducted fieldwork and analysed an extensive range of visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery.
It also analysed statements by senior Israeli government and military officials, and official Israeli bodies.
Many of the unlawful acts documented by Amnesty International were preceded by officials urging their implementation. The organisation reviewed 102 statements that were issued by Israeli government and military officials and others between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2024 and dehumanised Palestinians, called for or justified genocidal acts or other crimes against them.
Of these, Amnesty International identified 22 statements made by senior officials in charge of managing the offensive that appeared to call for, or justify, genocidal acts, providing direct evidence of genocidal intent.
This language was frequently replicated, including by Israeli soldiers on the ground, as evidenced by audiovisual content verified by Amnesty International showing soldiers making calls to “erase” Gaza or to make it uninhabitable, and celebrating the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities.
On multiple occasions, the organisation shared its findings with the Israeli authorities but had received no substantive response at the time of publication.
“Taking into account the pre-existing context of dispossession, apartheid and unlawful military occupation in which these acts have been committed, we could find only one reasonable conclusion: Israel’s intent is the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, whether in parallel with, or as a means to achieve, its military goal of destroying Hamas,” said Agnès Callamard.
“The atrocity crimes committed on 7 October 2023 by Hamas and other armed groups against Israelis and victims of other nationalities, including deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking, can never justify Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”
Gaza on brink of collapse
Israel’s actions following Hamas’s attacks on 7 October 2023 have brought Gaza’s population to the brink of collapse. Its brutal military offensive had killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, including over 13,300 children, and injured over 97,000 more, by 7 October 2024, many of them in direct or deliberately indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families.
It has caused unprecedented destruction, which experts say occurred at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century, levelling entire cities and destroying critical infrastructure, agricultural land and cultural and religious sites. It thereby rendered large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable.
Israel imposed conditions of life in Gaza that created a deadly mixture of malnutrition, hunger and diseases, and exposed Palestinians to a slow, calculated death. Israel also subjected hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza to incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment.
Viewed in isolation, amnesty says some of the acts constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law. But in looking at the broader picture of Israel’s military campaign and the cumulative impact of its policies and acts, genocidal intent is the only reasonable conclusion.
Israeli denials and claims
Before reaching its conclusion, Amnesty International examined Israel’s claims that its military lawfully targeted Hamas and other armed groups throughout Gaza, and that the resulting unprecedented destruction and denial of aid were the outcome of unlawful conduct by Hamas and other armed groups, such as locating fighters among the civilian population or the diversion of aid.
The organisation concluded these claims are not credible because the presence of Hamas fighters near or within a densely populated area does not absolve Israel from its obligations to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and avoid indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks.
Amnesty’s research found Israel repeatedly failed to do so, committing multiple crimes under international law for which there can be no justification based on Hamas’s actions. Amnesty International also found no evidence that the diversion of aid could explain Israel’s extreme and deliberate restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid.
It added that regardless of whether Israel sees the destruction of Palestinians as instrumental to destroying Hamas or as an acceptable by-product of this goal, this view of Palestinians as disposable and not worthy of consideration is in itself evidence of genocidal intent.
Suffocating siege
After 7 October 2023, Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza cutting off electricity, water and fuel. In the nine months reviewed for this report, Israel maintained a suffocating, unlawful blockade, tightly controlled access to energy sources, failed to facilitate meaningful humanitarian access within Gaza, and obstructed the import and delivery of life-saving goods and humanitarian aid, particularly to areas north of Wadi Gaza. They thereby exacerbated an already existing humanitarian crisis.
This, combined with the extensive damage to Gaza’s homes, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities and agricultural land, and mass forced displacement, caused catastrophic levels of hunger and led to the spread of diseases at alarming rates. The impact was especially harsh on young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women, with anticipated long-term consequences for their health.
Amnesty says that time and again, Israel had the chance to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, yet for over a year it has repeatedly refused to take steps blatantly within its power to do so, such as opening sufficient access points to Gaza or lifting tight restrictions on what could enter the Strip or their obstruction of aid deliveries within Gaza while the situation has grown progressively worse.
Through its repeated “evacuation” orders Israel displaced nearly 1.9 million Palestinians – 90% of Gaza’s population – into ever-shrinking, unsafe pockets of land under inhumane conditions, some of them up to 10 times. These multiple waves of forced displacement left many jobless and deeply traumatised, especially since some 70% of Gaza’s residents are refugees or descendants of refugees whose towns and villages were ethnically cleansed by Israel during the 1948 Nakba.
Despite conditions quickly becoming unfit for human life, Israeli authorities refused to consider measures that would have protected displaced civilians and ensured their basic needs were met, showing that their actions were deliberate.
They refused to allow those displaced to return to their homes in northern Gaza or relocate temporarily to other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory or Israel, continuing to deny many Palestinians their right to return under international law to areas they were displaced from in 1948. They did so knowing that there was nowhere safe for Palestinians in Gaza to flee to.
Accountability for genocide
“The international community’s seismic, shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities in Gaza, by first delaying calls for a ceasefire and then continuing arms transfers, is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience,” said Agnès Callamard.
“Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to end this genocide, which was enabled by decades of impunity for Israel’s violations of international law. States need to move beyond mere expressions of regret or dismay and take strong and sustained international action, however uncomfortable a finding of genocide may be for some of Israel’s allies.
“The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued last month offer real hope of long-overdue justice for victims. States must demonstrate their respect for the court’s decision and for universal international law principles by arresting and handing over those wanted by the ICC.
“We are calling on the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to urgently consider adding genocide to the list of crimes it is investigating and for all states to use every legal avenue to bring perpetrators to justice. No one should be allowed to commit genocide and remain unpunished.”
Israeli officials have yet to respond to the report’s findings.
